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Great Ideas from Michael Moore

Published on Thursday, October 22, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now

You've Seen the Movie -- Now It's Time to ACT!

by Michael Moore

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.

Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama's agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I'll post it on my website.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!

4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)

5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?

FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:

1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.

2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.

3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.

4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here's how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!

I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.

And when you act, send me your stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure to post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter on my site so they can be shared with millions.

C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Robert Reich on Lobbyists and "Reform"

From Robert Reich's blog:

Thursday, October 08, 2009

So Much Happening in Washington and So Little To Show for It, So Far

The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote Tuesday on a healthcare bill that just got a seal of approval from the Congressional Budget Office and is very likely to garner the vote of Republican Senator Olympia Snowe -- a twofer that gives the bill preeminence over four other healthcare bills that have emerged from House and Senate committees over these long months. Unlike those bills, though, the Senate Finance bill won't it have a public insurance option to compete with private insurers. Nor does it allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices, or adequately subsidize millions of middle-class families who will be required to buy health insurance that will be hard for them to afford. In short, it's a great deal for private insurers and Big Pharma but not such a great deal for middle-class Americans.

Meanwhile, the House Banking Committee is quietly circulating a draft set of reforms of financial markets likely to become the basis for whatever legislation emerges to fix the Street. Barney Frank, who heads the Committee, is a thoughtful progressive. But the draft has gaping loopholes that will let most financial firms escape -- such as one that exempts corporations that deal in financial derivatives from any requirements for capital, business conduct, record-keeping, and reporting if they use derivatives for the purpose of "risk management," which is the very thing they all claim they're doing. Neither the draft bill, nor the Committee, nor anyone on the Hill having anything to do with financial regulation, is raising what I consider to be the two key reforms necessary for avoiding another financial meltdown -- resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated commercial from investment banking, and applying antitrust laws to the remaining five biggest Wall Street banks so none is "too big to fail."

At the same time, environmental legislation is now slinking its way through Congress. The Waxman-Markey climate bill was passed by the House in June; John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have now released a Senate version. All four legislators claim to be progressives concerned about the environment, but the bills are, frankly, far short of what's needed. Waxman-Markey gives away 85 percent of pollution permits to the nation's biggest polluters, and the "cap" it proposes on overall carbon emissions would cut greenhouse gas emissions only by an estimated 2 to 4 percent by 2020 compared to the UN reference year of 1990. (If America was to play its appropriate role in a global climate deal, the reduction would be more like 40 percent, and the U.S. would also provide financing and technology so developing countries could reduce their emissions by a comparable amount.) The Kerry-Boxer bill has a stronger cap on emissions but it's still far short of what's necessary -- and it leaves out the hardest part, which is the actual cap-and-trade mechanism. Kerry and Boxer are leaving that to the Senate Finance Committee, of all places.

And what's happening on the job's front? Nothing except a blip of interest in tax credits to small businesses that create new jobs. That's not a bad move (I suggested it myself), but it's rather like bailing out the ocean with a teacup. If that's all there is, we're headed toward two years of double-digit unemployment. No one on the Hill or in the Administration is yet willing to say openly and clearly that the stimulus plan must be larger, and continued through 2010 and 2011.

My friends in the Administration and on the Hill repeatedly tell me "don't make the perfect the enemy of the better," or words to that effect. Politics is the art of the possible, blah blah blah. True. But in each of these areas -- healthcare, financial regulation, environment, and jobs -- the "better" is really not that much better. Forget perfect; anything that offered real reform would suffice for now. But in every case, what should be the centerpieces of reform are being left out.

Why? Congress is overwhelmed with corporate and Wall Street lobbyists (far too many of whom are former Democratic office holders). The White House is trying best it can to push and prod in the right direction but there's too much going on, too many arenas where private interests are framing the debate and stifling major reform, and too many friends of friends and relations of relations who are making tons of money working for the other side. The public doesn't know what's going on because the national media would rather report on the sexual escapades of famous people or social trends or high finance (a recent Pew study of economic reporting shows the vast majority of stories about the Great Recession have focused on Wall Street rather than Main Street). And progressives -- that is, progressive organizations in our nation's capital -- have been remarkably and consistently outgunned, outmaneuvered, or just plain ineffectual. This is largely due to the fact that they're sitting in Washington rather than organizing and mobilizing the rest of the country.

And I haven't even brought up Afghanistan.

posted by Robert Reich | 8:02 AM

Lobbyists Control American Political System

Published in Salon:

Washington's revolving doors are bad for your health

Healthcare reform might be easier if so many industry lobbyists didn't once work for legislators like Max Baucus

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Oct. 10, 2009 | On Tuesday, Oct. 13, the Senate Finance Committee finally is scheduled to vote on its version of healthcare insurance reform. And therein lies yet another story in the endless saga of money and politics.

In most polls, the majority of Americans favor a nonprofit alternative -- like Medicare -- that would give the private health industry some competition. So if so many of us, including President Obama himself, want that public option, how come we're not getting one?

Because the medicine that could cure our healthcare nightmare has been poisoned from Day One -- fatally adulterated, thanks to the infamous, Washington revolving door. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget for whom they're supposed to be working.

If you've been watching the Senate Finance Committee's markup sessions, maybe you've noticed a woman sitting behind Committee Chairman Max Baucus. Her name is Liz Fowler.

Fowler used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was its vice-president of public policy. Baucus' office failed to mention this in the press release announcing her appointment as senior counsel in February 2008, even though it went on at length about her expertise in "healthcare policy."

Now she's working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want -- higher profits -- and no competition from alternative nonprofit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.

A veteran of the revolving door, Fowler had a previous stint working for Sen. Baucus -- before her time at WellPoint. But wait, there's more. The person who was Baucus' top health advisor before he brought back Liz Fowler? Her name is Michelle Easton. And why did she leave the staff of the committee? To go to work -- surprise -- at a firm representing the same company for which Liz Fowler worked -- WellPoint. As a lobbyist.

You can't tell the players without a scorecard in the old Washington shell game. Lobbyist out, lobbyist in. It's why they always win. They've been plowing this ground for years, but with the broad legislative agenda of the Obama White House -- healthcare, energy, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act and more -- the soil has never been so fertile.

The healthcare industry alone has six lobbyists for every member of Congress and more than 500 of them are former congressional staff members, according to the Public Accountability Initiative's LittleSis database.

Just to be certain Congress sticks with the program, the industry has been showering megabucks all over Capitol Hill. From the beginning, they wanted to make sure that whatever bill comes out of the Finance Committee puts for-profit insurance companies first -- by forcing the uninsured to buy medical policies from them. Money not only talks, it writes the prescriptions.

In just the last few months, the healthcare industry has spent $380 million on lobbying, advertising and campaign contributions. And -- don't bother holding onto your socks -- a million and a half of it went to Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, the man who said he saw "a lot to like" in the two public option amendments proposed by Sens. Rockefeller and Schumer, but voted no anyway.

The people in favor of a public alternative can't scrape up the millions of dollars Baucus has received from the health sector during his political career. In fact, over the last two decades, the current members of the entire finance committee have collected nearly $50 million from the health sector, a long-term investment that's now paying off like a busted slot machine.

Not that we should be surprised. A century ago, muckraking journalists reported that large corporations and other wealthy interests virtually owned the United States Senate -- using bribery, fraud and sometimes blackmail to get their way. Jokes were made about "the senator from Union Pacific" or "the senator from Standard Oil."

One reporter in particular was out to break their grip. His name was David Graham Phillips. One day in 1906, readers of Cosmopolitan magazine opened its March issue to discover the first of nine articles by Phillips titled "The Treason of the Senate."

He wrote, "Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous: interests that manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up riches for the few; interests whose growth and power can only mean the degradation of the people, of the educated into sycophants, of the masses toward serfdom."

The public outrage provoked by Phillips and other muckrakers contributed to the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the direct popular election of senators, who until then were elected by easily bought-off state legislators.

Of course, like water seeking its own level, big money finds its way around every obstacle, and was soon up to its old tricks, filling the pockets of sympathetic and grateful politicians.

Today, none dare call it treason. So why not call it what it is -- a friendly takeover of government, a leveraged buyout of democracy.

Outrageous? You bet. But don't just get mad. Get busy.

Republicans Declare War On US President

Some Republicans have been saying things that amount to a declaration of war on a sitting US President. They want to defeat him at all costs. They could care less about the constructive role of making the US a better place for the American people. Senator Jim DeMint said that "if the Republicans can stop Obama on health care, it will be his Waterloo, it will break him." Yeah, we must defeat the US President when he is trying to make the US a better place for most non-billionaires. The language of warfare and battle is replacing the language of civil discussion. Talk about defeating Obama, breaking Obama, driving a stake through the heart of Obama's health care - this is the most vitriolic and uncivil use of metaphors in US history. It's suggestive of killing Obama.

In fact Bill Kristol has used precisely that word: "kill."

With Obamacare on the ropes, there will be a temptation for opponents to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear constructive, or at least responsible. There will be a tendency to want to let the Democrats' plans sink of their own weight, to emphasize that the critics have been pushing sound reform ideas all along and suggest it's not too late for a bipartisan compromise over the next couple of weeks or months. My advice, for what it's worth: Resist the temptation. This is no time to pull punches. Go for the kill. The Obama White House and the Democratic congressional leadership shouldn't be underestimated. They're tough. They'll cut deals and twist arms to try to keep their priority legislation alive. They'll certainly attack their opponents, whether their opponents' tone is conciliatory or confrontational. So this is not the time to let them off the ropes. This is the week to highlight every problem, every terrible provision, in the Democratic bills: from taxes and spending to government control and rationing to federal funding for abortion and government-required death-with-dignity counseling sessions for the elderly. Throw the kitchen sink at the legislation now on the table, drive a stake through its heart (I apologize for the mixed metaphors), and kill it.

Drive a stake through "its" heart. "Kill it." Nothing about constructive criticism. Only the language of warfare. It's all about defeating, even killing, Obama; nothing about making the US a better place for its citizens. OK, it's about making the US a better place for billionaires and corporations although they won't come out and actually say that. Talk about not discussing the merits of the health care bill. It wouldn't matter what health care bill Congress came up with. It could be the best thing that ever happened to America. The Republicans would still want to "kill it." Why? Because they want to defeat Obama at all costs.Why? Because they lust after political power. That's all they're concerned about. Make the US a better place for the average American? They could care less.

If the Democrats openly declared war on a sitting US President, the Republicans would be yelling "treason." Treason is in the eyes of the beholder. To paraphrase Nixon, when the Republicans do it, it's OK. When the Democrats do it, it's not. The Democrats should be under no illusions about Republican motives. If they think the Republians are interested in anything other than taking political power by any means necessary, they're crazy. I hope Obama is under no illusions either. I hope his talk of bipartisanship is meant to burnish his image as a nice guy rather than as a realistic approach to passing any legislation. The Republicans will seek to defeat anything Obama attempts to do, and the Democrats hopefully know that and will proceed accordingly. They have the votes and the power. They should use them and it to get the job done with repect to health care or anything else.

NO PUSSYFOOTING!

Has America Changed Its Role of Supporting Military Coups in South America?

Published on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

An End to Backyard Imperialism?

by Grace Livingstone

Early on Sunday morning, troops stormed the presidential palace of Honduras and kidnapped the president. Immediately eyes turned to the United States, which for more than a century has backed friendly dictators and cooked-up coups in Central America. The Honduran coup provides a vital test for Barack Obama, to prove that the US is no longer the "yankee imperialist" pulling the strings of despots in Latin America, an image that has resonated in the region since the 19th-century.

Since independence, the military has been the most powerful force in Honduras and if the coup goes unchallenged, it will show that it still has a veto on democratically elected presidents. Historically, that military has been supported unfailingly by the US. As US under-secretary of state Robert Olds wrote in 1927: "We do control the destinies of Central America and we do so for the simple reason that the national interest absolutely dictates such a course … governments which we recognise and support stay in power, while those we do not recognise and support fail."

US marines were sent to Central America over 30 times, and to Honduras seven times, between 1900 and 1934 to maintain order and quell any threat to the ruling oligarchies. With the introduction of Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour policy" in the 1930s, military intervention became less common; instead the US backed or installed "friendly dictators". In Honduras, the US smiled upon the brutal Tiburcio Carías Andino who ruled absolutely between 1931 and 1948, and a further series of military despots from 1951 to 1981.

Although democracy then returned to Honduras, the Reagan government poured in military aid, turning the fragile democracy into a militarised state. Using it as a base to pursue the war against the Nicaraguan revolutionary government, the US installed garrisons, supply dumps and air bases, as well as mercenary (Contra) training camps along the borders.

The US ambassador to Honduras at that time was John Negroponte, an ardent defender of the Honduran military, which was responsible for the "disappearance" of at least 184 people between 1980-92. He was one of a number of figures involved in the Iran-Contra affair who re-emerged in the George Bush administration. These old cold war warriors eyed with suspicion the new "radical populists" in Latin America, a term they used for the leftwing presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua. They were disturbed by the leftist tendencies of Honduras's Zelaya and his friendship with the Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. It is not surprising that Chávez has called for an investigation into whether the CIA played a role in this weekend's coup.

Although it looks unlikely, given the history, these calls cannot be dismissed out of hand. The US military has a longstanding relationship with its counterparts in Honduras and the US maintains an airbase in Soto Cano today. Elements in the Pentagon have been concerned about the growing leftist trend in Latin America: a US Army War College publication in 2006, entitled US Military Priorities for Latin America, included in its list of security concerns "Implications of the rising threat of populism in the region" and "Implications of the return of the Latin American left". The government development arm, USAID, spends about $50m a year in Honduras on "promoting democracy", funding pro-US non-governmental groups and political parties.

But it is notable that Hillary Clinton and other state department officials have clearly condemned the coup. This is in stark contrast to the Bush administration's public support for the coup against Chávez in Venezuela in 2002. President Obama has said he is "deeply concerned". Obama needs to act urgently, with his Latin American neighbours and the Organization of American States (OAS), to ensure that the elected president is reinstated, and prove his country is no longer a friend of despots in its own backyard.

Gov. Mark Sanford: Cheats on Wife, But Worse: Denies Stimulus Help to Poor

By now almost everyone has heard about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, a virulent critic of Clinton's sexual escapade with Monica Lewinski and strident Christian values proponent, who has confessed to an affair with a woman from Argentina. Last week he left his state without telling anyone and spent several days in Buenos Aires with his mistress while hinting he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. And yet he hasn't resigned as Governor. He's just one of a long string of Republican hypocrites who espouse Christian values and then cheat on their wives or have gay sex with underage boys including Mark Foley, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Newt Gingrich, John Ensign, David Vitter, Mr. "Wide Stance" Larry Craig. They're all adulterers or pedophiles.

This was reported by the State newspaper on June 23 before Sanford's return:

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff said this morning that the governor, who went mysteriously incommunicado for several days, plans to return to his office Wednesday. Late Monday, his office said the governor was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ending four days during which staff and state officials said they had not heard from him. State Sen. Jake Knotts issued statement today saying: “I’m happy to hear that Governor Sanford has finally contacted his office after being missing from the state for five days." "While I believe every person deserves a vacation, our constitution gives only one man authority to act in case of an emergency - the governor of South Carolina. Should the governor decide to vacation away from South Carolina again, it is my sincere hope that he will take his security detail and keep his cell phone on so that he can be reached in case of a large-scale emergency," the statement said. "If he is not willing to do so, he should turn his gubernatorial authority over to the lieutenant governor,” it continued. Knotts, a Lexington Republican and frequent Sanford critic, is an ally of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. Knotts make Sanford's absence public Monday by issuing a news release saying that SLED did not know where the governor was and asking who was in charge of S.C. government. In a statement, Joel Sawyer, Sanford's spokesman said, "Governor Sanford called to check in with his chief of staff this morning. It would be fair to say the governor was somewhat taken aback by all of the interest this trip has gotten. "Given the circumstances and the attention this has garnered, the governor communicated to us that he plans on returning to the office tomorrow. Neither Sanford’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford since he left the mansion Thursday in a black Suburban SUV assigned to his security detail, said state Sen. Jake Knotts , R-Lexington, and three others familiar with the situation, but who declined to be identified. On Monday, Sawyer would not disclose where on the trail the governor was hiking, nor would he reveal whether Sanford was hiking alone. Sanford’s last known location was near Atlanta late last week. A mobile telephone tower there picked up a signal from his phone, according to a source familiar with the situation. Since then, the governor’s state and personal phones had been turned off, and Sanford had not responded to phone or text messages, a source said. Most mobile phones cannot be tracked if they are turned off. First lady Jenny Sanford said Monday her husband has been gone for several days over Father’s Day weekend and she did not know where. She said she was not concerned. “He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids,” Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press while vacationing with the couple’s four sons at their Sullivan’s Island beach house. The two-term governor is chairman of the Republican Governors Association. This spring, Sanford became known nationally as the most outspoken governor who opposed federal stimulus money. That position won Sanford national attention until he lost a court battle. Sawyer said Monday the governor told staffers late last week where he was going to be. “Before leaving last week, he let staff know his whereabouts and that he’d be difficult to reach,” Sawyer said in a interview with The State. In an earlier statement Monday, Sanford’s office said: “Gov. Sanford is taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle and the legislative session, and to work on a couple of projects that have fallen by the wayside. “We are not going to discuss the specifics of his travel arrangements or his security arrangements,” the statement said. One official familiar with the situation said there was no indication Sanford had been harmed. He regularly makes trips without his security detail. Sanford usually uses the Suburban, which is assigned to agents who transport him, the source said. Knotts, a longtime Sanford critic, said he contacted SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd Saturday after he heard reports the governor could not be reached. “Chief Lloyd confirmed that my information is legitimate,” said Knotts. “He shared my concerns” about succession of power. “I was recently made aware that Governor Sanford has frequently been eluding SLED agents and disappearing at odd times,” Knotts said. Lloyd could not be reached for comment late Monday. On previous unescorted trips, Sanford has not been out of all contact - including with his own office - for this long, a source said. The state’s chief executive should never be unreachable, Knotts said. “As the head of our state, in the unfortunate event of a state of emergency or homeland security situation, Governor Sanford should be available at all times to the chief of SLED,” the senator said. “I want to know immediately who is running the executive branch in the governor’s absence,” Knotts said.

So Sanford's attempt to fool everybody went horribly wrong - for Sanford. But Sanford, who has refused to step down, is guilty of an even worse crime than cheating on his wife. After all, if it weren't for his utter hypocrisy in putting himself up there as a paragon of Christian values and castigating the hell out of Clinton, I would say it's a matter between him and his wife. The worse crime in my opinion was refusing to accept stimulus money for the state of South Carolina thereby denying the poor of his state extended unemployment and other welfare benefits at a time of huge job loss and economic recession.

Sanford has failed on at least three accounts: (1) cheating on his wife which is the moralistic Christian failing although welshing on a committment and a vow transcends Christianity; (2) lying to the people of South Carolina on his whereabouts and leaving the state with no one in control; and (3) the far greater sin in Christian terms of refusing to help the poor by refusing to accept stimulus money.

According to Matthew 25:

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' "

The Jesus goes on to say that those who did not help the "least of these" will not be joining him in Heaven but instead will go to that other place - where there is no air conditioning.

This is the epitome of Jesus' Christian philosophy, a philosophy which is too often ignored by a narrow moralistic interpretation of the Bible, too often ignored by the pompous, pretentious likes of Gov. Mark Sanford and other Republican hypocrites.

Sanford had no mercy for Clinton. Why should anyone have any mercy for him?

From Huffington Post:

The standard Sanford has set for other politicians over the years has been fairly high. A member of the House of Representatives during the heyday of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, he was often a harsh critic of the president for his marital misconduct. This is "very damaging stuff," Sanford declared at one point, when details of Clinton's conduct became known. "I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign)... I come from the business side," he said. "If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone." Explaining his decision to back impeachment articles against Clinton, he added, "I think what he did in this matter was reprehensible... I feel very comfortable with my vote." Sanford's complaints were directed primarily, although not entirely, at Clinton's lying about the affair rather than the affair itself. At one point, however, he proclaimed that Clinton was likely to get away with his infidelities and indiscretion because he already had the perception of someone who was untrustworthy. "In politics you can get away with anything as long as it's what's expected," he was quoted saying in a Boston Globe article published in December 1998. "If people expect you to be a rascal, you can be a rascal."

He needs to be held to his own high standards and made to resign in shame. If he were a Democrat, the Republicans would be piling on. Yet here he is, refusing to resign as governor after having made a mockery out of his marriage and the governorship of South Carolina and that's not even the worst of it. From a true Christian persepective his refusal to help "the least of these" in a time of hardship would put him in the class of the goats when Jesus talked about separating the sheep from the goats.

Mark Sanford is a sanctimonious asshole who cheated on his wife, denied the poor of South Carolina a few crumbs from the table while living in the lap of luxury himself and refuses to resign which would be the honorable thing to do.

And as far as the emails go with all the intimate details and misspellings, all I can say is how far the mighty have fallen. Never in a million years did Mark Sanford think that these would be released to the public. They probably threw a wet blanket on the whole love affair! Now we know what trivial tripe goes through the governor's mind! I feel sorry for Maria though. She's obviously sincere while the governor is at best ... immature?

Maria says: "Thanks for your beautiful words, I don’t know if I do need or not therapy but I have to find my new place in this new stage of my life. Life has been very generous with me and I want to return at least a little bit of what I have been given. I have time and think helping others who haven’t been as lucky as me will do me fine." So Maria wants to help the "least of these" in so many words. Good luck with a Republican governor who only wants to help the wealthy, who denied the "least of these" in his own state the help they would have gotten from the stimulus package. I can see this match is a mismatch from the start. No, Maria, if you want to make it with the governor, you will have to become as cold and heartless as he is and learn to appreciate the good life as only a self-serving Republican hypocrite can.

And I'm sure that Maria is familiar with this bit of history of CIA support for the junta that overthrfew the Peron regime in Argentina in 1976 even if Mark Sanford is not:

The 1976 Argentine coup was a coup d'état that overthrew Isabel Perón on 24 March 1976, in Argentina. In her place, a military junta was installed, which was headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier Orlando Ramón Agosti. The junta took the official name of "National Reorganization Process," and remained in power until 1983. Although political repression (the so-called "Dirty War") began before the coup, as soon as Operativo Independencia, it was heavily extended after the coup and resulted in the "disappearances" of approximately 30,000 persons. The United States Department of State learned of the preparations of the coup two months before. Two days after the coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, William D. Rogers, stated "This junta is testing the basic proposition that Argentina is not governable...I think that's a distinctly odds-on choice." and "I think also we've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long. I think they're going to have to come down very hard not only on the terrorists but on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties." US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated that "Whatever chance they have, they will need a little encouragement" and "because I do want to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States." In June 1976, when human rights violations by the junta were criticized in the US, Kissinger reiterated support to the junta, directly addressing himself to Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti during a meeting in Santiago de Chile .

DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA!

And then this epistle from the guv:

"Have you been told lately how warm your eyes are and how they softly glow with the special nature of your soul. I remember Jenny, or someone close to me, once commenting that while my mom was pleasant and warm it was sad she had never accomplished anything of significance. I replied that they were wrong because she had the ultimate of all gifts — and that was the ability to love unconditionally. The rarest of all commodities in this world is love. It is that thing that we all yearn for at some level — to be simply loved unconditionally for nothing more than who we are — not what we can get, give or become. There are but 50 governors in my country and outside of the top spot, this is as high as you can go in the area I have invested the last 15 years of my life — my getting here came as no small measure because I had that foundation of love and support so critical to getting up in the morning and feeling you could give and risk because you already had a full tank of love in the emotional bank account. Since our first meeting there in a wind swept somewhat open air dance spot in Punta del Este, I felt that you had that same rare attribute. Above all else I love that inner beauty about you. That gift of yours is going to make a tremendous difference in (The State deleted sons’ names) life — and in anyone’s life who is blest to be touched by yours — you need to rest very comfortably in that fact. As I mentioned in our last visit, while I did not need love fifteen years ago — as the battle scars of life and aging and politics have worn on this has become a real need of mine. You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that is so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!"

Golleee!! He mentions his wife that he's cheating on in the next sentence after he praises his lover. How insensitive! The guv wants to be loved unconditionally while showing no sympathy or compassion for the people of his own state who might benefit from the stimulus money. How audacious! Like a typical self-centered asshole, he wants it for himself but refuses to give it not even a little bit. And then he goes on to praise himself as having attained a level "as high as you can go" in politics. You're so wonderful Mr. Sanford, it makes me gag. And how your mother's unconditional love enabled you to gain the "top spot." Why don't you show a little unconditional love yourself for somebody other than yourself? You had a "full tank of love in your emotional bank account" while you expect other people that you could help out to drive on empty. Oh, you didn't need love 15 years ago, but your mother gave you all that unconditional love that helped you become successful? Non sequitur, sir! And are you saying that your wife, Jenny, never gave you any love? That seems to be what you're implying. What is she - just a potted plant? And love has become a real need, as you say, well this is something you're not getting from your wife. So what are you doing - living a lie? But you Republicans routinely live lies. That's your stock-in-trade along with hypocrisy. I guess when someone real comes along, you're very smitten since you've been associating with phonies all these years. But does this mean that you're going to have a change of heart and adopt Maria's ethic of helping those less fortunate than yourself? Does it mean, God forbid, that you might have a heart transplant and become a bleeding heart liberal? Or is all this pandering to Maria just to continue basking in the "warm glow of her eyes"?

And your reticence, Mr. Guv, to go into the "sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner." Is that because, after all, you're a sanctimonious tight assed Christian who needs to preserve some modicum of decorum vis a vis this raunchy South American sex goddess? Well, you did loosen up enough to speak of "your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light." Not exactly purple prose - especially the part about holding "two magnificent parts of yourself." What is she - a piece of meat? Shoulder, butt, arm roast, ham hocks, rump roast? You were doing pretty good until you got to the "erotic beauty" part. "Tan lines, curve of your hips" - that's good stuff! But speaking of her "body parts"? For shame. You must think she's as smugly self-centered as you are with as big a self-serving ego as you have to think she wants to hear about her particular "grace and calm" and "level of sophistication so fitting of your beauty." Why it is beginning to sound like she's everything the wife you're cheating on is not. A perfect trophy wife, someone who can give you unconditional love, and, by the sound of it, pretty darn good sex too!

Well enough of this diatribe dragging the governor's sorry ass through the sorry hell he's created for himself. Now he'll have to repair his sorry relationship with his sorry wife who can't give him unconditional love or passionate sex. But guv, grow up. After 15 or 20 years of marriage, sex isn't passionate any more. But with a young Argentinian, well, guv, I guess you didn't know what you were missing until it "sparked." But you know, guvernur, what it comes down to is this: You threw your career, wife and family (not to mention the poor people of South Carolina) under the bus for a piece of ass.

DON'T CRY FOR HIM, ARGENTINA!

Why Republicans Don't Like Budget Deficits Except When They're in the White House

The Republicans will fight Obama's budget every step of the way. They will complain that it robs future generations, that it's intergenerational theft. But they didn't have a problem with budget deficits when Reagan or Bush Sr. or Bush Jr. occupied the White House. Cheney even went as far as to say, "Reagan proved budget deficits don't matter." The fact is that Reagan tripled the national debt with his enormous deficits. Bush Sr. slowed down the addition but added more debt. Clinton actually ran budget surpluses his last years in office and Bush Jr. doubled the national debt he inherited. This is another example of the sheer hypocrisy of Republicans. They're against debt accumulation except when they're in office. Then it's OK.

Here's the Republican game plan. Run on lowering taxes. Then when you get elected, cut taxes, but don't cut spending. Result: budget deficit. But the Republicans abhor spending that actually benefits US citizens. So they spend on war. War is their economic stimulus plan. They love to contend that war is what got us out of the Great Depression. And if they have anything to do about it, war will continue to be the engine of the economy. So they decrease spending on social programs, increase spending on war and lower taxes. This is a perfect prescription for fiscal irresponsibilty. But the Republicans have a plan. Their plan is to make the Democrats the fiscally responsible party so that when a Democrat gets elected, a Clinton or an Obama, they cry for fiscal responsibility. They do this because they don't want a Democrat to spend any money on social programs that will actually benefit US citizens. They want a Democrat to clean up the mess that they left behind. Clinton dutifully did this by raising taxes and bringing the budget into balance with the result that Bush Jr. ran on a platform of lowering taxes, and, once elected, proceeded to do just that with the result that the deficit and the debt resumed their upward spiral. And they tagged the Democrats as TAX and spend knowing that people would object to the tax, if not the spend, part.

Republican stewardship, which amounts to getting Democrats to clean up their messes thereby paving the way for their continued excesses and allowing them to run on a platform of lowering taxes, is thus a hypocritical game plan in which they demand fiscal responsibility from Democrats while practicing  fiscal profligacy themselves. They love for Democrats to raise taxes in an attempt to be fiscally responsible because it (1) cleans up their mess and (2) paves the way for them to run on a platform of lowering taxes. Barack Obama is wise to the Republican profligacy and hypocrisy; Clinton wasn't. Obama is pressing ahead with his plans to spend money on programs that will actually benefit the American people. Clinton was more or less a Republican dupe. In addition to running budget surpluses paving the way for Bush Jr. to lower taxes, Clinton signed all kinds of conservative legislation the worst of which was NAFTA and other "free trade" legislation and deregulation which lead directly to the current financial crisis.

An agreement between the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans, reached during all-night negotiations which concluded in the early hours of October 22, sets the stage for passage of the most sweeping banking deregulation bill in American history, lifting virtually all restraints on the operation of the giant monopolies which dominate the financial system. The proposed Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 would do away with restrictions on the integration of banking, insurance and stock trading imposed by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, one of the central pillars of Roosevelt's New Deal. Under the old law, banks, brokerages and insurance companies were effectively barred from entering each others' industries, and investment banking and commercial banking were separated. The certain result of repeal of Glass-Steagall will be a wave of mergers surpassing even the colossal combinations of the past several years. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "With the stroke of the president's pen, investment firms like Merrill Lynch & Co. and banks like Bank of America Corp., are expected to be on the prowl for acquisitions." The financial press predicted that the most likely mergers would come from big banks acquiring insurance companies, with John Hancock, Prudential and The Hartford all expected to be targeted.

For more on bank deregulation see the excellent article: How Deregulation Eviscerated the Banking Sector Safety Net and Spawned the U.S. Financial Crisis. 

Congress even passed a specific act whose sole purpose was to prevent Brooksley Born, chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, from regulating derivatives! The following is from The Nation:

But more than a decade ago, a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission-- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading--was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn, condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers. In fact, Greenspan, the man some affectionately called "The Oracle," spent his political capital cheerleading these disastrous financial instruments. What these "three marketeers" --as they were called in a 1999 Time magazine cover story--were adept at was peddling the timebombs at the heart of this complex crisis: exotic and opaque financial instruments known as derivatives--contracts intended to hedge against risk and whose values are derived from underlying assets. To cut to the quick, Greenspan, Rubin and Summers opposed regulating them. "Proposals to bring even minimalist regulation were basically rebuffed by Greenspan and various people in the Treasury," recalls Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve board member and economist at Princeton University, in the Times article. In 1997, Brooksley Born warned in congressional testimony that unregulated trading in derivatives could "threaten our regulated markets or, indeed, our economy without any federal agency knowing about it." Born called for greater transparency--disclosure of trades and reserves as a buffer against losses. Instead of heeding this oracle's warnings, Greenspan, Rubin & Summers rushed to silence her. As the Times story reveals, Born's wise warnings "incited fierce opposition" from Greenspan and Rubin who "concluded that merely discussing new rules threatened the derivatives market." Greenspan deployed condescension and told Born she didn't know what she doing and she'd cause a financial crisis. (A senior Commission director who worked with Born suggests that Greenspan and the guys didn't like her independence. " Brooksley was this woman who was not playing tennis with these guys and not having lunch with these guys. There was a little bit of the feeling that this woman was not of Wall Street.") In early 1998, according to the Times story, one of the guys, Larry Summers, called Born to "chastise her for taking steps he said would lead to a financial crisis. But Born kept at it, unwilling to let arrogant men undermine her good judgment. But it got tougher out there. In June 1998, Greenspan, Rubin and the then head of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, Jr., called on Congress "to prevent Ms. Born from acting until more senior regulators developed their own recommendations." (Levitt now says he regrets that decision.) Months later, the huge hedge fund Long Term Capital Management nearly collapsed--confirming some of Born's warnings. (Bets on derivatives were a key reason.) "Despite that event," the Times reports, " Congress (apparently as a result of Greenspan & Summer's urging, influence-peddling and pressure) "froze" Born's Commissions' regulatory authority. The next year, Born left as head of the Commission. Born did not talk to the Times for their article. It seems that Rubin, Greenspan and Summers influenced Congress to pass legislation whose sole purpose was to prevent Brooksley Born from regulating Over The Counter (OTC) derivatives. In May of 1998, the CFTC proposed "reexamining its approach to the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market" and sought public comment. In particular, Brooksley Born, chair of the CFTC, "was concerned that unfettered, opaque trading could “threaten our regulated markets or, indeed, our economy without any federal agency knowing about it,”… She called for greater disclosure of trades and reserves to cushion against losses." However, senior members of the Clinton administration pressured her to back off and when she did not, Greenspan, Rubin and Levitt asked Congress to act to prevent the CFTC from regulating OTC derivatives. Congress responded with a 6 month restraint period, during which the CFTC "may not propose or issue any rule or regulation, or issue any interpretation or policy statement, that restricts or regulates activity in a qualifying hybrid instrument or swap agreement" (language from H.R.4328). After a year of conflict, including a number of contentious Congressional hearings, in January of 1999, Brooksley Born announced she would not be seeking a second term as CFTC chair.

So while Greenspan and his cohorts were actively involved in deregulating the financial system, Republican Presidents were actively involved in lowering taxes and driving up the National Debt. These two processes happened more or less independently and produced the multi-pronged crisis we are experiencing today. It's a crisis produced by a whole host of wrong-headed Republican policies.

Obama, however, is not falling into the trap that Clinton did. First Clinton wasted his political capital by getting sidetracked on the "Gays in the Military" issue. Then Clinton triangulated and was essentially bullied by Newt Gingrich with his "Contract on America." Finally, Clinton lost the moral high ground and his ability to resist the Republican onslaught over his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Obama has learned from Clinton's mistakes. He has not drunk the Republican Kool-Aid that would encourage him to postpone spending on social programs in the name of fiscal responsibility in order to set the Republicans up for the next campaign of lowering taxes. He's too smart for that. But he has addressed fiscal responsibility by his intention to raise taxes on the rich, a plan Republicans are not likely to cheer. And he's not likely to let the Republicans filibuster him out of everything he wants to do to set the US on a path away from war and towards a society that cares for its citizens. And I like the fact that as a black man, he has responded to Republican imprecations to clean up the white man's mess by in effect telling them to "go shove it." We're not your janitors and cleaning ladies any more!

Finally, Obama has trumped the Republicans on the tax issue. It's not about raising or lowering taxes; it's about raising or lowering taxes on whom? Obama has turned the issue into one of lowering taxes on the middle class while raising them on the rich. This is exactly what the issue should be. While deficits and debts have skyrocketed, there has been a vast transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy with the result that there is more income and wealth inequality now than since the Gilded Age. This issue can be addressed by restoring progressivity to the tax code and making the rich pay their fair share. What is their fair share? It's whatever it takes to restore income equality such as we had pre-Reagan so that all economic quintiles progress at more or less the same rate. At the same time raising taxes on the rich will restore responsibility to the Federal government by bringing the budget deficit down.

So Obama has made some important political decisions. By placing the emphasis on improving the lot of the middle class, he has placed his constituency smack dab in the middle of the majority of American voters. He has gotten away from the splinter group politics that affected the Democrats for so many years. By emphasizing tax fairness for the middle class he has turned the corner on the Republican mantra labeling the Democrats as the  "tax and spend" party. The middle class doesn't have a problem with "taxing the rich and spending on the middle class." By emphasizing issues of health care, energy policy, and education, he has singled out important issues that have been woefully neglected by the Bushes and Reagans. By not being stymied by Republican trash talking, he has called their bluff and pointed out their hypocrisy and pandering. He is much more intelligent and articulate than anything the Republicans have to offer so all they can do is shout at him and call him a socialist. Unfortunately, their laments are only the empty sounds of clanging cymbals or as it says in the Bible: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal."

Yeah, that's what the Republicans are - clanging cymbals - especially that sad, pathetic putz, Rush Limbaugh.

Wall St Using Taxpayer Bailout Money to Give Campaign Contributions to Washington Politicians

This is an article from Newsweek published March 21, 2009 by Michael Isikoff and Dina Fine Maron:

There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

While a few big firms, such as Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, have curtailed their campaign giving, others are quietly doling out cash to select members of Congress, particularly those who serve on committees that oversee TARP. In recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOP Whip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty." "This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions," says Brett Kappell, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it's his "policy to accept legal contributions.")

The cash flow is already causing angst inside the Beltway. "The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning and see our PAC check being burned on C-Span," said one bank lobbyist, who asked not to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Financial Services chair Rep. Barney Frank both said recently they won't take donations from TARP recipients. But House Democratic fundraisers have quietly passed the word that the party's campaign committee will resume accepting them—but down the road, not right now. Said one fundraiser, who also requested anonymity, "These are treacherous waters."

Democrats Should Block Republican Filibusters!

Finally, some light at the end of the tunnel. The Obama administration is considering using a congressional  rule to block Republican filibusters in the Senate. Yes! Yes! Yes! They should go ahead and do it. The Republicans will filibuster every Democratic proposal, and if the Democrats lose this opportunity to get their legislation passed when they have majorities in both houses of Congress, it might never come again. They need to do it. The Republicans would use every means at their disposal to force their legislation down the Democrats' throats. The Democrats should fight fire with fire and do the same. The Republicans have already shown their hand, and, despite Obama's attempts to be bi-partisan, have turned around and shown him that they will attempt to block any meaningful Democratic legislation. Obama has only a limited time to act and get his legislation regarding health care, energy and global warming passed. The elections in 2010 might eliminate Democratic majorities in one or both Houses.  He needs to act now and not pussyfoot around. The Obama administration determination to terminate the filibuster is the best news I've heard out of Washington yet! Bravo!

Here's a full report from the McClatchy press:

WASHINGTON — A top White House official threatened Tuesday to use a congressional rule to force some controversial proposals through the Senate by eliminating the Republicans' power to block legislation.

Peter Orszag, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the Obama administration would prefer not to use the budget "reconciliation" process that allows measures to pass the Senate on simple majority votes.

Orszag said he wouldn't rule it out, however. The legislative tactic is being considered to push through Obama's global warming and health care programs, and perhaps his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy.

"We'd like to avoid it if possible," Orszag told reporters at a luncheon in Washington. "But we're not taking it off the table."

Members of Congress are bracing for a political donnybrook should the Democrats use the reconciliation process to sidestep the Republicans and their power of the filibuster in the Senate. Under normal Senate rules, it requires 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to shut off debate and force a final vote. Democrats currently have 58 Senate votes. Under reconciliation, 51 votes can force anything through.

There is plenty of historical precedent of using it by both parties, including Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who used it force through big tax cuts.

"Pretty much every major piece of budget legislation going back to April 1981, April '82, April 1990, April 1993, the 1990 act, the 2001 tax legislation, they were all done through reconciliation. Yet somehow this is being presented as an unusual thing," Orszag said.

"The historical norm as opposed to the exception is for a major piece of budget legislation to move through reconciliation."

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the senior Republican on the tax-writing Finance Committee, said: "I'd have to say the possibility is very great" that the Democrats will use a coming budget resolution vote to signal their intention to use the reconciliation process later in the year.

If the Democrats proceed that way, it could be a genuine move toward using reconciliation later, or it could be merely a threat to force Republicans to the bargaining table to ensure that they have any voice in drafting legislation.

Orszag said that President Barack Obama is aware of the objections from Republicans that the reconciliation would cut them out of the loop on major legislation. He said the administration would prefer to get "major legislation without it."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was discussing the option with top Democrats Tuesday, apparently including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, but declined to elaborate. "This is a long process," he said.

Rep. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, warned Orszag last week that Republicans won't cooperate if Democrats try to push a massive "cap and trade" carbon emissions program through the Senate using reconciliation.

" . . . (W)e would be concerned that if we step into this exercise, we will be blindsided with reconciliation exercises and there's no point in stepping into this exercise if we're going to be shut down in our ability to influence it."

Finally, Gregg, who last month withdrew his nomination to become commerce secretary, turned to Orszag and said "I think that's a concern, not that you really care."

Republican Party Wants to Turn US into Banana Republic

This article by Philip Slater entitled "How the Modern Republican Party is Trying to Subvert American Democracy" appeared Februaury 25, 2009 in the Huffington Post:

The Communist Party was denounced in the 1950s for 'cynically using the democratic process to subvert democracy'. The same could be said of today's Republican Party, which seeks to replace our democracy with a system approximating the Latin American 'banana republics' of the early 20th century.

The strength of our democracy has always been our large educated middle class--by which I mean those citizens who define themselves as middle class. This in turn has depended on a strong, well-funded public school system.

So it isn't surprising that the top item in the modern Republican agenda, judging by their actions, is the destruction of that school system by every means possible--primarily starving it of funds. It's no coincidence that Republicans blocked both the federal stimulus package and the California state budget until funds for public schools were cut. The U.S. once ranked first in the world in the percentage of its people who held a college degree, and also in the percentage who held at least a high school degree. Today it ranks seventh in the first category and ninth in the second. Students in American schools today lack many of the resources that European and Asian students take for granted. Prevented by the ignorant prejudices of fundamentalists from learning anything significant in science, the social sciences, or the arts, condemned to the rote parroting of archaic material, American students do especially poorly in comparison with other countries when asked to apply their knowledge to real-life situations. Teaching our children to think is called "pork" by Republicans.

Republicans want a nation sharply divided between a small, wealthy class and a huge underclass--the system that characterizes so many Third World nations, especially dictatorships.

The poor majorities in Third World dictatorships are typically kept in line by a swollen military and a police system unconstrained by considerations of human rights or legality. So it's hardly surprising that Republicans, who are such extreme fiscal conservatives when it comes to the health and education of our children, are the world's most uncontrolled spendthrifts when it comes to funding weapons of mass civilian destruction. The Pentagon's budget is higher than that of the next highest 25 nations combined.

The only reason Republicans oppose Democratic spending proposals is that they have always regarded the federal government as their own private cash cow. Corporations get handouts of land for timber, mining, oil exploration, etc., for little or nothing, and when done maiming the environment, simply move on, leaving the government to clean up and undo the damage. "Tax Reform" for Republicans means "let the poor pay". Since the 1950s every Republican alteration of tax laws--federal, state, and local--has involved shifting more and more of the burden away from the wealthy and onto the average middle- or working class American. The corporate share has gone from 50% to 14% during the same period. Locally, taxes have shifted from progressive income taxes to sales taxes--placing the heaviest burden on the poorest citizens.

The Republican agenda prioritizes inflating the wealth of the already wealthy few. They achieve this goal with the backing of a phalanx of deluded poor white Stepinfetchits who imagine that voting Republican will magically enhance their social status.

Small wonder Obama is such a threat to modern Republicans. He seems to have a vivid understanding of what democracy is all about, and his program is designed to restore American democracy to what it was before the neo-cons began so vigorously tearing it down. One can only hope the Republican party, as now constituted, will wither away, and a party based on something more than hatred and greed will emerge to replace it.

Also, please see another excellent post by Philip Slater: Why Free-Market Capitalism Will Follow Communism into the Trash-Heap of History

GOP Revs Up Spin On Stimulus

Great post by E. J. Dionne in Truthdig:

The irony of President Barack Obama’s Blue Tuesday is that the wall-to-wall television interviews he granted were designed not to apologize for Tom Daschle’s fall from grace but to fight back against the Republicans’ success in tarnishing his stimulus package.

    Obama’s network appearances were planned as a response to a wholly unanticipated development: Republicans—short on new ideas, low on votes and deeply unpopular in the polls—have been winning the media wars over the president’s central initiative.

    They have done so largely by focusing on minor bits of the stimulus that amount, as Obama said in at least two of his network interviews, to “less than 1 percent of the overall package.” But Republicans have succeeded in defining the proposal by its least significant parts.

    Daschle’s withdrawal as the nominee for secretary of health and human services poses a long-term challenge to the administration’s ambitious health care plans because he was so crucial to the White House’s strategy. But the battering the stimulus has taken is an immediate problem.

    Although Obama aides dismiss the media coverage as “cable chatter” important only inside the “Washington echo chamber,” they acknowledge that Congress does its work inside that noisy hall and that the journalistic back-and-forth has tainted its key legislative objective. “We didn’t give it as much air cover last week as we should,” said one top adviser. “We lost a week.”

    This thinking was reflected during Obama’s interviews, once he got through his apologies for having “screwed up” the Daschle matter.

    Obama kept bringing the stimulus discussion back to the bill’s purpose of restoring life to a cratered economy. He also highlighted the bill’s substantive elements—in health care, education, energy and relief to fiscally ailing states—that have received scant attention in news accounts dominated by political questions about how much Obama should concede to the Republican minority.

    For most of the debate, Obama has cast himself as a benevolent referee overseeing a sprawling and untidy legislative process to which he would eventually bring order. While doing little to defend the overall package or to reply to its Republican critics, he urged Democrats to knock out small spending measures that had caused public relations problems.

    In the meantime, those critics were relentless, often casting logic aside to reframe the debate from a practical concern over how to rescue the economy to an ideological dispute about government spending.

    “This plan is a spending plan; it’s not a stimulus plan,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., ignoring the truth that stimulus plans—including Republican proposals to put more money into resolving the housing crisis—by definition include significant new spending.

    And Republicans who in one breath say they want more tax cuts declare in the next that they are against the tax cuts Obama has actually proposed.

    Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona said of Obama’s $500 refundable tax credit: “Calling a rebate to people who don’t pay income taxes a tax cut doesn’t make it a tax cut.” Presumably Kyl doesn’t consider the payroll taxes (or, for that matter, sales taxes) paid disproportionately by low- and middle-income Americans as taxes.

    But such volleys have gone largely unreturned, and the biggest danger for Obama will come if Republican attacks erode support for the stimulus among Democrats. That’s why the president will be spending more time with congressional Democrats in the coming days. The administration’s visionary emphasis on winning expansive Republican support has been replaced by a down-to-earth struggle to get a bill through the Senate.

    Its hopes rest in part on a different form of bipartisanship. If Washington Republicans have decided to build a wall of opposition to the stimulus, Republican governors and mayors are eager for the money Obama wants to give them.

    Thus will Obama and his allies be touting strong support for the stimulus from the Republican governors of California, Connecticut, Florida and Vermont. Mayors will be called upon to move House Republicans still open to persuasion.

    In just two weeks, Obama and his advisers have been forced to learn basic lessons on the run. The elation of Inauguration Day has given way to a classic form of partisan hardball. The media cannot be counted on to be either liberal or permanently enchanted with any politician. Arguments left unanswered can take hold, whether they make sense or not. And one more lesson: No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water. 

Bush the Worst President in US History or the Best?

Senator Bernie Sanders says that Bush will go down as the worst President in American history, but it all really depends on your point of view, doesn't it. I would contend that from the neocon point of view that has ruled the Republican party for the last 30 years, Bush will go down as one of the best and greatest Presidents in US history.

Reagan set out to destroy the middle class. I remember when Eldridge Cleaver spoke to the UCSD student body in the late 60s and led a cheer that seemed to go on forever: "F*** Ronald Reagan, F*** Ronald Reagan ..." And this was before Ronald Reagan became President of the US. All the blue-haired old ladies headed for the exits. When word got back to him which it inevitably did, Reagan probably felt like he had to get rid of all these guys and by extension the entire middle class who had gotten all too uppity. Just think of that free tuition that these kids were not even grateful for. He started by getting rid of the air traffic controllers union. Deunionizing is always a good thing from the neocon point of view.

Well, Bush has almost completed the job that Reagan set out to do and hence will go down as one of the greatest Presidents in US history from the neocon point of view and, since history is written by the victors and not the vanquished, I suspect the middle class will have little to say about it. And that point of view has plenty of ballyhooers, namely Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Reagan and a whole host of others. And a lot of money to hire "intellectuals" at the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute. There is a whole infrastructure of well funded right wing intellectuals, historians and talk show hosts.

Bush is even finishing off the environmentalists as he goes out the door, changing regulations right and left. In fact no one has been more successful at destroying the middle class and the environment than Bush/Cheney.

So rather than portraying Bush as a bumbling incompetent, a more accurate portrayal would be Mission Accomplished. His list of accom- plishments would include permanent ongoing wars which greatly benefit the military-industrial complex and the Carlyle Group where neocon ex-Presidents park their money, ignoring the plight of poor people caught up in the disaster of Katrina, militarizing the mind-set of the American people, demeaning the role of government in American life, successfully hiding the fact that Bush policies have created the greatest inequality and transfer of wealth to the upper classes in American history, policies that have favored business while destroying the environment and on and on. This is not to mention how Bush policies have destroyed the Constitution with warrantless wiretapping, torture as an instrument of war and signing statements thus creating the imperial Presidency that Nixon set in motion but the success of which he couldn't have dreamed of compared to its actual implementation by Bush. "When the President does it, it's not illegal."

The only problem that Bush and his apologists and right wing historians have is how to portray all this in the most positive light, but that's where the spin-meisters come in. NO PROBLEM. They will be working overtime at the Bush Presidential library to portray stealing as "creating the conditions for liberty," the immiseration of Iraq as the "liberation of Iraq," the destruction of the middle class as a "times are tough" bump in the road that just "happened" that Bush couldn't have foreseen and had no responsibility for. Bush's legacy burnishers will descend like a plague of locusts. Think of the book signings. Think of the million dollar speeches Bush will be called upon to give in gratitude for all he's done for the wealthy interests that will dote on his every word and pronouncement. While Carter swings a hammer for Habitat for Humanity and Clinton does his charitable work through the Clinton Global Initiative, these do-gooders will have to take a back seat while Bush cashes in thanks to grateful benefators who appreciate all he did for them while he was in office. Of course, Cheney has already cashed in because he didn't divest himself of Halliburton stock while he was in office as vice-President and we all know how successful Halliburton has been in the last eight years with all those no bid, cost plus contracts that Cheney has thrown their way.

Yes, freedom is on the march - the freedom to not pay taxes and the freedom to eat out of garbage cans. It all depends on your perspective.

Also posted as a comment on Robert Reich's blog.

Looking Forward to 2012: "Carribou Barbie" Palin and "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher VS Barack "No Drama" Obama and Joe "Get Up Champ" Biden

Like many of you political junkies out there, I'm looking forward to the 2012 political campaign. I know the recent one is barely over, but my adrenalin rush has waned and I can't wait for the next one. After all Carribou Barbie has already started campaigning. And what about that multi-million dollar book deal? Sweet! As a true Republican she's wasting no time in cashing in on her celebrity. Who said there was a liquidity crisis? And have you heard about the sweet deal she pulled off with Mattel? They're going to make a million Carribou Barbie dolls. As Sarah said,"Well, I know they'll be made in China, but they've promised me they won't use lead based paint, and I'll be making 10% of everything also. You can't beat that. Cashing in is the American way. It's what freedom is all about. It's patriotic not like paying taxes like Joe Biden said. Ugh"

Word has it that Todd Palin will be opening up a number of franchised Sarah Palin Mooseburger Emporiums. "Why not?" said Todd Palin. "Ray Kroc made billions off of MacDonald's. We don't have enough fast food in Alaska, and from here we'll expand into the deep south where Sarah's base is. I'm sure all those Kentucky Colonel fried chicken lovers will go for a Sarah Palin Mooseburger once in a while. It's a no-brainer just like her."

As for "Joe the Plumber" Wurzel- bacher, he has managed to stretch his 15 minutes of fame into an hour and a half! Pretty good for a guy whose name is not actually Joe and  who's not even a licensed plumber. He's going for that million dollar book deal too so, unfortunately, Obama will be raising his taxes after all. And what a sweet deal that was when Mattel bagged him for the "Joe the Plumber" action figure. He'll make even more off of that. You see it pays to get an agent when you get your 15 minutes of fame. You need to capitalize immediately. Carpe diem! And all that crap you heard about the Wurzelbachers being on welfare and Joe (I mean Sam) not paying his taxes ... that was all a bunch of crap. Joe is a fine upstanding citizen. And in addition to the "Joe the Plumber" action figure, Mattel plans to introduce - just in time for Christmas - the GI Joe "the Plumber." You see the storyline goes that Joe the Plumber had joined the National Guard and got the call to go to Iraq so he had to hang up his plumber's helper and join his unit bound for the Middle East. GI Joe "the Plumber" comes with a miniature AK-47 and a HumVee, uparmored, of course. 

Others have been thinking along the same lines:

"In four years, Palin will be the ideal candidate," another RNC leader effused.  "Just think about it.  Bristol will be happily married with several children.  Track will be a war hero.  Even Trig will be old enough to walk by himself, though the governor may still want to carry him around to show her undying love and devotion.  Even  Palin's husband, Todd, will have won a few more races, which can only increase the image of the Palins as a model first family.  We mustn't forget family values." Joe the Plumber presents more of a problem for the RNC.  "But we've got an angle on that, too," Mary Matalin has also said off-the-record.  "Think about him—he's a gift dropped right into our laps.  We've already started ghostwriting a series of plumbing manuals for him.  Not ‘Plumbing for Dummies.’  That's too obvious, but manuals designed for specific consistuencies.  'Plumbing for Christians,' for example, in the tradition of something like Thoreau's "Walden," inspirational ways to help one's self and better the economy at the same time. The plumbing metaphor will be in everything the GOP will do in the next few years."

I can't wait for the family friendly 2012 Republican convention. There on the stage will be the Palin family: Trig, Trak, Trump, Piper and Pepper along with her running mate, Joe the Plumber, and the whole Wurzelbacher family: Plug, Plack, Prig, Prug and Dick. There has been a leak from the Palin campaign that the main plank of her platform will be anti-gay marriage. Mattel plans to introduce an anti-gay Carribou Barbie in 2011 just in time for the political campaign. When asked about the planks in her proposed platform, Palin said, "I'm running against gay marriage. I mean if gays can get married what does that say about my own marriage? What am I supposed to say to Todd when any old Tom, Dick and Harry can get married? It makes marriage meaningless."

  

Joe the Plumber aka Sam Wurzelbacher, the author, has vowed to take back all the beautiful old songs that contain the word "gay" in the lyrics. "They've ruined all those songs," Joe (Sam) said. What right do they have to appropriate all those old love songs and turn them into gay anthems?" and then he started singing ...

"Love is tearful, or it's gay,
It's a problem, or it's play.
It's a heartache either way,
But beautiful..."

"That used to be one of my favorite songs until the gays got ahold of it and made a travesty out of it."

Well, there you have it folks. Two redblooded Americans, "Carribou Barbie" and Joe (Sam I am) the Plumber (who don't plumb) together again holding up each other's hand at a campaign rally running on a platform that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

Obama Shouldn't Get Bogged Down in Quagmire in Afghanistan

Obama has said he's going to "end the war in Iraq responsibly." This is all well and good. He's talked about repatriating the $10 billion being spent there each month. That would be wonderful for our ailing economy. But wait a minute. He wants to transfer the troops now fighting in Iraq to Afghanistan. Does that mean that then he's going to be spending the $10 billion, now being spent in Iraq, in Afghanistan? If so he will be trading one quagmire for another one with no financial benefit to the US let alone a benefit to the troops that will have to go on being redeployed indefinitely. Don't be suckered into fighting another Bush war while you end the first one!

Let's think this through. What exactly do we hope to accomplish in Afghanistan? To capture bin Laden? That's the only objective I've heard Obama mention. If this is the goal, do we really need a whole army to accomplish it? And what if he's dead or somewhere else altogether? Wouldn't it be better to locate bin Laden first and then take appropriate action to eliminate him? Having a whole army there is accomplishing nothing. They're just thrashing around and getting themselves killed. Bin Laden could be located by the CIA in a covert operation and then taken out by special forces. This does not require a $10 billion a month army. And it certainly does not require bombing and killing a bunch of civilians in the hopes of killing one al Quaeda. This is just a horrible policy that is only generating more enemies for the US. Targeted assasination is one thing; killing a bunch of civilians to get one al Quaeda is another. The former is reasonable; the latter is reprehensible.

I think Obama had to show that he was militarily tough during the campaign by saying he was going to beef up the war effort in Afghanistan as a way of balancing out his phasing out the war in Iraq. See he wants as much war as McCain ... just in a different place so, therefore, he's just as tough as a Republican. He's just as much of a hawk; he's just as strong and tough. Well it's one thing to campaign; unfortunately, this is what you have to do to appeal to the American people: look tough. But I think once in office he should reconsider. I think it's a big mistake to sink into the quicksand, and Afghanistan will just be an albatross hung around Obama's neck like Iraq was for Bush. Should we really be spending this much money and killing this many people or having our own troops getting killed just to get bin Laden? I think the answer is obvious. It's not worth it. Instead a covert CIA operation is the appropriate tool for the job. You don't need a brickbat to kill a flea.

And let's take a look at the war on terrorism from a strategic point of view. It's really a defensive not an offensive war, isn't it?. Whether or not we have a military in Afghanistan, whether or not we kill bin Laden, this has nothing to do with whether some terrorist can smuggle weapons and/or personnel into the US and wreak havoc. Do you really think we have them "pinned down" in Afghanistan? No, they could launch another terrorist attack within the US at any time especially since the US government has done little if anything in terms of border and port protection. The border is still a sieve! If bin Laden wants to bleed us dry financially, he's certainly accomplishing his goal. And Obama would be foolish to follow in Bush's footsteps in letting him accomplish it. Instead, the important thing is to recognize that protecting the American people from a terrorist attack is primarily a defensive - not  an offensive - operation. Controlling the border is the key, and intelligence both human and otherwise, the failure of which led to 9/11, is also of extreme importance. Border control should be thought more in terms of an electronic rather than a physical wall, sopisticated surveillance using satellites and drones and quick response by our military (rather than the ineffective Border Patrol) from bases along the border. Research and Development money should be going to border protection and not the programs the US is wasting money on now.

The military establishment in this country is out of control both in terms of the money they demand and in terms of their Keystone Kops approach to global military strategy. They don't know what they're doing largely because they've had a bunch of neocon nincompoops at the helm for the last eight years. With Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney we've had the 3 Musketeers of Idiocy running the country and trying to run the world in a chauvinistic "up yours!" manner. Hopefully, Obama will hesitate a second, take a look around and consider whether or not he really wants to get into another Iraq quagmire in Afghanistan. I would implore him not to because it will be to Obama what Iraq was to Bush: a tremendous waste of blood and treasure. It will be something Obama will not be able to get out of without a huge loss of face; therefore, he will have to continue it ad infinitum or until the next election when another candidate will promise to end the war in Afghanistan. It will be Obama's Waste Waterloo, a tar baby that will stick to him, and he won't be able to let it go out of ego considerations the way Bush wasn't able to let go of the war in Iraq. It will require an open ended military and humanitarian commitment where there is no clearcut definition of winning or losing - just a war of attrition in which the US is the party which is attrited the most. Talk about burning through cash! For every dollar al Quaeda spends, we'll be spending hundreds of thousands, bombing civilians and creating enemies. To think that these rag tag mountain men are a real threat to the mainland of the US is ridiculous. There is enough resentment of the US outside of Afghanistan to fuel another 9/11 so the only real and meaningful response to terrorism is a defensive strategy that foils any attempt to pull something like that again, and diplomacy and creating good will will do more to prevent terrorism than all the military expenditures in the world.

Obama should also put an end to the foolishness of the Bush administration in wanting to put missiles in Poland. Talk about poking the Bear! This is a direct affront and slap in the face to Russia, a country that has tried to establish reasonable relationship with the western world and on which Europe depends for its oil. This is nothing more than an attempt to reignite the Cold War. Obama should put a stop to it on Day 1 as well as shutting down Guantanamo on Day 1. Don't fool around with Bush's insane and idiotic policies. Put an end to them immediately. This sends a message to the rest of the world that we are serious about reestablishing the US as a decent and sane player on the world scene.

Let's get real about protecting the American people. Fighting an unending, meandering war in Afghanistan is not the way to go. The budget for the military-industrial complex can be cut in half with more than enough left over to provide real - as opposed to fantasy - protection for the American people.

Obama Wins Historic Victory. Now He Must Focus and Deliver!

Dr. Robert Reich is some- what pessimistic about the vested interests and the status quo not giving up just because Obama and the Democrats have swept into office with an impressive and historical win. After all it took an unpopular war, the worst Presidency in history and on top of that the worst financial crisis in 100 years occurring a few weeks before the election and McCain still got 48% of the popular vote! As much as Obama is a consensus builder and wants to "bring us together," there should be no illusions about the forces that are aligned and arrayed against him.

The Democrats still do not have a filibuster proof Senate and that means that the Republicans can obstruct every single piece of legislation that comes down the pike. If Obama does not have a plan to confront this possibility, he better get one. Otherwise, the Republicans will sit there and turn all his necessary and potentially groundbreaking plans for the transformation of this country into so much dross left on the cutting room floor. Obama needs to shed the naivete he seems at times to be dangerously close to having.

Obama's program as summarized in his last campaign commercial, if accomplished, would in and of itself represent earthshaking change for the US. This should be his primary agenda and he should drill down and go for it right out of the box, not fool around and dither with ancillary issues like Clinton did in his first days in office (gays in the military ... remember?).

1) End the war in Iraq responsibly. Repatriate most of the $10 billion a month we're spending there.

2) Initiate a massive alternative energy, infrastructure rebuilding and job creation program. (maybe with the $10 billion from Iraq.)

3) Reform health care so that everyone is covered at a lesser cost.

4) Give corporations disincentives for offshoring jobs and incentives for creating jobs at home.

5) Tax breaks for the middle class and tax increases for corporations and the wealthy.

These five agenda items spelled out by Obama himself in his campaign commercials and in his platform, if accomplished in his first term, would be a remarkable and revolutionary achievement. But massive forces will be arrayed against him. He shouldn't make Clinton's big mistake and play patsy with the Republican establishment or think he can "triangulate" and be nice to everybody. He shouldn't let them dictate a watering down of the necessary change we need for the preservation of anything resembling a half way decent democracy and a planet worth inhabiting. In short he's going to have to take the forces of the status quo and connservatism head on. To think otherwise would be a naivete we can not afford. Clinton's "triangulation" must be avoided at all costs. Clinton essentially let the Republicans have their way with him, and to avoid a do-nothing Presidency went along with things that in hindsight seem disastrous like deregulation and various free trade agreements.

The Republicans have it in their power to do to Obama what they did to Clinton: threaten him with a Presidency of no consequence. He at least needs a back-up plan to fight and take them on if Plan A for consensus building doesn't work. Don't play nicey-nice with the Republicans. And don't think that just because the American people (at least 52% of them) want change, the status quo gives a damn about them. They still represent 48% of the population and approaching 100% of the corporate big moneyed interests. And they can still filibuster him and the Democratic majority to death!

Getting the Biggest Bang for the Buck

President Obama, if hopefully elected in a few days, would stimulate the economy by creating jobs in the alternative energy production industries and in rebuilding infrastructure.

This is from msnbc:

Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday that as president he would spend $210 billion to create jobs in construction and environmental industries, as he tried to win over economically struggling voters. Obama's investment would be over 10 years as part of two programs. The larger is $150 billion to create 5 million so-called "green collar" jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources. Sixty billion would go to a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to rebuild highways, bridges, airports and other public projects. Obama estimated that could generate nearly 2 million jobs, many of them in the construction industry that's been hit by the housing crisis.

The question is exactly how does Obama plan to spend the $15 billion per year. I suggest that he get the biggest bang for the buck possible. One of the ideas is to use it in conjunction with a public-private partnership in such a way as to attract as much private capital with as little public capital as possible. New industries may have to be created from scratch because there would be more flexibility than there would be trying to deal with old industries. In this way a massive effort could be undertaken to provide solar, wind and other alternative energy. This would also have the effect of jump starting the economy creating millions of jobs.

Another area that needs immediate attention is fresh water production through desalination.

Other countries have successfully used public-private partnerships. They are necessary now for the US since, if private enterprise was all that was necessary, why haven't the solar and wind industries already have been provided. Where is the high speed rail? Europe and Japan have these things precisely because of government involvement. But let's be smart and fiscally conservative in the ways we use taxpayer money. Cost plus contracts should definitely be eliminated.

Let's explore innovative ways to get the most bang for the buck while keeping deficits to a minimum. With an equity stake, government can hope to pay back some day whatever deficits were created. It's a time honored principle to pay a toll when going over a bridge. This helps pay off the bonds that were issued to pay for the bridge. Let's extend this principle so that all monies spent by government are not merely outgo. There should also be a return to government. Using principles such as these, we could even hope some day to eliminate deficits and pay down the national debt.

Rather than outright own these enterprises or grant contracts to existing corporations that too often have proven to be boondoggles, perhaps government could provide "venture capital" and then take an equity stake in which a department of government has a say in how the project proceeds. That's why I have suggested creating a cabinet level Department of Trade and Industry similar to Japan's MITI.

In this way the deficit can hopefully be kept down while a massive undertaking can proceed without a massive investment.

David Sirota: McCain Banking on Confederacy of Dunces

The following is by David Sirota:

Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That’s the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to “redistribute the wealth” with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich.

Of course, the Democrat’s proposal would merely slow down (not fully halt) the less-talked-about redistribution whereby Washington sends middle-class money up the income ladder. Either McCain doesn’t know about this kleptocracy and is the dumbest presidential candidate in history, or he thinks America is too ignorant to recognize theft. Which is it?

I’m guessing the latter, since the evidence is so overwhelming.

In the last eight years, we the little people have been forced to provide more and more of the taxes fueling America’s redistribution machine. As the Congressional Budget Office reports, the $715 billion in tax breaks that President Bush gave to those making more than $342,000 a year began dramatically shifting the overall tax burden from the rich onto the rest of us. Meanwhile, because of lobbyist-crafted loopholes, most corporations pay zero federal income taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. The result is what Warren Buffett admits: When counting all taxes (income, payroll, property, etc.), billionaires and Big Business often pay lower effective tax rates than their employees.

The output of the redistribution machine is becoming just as regressive. In the age of Halliburton fraud and ExxonMobil subsidies, our government spends $93 billion a year on corporate welfare. (For comparison, that’s roughly three times what it spends on a traditional welfare program like food stamps.) That doesn’t include the recent bailout giving $700 billion to the same banks currently doling out $70 billion in executive pay and bonuses—a scheme the Financial Times says “amounts to a large transfer of resources from lower to higher income earners.”

Thanks to these redistributive policies—policies McCain championed in Congress—the richest 1 percent today owns a larger share of America’s wealth than at any time since before the Great Depression.

The Republican standard-bearer probably knows all this, but his fetish is fact-free fairy tales—the kind presenting seven houses, a beer-industry fortune and lockstep conservatism as mavericky Joe-the-Plumber populism. When it comes to economics, McCain is banking on Americans believing similarly inane myths—specifically, those portraying obscene affluence as the commonplace achievement under royalist rule.

During the indigence and socioeconomic immobility of the 19th century’s Gilded Age, this meme flourished through Horatio Alger stories. Today, one in five American children live in poverty, and authorities from The Economist magazine to The Wall Street Journal note that our country exhibits the least amount of upward economic mobility in the industrialized world—less than even Europe’s supposedly sclerotic socialisms. In light of that, sustaining the “American dream” narrative requires updated rags-to-riches fantasies like “MTV Cribs,” HBO’s “Entourage”—and now McCain ’08.

The Arizona senator’s pulp fiction packs an extra-nationalistic punch, however. We are not only expected to support regressive redistribution, but also to believe that stopping such robbery is subversive. McCain implies Obama is backing Soviet conquest by proposing to finance tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers with tax increases on the richest 5 percent. When Joe Biden said it is “patriotic” for millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, Republicans waved the bloody shirt of Reaganism and attacked him—as if Al Capone-style tax evasion is how aristocrats display their true love of country.

The GOP campaign, in short, is a brew of Red-baiting and free-market zealotry, a concoction with a poisonous purpose: resurrecting the everyone-for-themselves pathologies that perpetuate the status quo. And if we revert to selfish form during this economic crisis, then McCain’s cynical calculation is correct: America is a confederacy of dunces.

David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” was released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network, both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

Frank Thomas on Dutch Government

You asked me what the influence is of lobbyists, advertising, and money in European politics compared to America. I can give you some quick thoughts from my long experience living, working and voting in The Netherlands.

I'll come direct to your questions and then, for readers, it's important to explain how the Dutch government works .... which is not too dissimilar to how other European governmental systems work.

First, lobbyists work for themselves. They try to influence members of the Dutch Parliament but they make NO donations to politicians.

The parties (Holland has 10 of which four are dominant) are financed by the government (taxpayers in general). The larger the party the more the government pays to that party to finance its campaigns.

The parties, not individuals, receive money to finance their campaigns. Individual costs are paid by the party an individual represents. So the parties make campaigns and finance campaigns.In effect, the party is campaigning, not individuals ... a pretty hard concept to understand for Americans unless you have seen it in operation. It works well in this small land.

A new development is that private money can come to new parties (NOT to individuals) not yet officially represented in government. But the sums are very, very small.

The parties pay for TV advertising from funds received from the government.

So, it's not a big MONEY GAME. The basic principles are that:

"Money should not rule democracy," or, "You can't buy democracy."

The Dutch government is what you could call a constitutional monarchy with a Parliamentary system (like UK). It is not only comprised of the Ministers and the state secretaries, but also the monarch, Queen Beatrix.

The constitution has determined how the powers are divided between the Queen and the other institutions of the government. For instance, the Parliament has been given certain rights to check the power of the government. Importantly, although the central government Ministers are accountable to Parliament, the Queen, who has no political responsibility, is not.

The Cabinet's responsibilities are: preparing and implementing legislation, overseeing the local government, carrying out the day-to-day business of government, and maintaining international relations.

The Parliament forms part of a representative democracy made up of two chambers: the Upper House (like our Senate), whose 75 menbers are elected by the members of the provincial councils (unlike America); and the Lower House (like our House of Representatives), whose 150 members are elected directly by the people (like America).

The two houses of Parliament have been given four rights: the right to set a budget; the right of interpellation, the right to put questions to ministers and state secretaries and the right to inquiry. The Lower House has been given two further rights: the right of amendment and the right to propose legislation.

The Lower House of Parliament is elected by proportional representation and currently there are ten parties in the Lower House. The four largest are the PvdA (or labor party), the CDA (mainstream Christian Democrats with Jan Peter Balkenende as leader and current Prime Minister of Holland, a merger of three confessional parties that bases many of its ideas on religious principles), the recently third 3rd largest party - the SP, or Socialist party, and the VVD, the conservative party - now in 4th place.

Modern Dutch society is very secular, and not many Dutch people identify with an organizd religion. Of the Dutch people who in these times claim church affiliation, about half are Catholic and half are Protestant.

This multi-party system insures very effective representation of the needs of all sectors of society. It fosters a coming together to reach a consensus, a give and take in all the various areas so characteristic of Dutch society and Dutch politics.

We must note that Holland comprises 17 million people on a land territory half the size of my State of Maine. In fact, all of the European countries have this very dense people-to-land situation, unlike America. This makes it easier to see, discuss, and solve problems with a microscopic eye ... again unlike America with its 50 different states and 300 million people spread over a land territory with a people-to-land ratio half as dense as Europe.

So, from a pure logistical standpoint, central governments in Europe are relatively very close to their provincial and municipal governments (unlike the US). The central government concerns itself with issues of national interest. The provincial (regional) governments occupy themselves with social work, cultural affairs, environmental management, spatial planning, energy and sports. The municipal governments concern themselves with traffic, housing, social services, health care, culture, the water supply, public schooling, sports, and recreation.

So, there's a tight coordination and communication among central, regional, and local governmental institutions on behalf of ALL citizens.

Frank Thomas, The Netherlands

Monday, 13 October, 2008

McCain Voted to Raise Taxes on Small Business!

McCain is always running off at the mouth about how much he loves small business. Everything he does is for small business. Then why did he vote in 1983 to raise taxes on small business by 66%?

The following is from Dr. Ravi Batra's website:

The other reason [why George W Bush has destroyed 3 million manufacturing jobs] is a huge rise in taxes on small business. The Republicans are right when they say raising taxes kills the economy and jobs, but they forget that they are the ones who raised such taxes. This perhaps comes as a shock to you. What! The Republicans raising tax rates, and that too on small business? Nobody would believe that. Aren't they the party of tax cuts? They are, indeed, but only for the wealthy. They have crippled the small business person with the largest tax rise that occurred on self employment under President Reagan. Please take a look at Table 2.

 

Table 2: Trust Fund Data: Tax Rates for Self Employed Persons

Year	Tax Rates (in percent)
1981	9.3
1982-83	9.35
1984	14
1985	14.1
1986-87	14.3
1988-89	15.023
1990 and later	15.3

Source: Social Security administration: www.socialsecurity.gov

As you can see, in 1981, when Reagan became president, the self-employment tax was only 9.3 percent and remained more or less the same until 1983. It jumped to 14 percent in 1984, and kept rising until 1990, when Bush senior was the president. So such a giant rise in the self employment tax occurred under the watch of Republicans. This information comes from the Social Security administration.

There is something else you should know. The tax increase was proposed by a commission headed by Alan Greenspan, John McCain voted for it in 1983, and Reagan signed it into law. All of them were prominent Republicans. How strong was this tax rise? It rose from a factor of 9 to 15 or by 66%. Can you even imagine a 66% tax rise? Such a vast tax increase has to kill the jobs machine that small businesses are.

Now as a self-employed businessman, I resent the fact that I have to pay twice the rate in social security tax as does an employee. I have to pay for the employer and the employee with the so-called SECA tax corresponding to the employee's FICA tax and for 2008 the tax is paid on the first $102,000. of earned income. How does this help small business? The Republicans are such hypocrites. They say one thing and do another. I paid taxes of $2397.00 for 2007 - all of it SECA tax! In other words I paid no income tax because I had tons of write-offs - more write-offs than I even needed. But could I use those write-offs against my social security tax? No way! That I had to pay no matter what. This is unfair and regressive, but it is exactly the kind of tax Republicans love because it falls primarily on the poor, middle class and self-employed small business person.

Now don't feel sorry for me because my self-employment income was only about a third of my total income, the rest being derived from rental properties. So I paid no social security and medicare tax whatsoever on my income derived from rents - that is, from unearned income - and I paid almost $2400. on my income derived from my own labor - that is, from earned income. So even though I personally have nothing to complain about - I indeed am fortunate - but you can see in one person's tax return how unfair this situation is. Say I was two persons - one with an income from self-employment of $30K gross with enough deductions to bring income taxes down to 0; the other with an income of $60K from rents, dividends and interest, the typical capitalistic stuff with write-offs bringing income tax to 0. The second person would pay no income tax or FICA or SECA tax whatsoever! And if the second person had capital gains or could claim all his income as capital gains - like hedge fund managers - he would just pay an income tax of 15%!

Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare tax) is assessed only on unincorporated business income.  What makes it particularly painful is that the payer is both the "employer" and the "employee"--and hence must pay the full 15.3% rate...

The self-employment tax (SECA) is the self-employed equivalent of the payroll taxes that employees and employers pay (FICA).  It is in addition to any income tax owed on the profits.  Thus, marginal tax rates on unincorporated business income can be quite high for even moderate-earning businesses.

You are liable to pay self-employment tax if you have net income from an unincorporated trade or business.  This income can be in the form of a sole proprietorship or a business partnership.  Independent contractors and LLC members generally fall into these categories.

The 15.3% rate is actually two taxes: the 12.4% Social Security tax, and the 2.9% Medicare tax.

Only the first $102,000 (in 2008) of earned income (wages and unincorporated business income) is subject to Social Security tax (FICA and/or SECA).  Conversely, every dollar of earned income is liable for the Medicare tax.

Those who pay the self-employment tax can take an income tax deduction for half the self-employment tax paid.  This is fair, since an employer can take a business deduction for his half of FICA tax paid.

Self-employment tax is never owed on interest, dividends, capital gains, rental income, royalties, S-corporation profits, limited partnership income, IRA distributions, pension distributions, Social Security, or any excluded income.

To add to this scenario I am a senior citizen who is collecting social security at the same time I'm working and paying into social security. Now I'm fortunate in that I don't really have to work but for a growing number of seniors collecting social security, they must work ... and pay outrageously into social security. The law should be changed so that seniors collecting social security don't have to pay any more social security taxes. Now supposedly since I'm still paying into social security, my social security income should increase each year that I'm paying into it even after I've started collecting it, but my increases have been on the order of a couple of dollars a year while my payments for the Medicare portion keep going up considerably more than that. I won't even get into here the latest Republican attempt to destroy Medicare - the Medicare Advantage program.

But what would you expect from Republican administrations who have held sway for the better part of the last 38 years? And McCain is a total panderer. When he says "The economy is fundamentally sound" he's talking about how wonderful American workers are? Give me a break! Anybody who believes that BS has his head up his you know what. No, the Republicans and John McCain in particular have presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy in the history of the planet, and they pander to the middle class. In the last 8 years the top 400 families have seen an increase of $680 billion in their wealth while the average middle class person has seen a decrease in earnings.

The Mother of All Bail-Outs

The US government is now in the process of doing the bail-out to end all bail-outs. The bail-out du jour will be even larger than all previous bail-outs, and it will be done even more hastily. When you're throwing trillions of dollars around you would think that it would be done in a more thoughtful, well considered and deliberate manner. Instead the US government has a penchant for last minute, stop-gap, panicky problem solving. And make no mistake: this is another stop-gap deal. They haven't gotten down to the root causes of what's going on with the banking system. Here in a nutshell is the root cause: the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 2000. Phil Gramm, John McCain's economic policy advisor and erstwhile future Secretary of the Treasury (God spare us!), slipped this into a bill, unbeknownst to most senators, the night before it was voted on. This was the bill responsible for the machinations of Enron and now the financial meltdown of the whole banking system. Let's assign blame where blame is due! Gramm-Leach-Bliley repealed Glass-Steagall which was the depression era act that put a firewall between commercial and investment banking. Without it we would not have had the sub-prime mortgage mess because you wouldn't have been able to have collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps. You wouldn't have had a toxic mixture of main street commercial banking, Wall Street investment banking and insurance companies (think A.I.G., the beneficiary of another recent bail-out). In addition we have derivatives of all the facny schmancy financial instruments aforementioned. Then we have derivatives of the derivatives etc. etc. They've just figured out that short selling might cause some problems, but in general no bets are off the table including the mother of all bets - the complete devastation of the US banking system. Want to bet on that?

The financial- ization of the US and turning it into a casino which manu- factures nothing but bets on every- thing is what the Republican party has been about for the last 30 years, ever since Ronald Reagan, thet revered and beloved figure, entered the scene. Reagan didn't know much about banking but his cronies sure did. They knew where they wanted to take the country - right back to Hooverville! Before long it would be as if FDR never even existed. Everyone knew it wasn't the New Deal that ended the depression; it was World War II so why not get involved in another war and end the New Deal by repealing for starters the New Deal banking legislation. After all it was 70+ years old. Time to modernize with the Financial Modernization Act which most senators, at the time of its passage, had never even read, much less considered or debated upon. Is this a way to do business or what?

According to Max Fraad Wollf:

We just went from Free Fall to Free Lunch. It turns out free markets are the greatest system on earth, but only when they go up. Market discipline is for low income people and homeowners. Short selling must stop only when it laps up on Goldman's shores. Today, the government deploys hundreds of billions, maybe more than a thousand billion dollars to bail out banks and owners, insurers and traders of mortgage backed securities. Wave after wave of cash infusions didn't work, Thursday morning's $183 billion did not work. So here come new rules and whole lots more money. The government will insure money markets, the government will buy between $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in distressed securities to shore up balance sheets. If this had been done last week, then Lehman, AIG and Merrill would still be out there with ALL their employees. If it had been done in March, Bear Stearns would be with us. This financial run just got more expensive than Iraq. Where will the money come from? Who gains and who loses? Is this the largest economic intervention in at least several decades?

Let's consider the bail-outs of 2008, the year of the bail-out. Bank of America acquires Countrywide - January 11. Bear Stearns swallowed by JP Morgan Chase - March 16. Then came IndyMac - July 11; then Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac - September 7. Bank of America acquires Merrill Lynch - September 15 . The Fed puts $85 billion into A.I.G. - takes 80% stake - September 16. Yesterday, September 19, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson announces a trillion dollar mother of all bail-outs to end all bail-outs so help him God bail-out. It seems like the pace of the bail-outs is accelerating! They're barely finished with one bail-out before announcing the next one. And if you add up the price tags for all these bail-outs, you have approximately two trillion dollars. Just the latest one announced by Paulson yesterday was one trillion in and of itself!

Some think this signals the end of the US being the financial capital of the world. Taxpayers will have to pay more to pay for these bailouts, but John McCain promises to lower taxes. Does this compute? Paulson's latest stop-gap measure will work until the next crisis comes along. Maybe next week? US government debt and yearly deficits have become a structural part of the system, but they can't continue forever. Sooner or later the mother of all crises will arise: the US government is bankrupt. But that could never happen, you say? The US is already beholden to foreigners for about a quarter of its total debt. At the rate the US is going it will soon be a protectorate of China! Fiscal prudence is out the window. The borrowing and spending will continue. We need more money to fund the world's biggest military machine. We need money to pay interest on the national debt. We need money to bail out the banking sector. We need money to pay even higher interest rates on the national debt because otherwise countries won't loan to us. It's the Banana Republicanization of the US.

Y'all taxpayers, listen up, y'heah. You're going to have to pay higher taxes. But if you elect John McCain, he will lower your taxes and get the US into an even worse mess. Who will bail out the mother of all bailer-outers? No one. US equity will go flying out the window. You were upset when foreigners bought the Helmsley and Chrysler buildings in NYC? You ain't seen nothing yet. You don't like Dubai running our ports? You ain't seen nothing. You think the US is the financial capital of the world? Laughable. The US is the world's largest debtor nation filled with debtor instituions who are beholden to financially more prudent foreigners. Financially speaking, even Kazahkstan which has a Sovereign Wealth Fund, is better off. The US has neglected its people, its infrastructure, its health care system, its veterans and every other responsible function of government all in the name of free market, laissez-faire, devil-take-the-hindermost capitalism. Money talks and shit walks! That's the way we do it in the US.

John McCain Has So May Houses He Doesn't Know What To Do!

You all have heard about the little old woman who lived in a shoe who had so many children she didn't know what to do. Well, John McCain has the opposite problem. That little old man has so many houses he doesn't know when his property taxes are due! By latest count McCain owns at least eleven, count 'em, eleven houses with his wife Cindy who has a little sibling problem. John McCain can't count all his houses; Cindy McCain can't count all her siblings.

There was an old woman
Who lived in a shoe;
She had so many children,
She didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth,
Without any bread;
She whipped them all soundly,
And sent them to bed.

There was John McCain with his $520 Ferragamo shoes.
He had so many houses he didn't know when his property taxes were due.
His wife had so many siblings she forgot who was who.
So he fed the American people some gruel without any bread,
Whipped the whiners soundly
And sent them to bed.

Now who's the out of touch elitist? I guess the economy is going pretty good ... for the McCains. After all they spent over a quarter of a million dollars last year on household help. Jeez, if their taxes had been lower, they could have hired a few more servants. They would have been able to create more jobs as we know all rich people do if their taxes are low enough.

But then as if not being able to count all your houses isn't bad enough, Cindy McCain can't even couint all her siblings!

When Cindy McCain talks about growing up, she usually refers to herself as an "only child" -- a phrase that ignores the existence of her half sisters. "It's terribly painful," Kathleen Hensley Portalski said yesterday. "It is as if she is the 'real' daughter. I am also a real daughter." Portalski and McCain are both children of the late Jim Hensley, the Arizona businessman who founded one of the largest beer distributorships in the nation. Kathleen, 65, is the product of Hensley's first marriage in the 1930s to Mary Jeanne Parks. Hensley divorced Parks for Marguerite "Smitty" Johnson, whom he met at a West Virginia hospital in World War II and married in 1945. Cindy was born nine years later. The half sisters had little contact growing up and have not spoken since Hensley's funeral in 2000. In his will, he left just $10,000 to his older daughter; Cindy inherited her father's multimillion-dollar fortune. Portalski told our colleague Kimberly Kindy that she stood quietly by for decades while her father lavished attention on his second family. But the past few months -- with Cindy McCain's glowing childhood memories and repeated references to being her father's only child -- finally became too much. "I was his family, too," she said from her home in Phoenix. "I saw him at Christmas and I spent my birthdays with him." But there's more: Cindy McCain has another half sister. Before her marriage to Hensley, Johnson had a daughter, Dixie Burd, by a previous relationship. Burd, who is much older than Cindy, could not be reached for comment. The McCain campaign has been tight-lipped about the expanded family tree: "Mrs. McCain was raised as the only child of Jim and Marguerite Hensley, and there was no familiar relationship with any other sibling," it said in a statement. The messy saga went public after McCain talked about her childhood in an NPR interview. Portalski's son, Nicholas, contacted the network to clarify the family history and his mother's feelings about being overlooked. "I'm upset," she told NPR. "I'm angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of." Money, of course, has exacerbated the family tensions. The multimillionaire Hensley only occasionally saw his older daughter -- and was emotionally distant when he did, according to her son -- but gave Portalski and her children money and college tuition. But when he died eight years ago, Hensley bequeathed Cindy the majority share of his company. (Andrew McCain, John's son from his first marriage, is now the chief financial officer.) Portalski got no share of the business, and support to her family was abruptly cut off. "It doesn't make any kind of sense at all,'' Portalski said yesterday. "He was generous over the years when I was growing up, so it doesn't compute that he would do that; that he would leave all of us out. He paid for college for two of my kids. He gave us yearly gifts that were generous, allowed for a down payment on a home. I felt shock and disbelief. I just wish I could ask him, 'Why?' " Her son, Nicholas, asked for a copy of the will and said it had been amended so many times that it was hard to tell what the original intent or language must have been. Now, she said, all she wants is for the McCains to apologize and acknowledge her branch of the family tree. (Since you asked: Yes, they're Democrats.) "He was my father, too. I don't know why even now he cannot be a part of my life."

Memo to Cindy: Couldn't you at least give Nicholas Portalski, your nephew, a job driving a beer truck? After all that's what the family business consists of: beer distribution. You truck beer around the state of Arizona. That's how your father, Jim Hensley, made his millions.

But speaking of Jim Hensley, he was convicted in 1948 of liquor law violations.

The criminal convictions had little immediate impact on the brothers' fortunes. James Hensley profited handsomely from his association with liquor magnate Kemper Marley, a man police suspect ordered the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had written about Marley's business and political dealings. The man convicted of placing a bomb beneath Bolles' car testified that Marley also wanted former Arizona governor and then-attorney general Bruce Babbitt murdered because Babbitt had filed an antitrust lawsuit against the liquor industry in 1975. (Marley, who died in 1990, was never charged in the Bolles case. Babbitt is now U.S. Secretary of the Interior.) By 1955, James Hensley had launched a Budweiser distributorship in Phoenix, a franchise reportedly bestowed upon him by Marley, who was never indicted in the 1948 federal liquor-law-violation case -- or a subsequent one -- despite his controlling financial role in the liquor distribution businesses. James Hensley's conviction didn't deter the State of Arizona from granting him a wholesale liquor license in the mid-1950s. The Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control turned a blind eye to repeated liquor-law violations at the company. State liquor regulators did nothing when James Hensley failed to disclose his federal felony conviction on a sworn 1988 disclosure statement to the department and the City of Phoenix. Today, Phoenix-based Hensley & Company is the nation's fifth-largest beer wholesaler -- a privately held business that 80-year-old James Hensley still controls. He built the Budweiser distributorship into at least a $200 million-a-year business, with annual sales of more than 20 million cases of beer.

Not quite the American Dream story that has been portrayed for James Hensley: "returning veteran starts business, makes fortune." Yeah, by associating with the mob.

But be that as it may. Cindy's father came home from WWII and divorced his first wife, Kathleen's mother, in order to marry Cindy's mother. John McCain came home from the Vietnam war, divorced his first wife in order to marry Cindy. Is that history repeating itself or what? McCain callously left behind his first wife, Carol, after she became disfigured in an auto accident. After Carol had done all she could to get McCain released from the Hanoi Hilton, McCain ditched her when he finally came home and found that she had gained weight and walked with a limp. He ran around with other women and finally settled on the beautiful and rich Cindy. He married Cindy a month after getting a divorce from Carol.

McCain had less than a distinguished record at Annapolis graduating almost last in his class. His class rank was 894 out of 899. But then he described himself as being "dumber then Bush" a difficult feat to accomplish. Then he went on to lose five aircraft before he landed up in the Hanoi Hilton. And this is what you call a distinguished military career? The Red Baron, he ain't. But I guess graduating almost last in your class qualifies you to be President of the United States. Along with those other stellar intellects Ronald Reagan, Pappy Bush and George W Bush, McCain would be in the tradition of a long line of Numbskull Republican American Presidents.

I hope that Joe Biden will point out that almost every McCain utterance contains the words "My friends," a noun, a verb and "prisoner of war." Did McCain actually accomplish anything in Vietnam other than getting shot down and losing millions of dollars' worth of US aircraft? The answer is not much. Some war hero. And then there's the questionable "cross in the sand" story.

But you would have thought that, after he got home, McCain would have been a champion of the POW/MIA cause and a champion of all veterans returning from Iraq. Sadly this was and is not the case.

According to Mrs.Carol Hrdlicka, when POW/MIA family members confronted Sen. John McCain in the halls of Congress after the conclusion of the Committee’s Report, he shoved the wheelchair of handicapped POW mother Jane Gaylord out of his way knocking it into her niece who was behind the chair attending to her aunt and she was pushed up against a wall. Subsequently Mrs. Gaylord filed a complaint for assault against the Senator but the matter was squelched by the powers that be. As Senator McCain attempted to jump on an elevator to make a quick escape from the POW/MIA family members gathered, he shouted at Mrs. Hrdlicka, “You don’t know what I’ve been through”(indicating he was a former POW and inferring Mrs. Hrdlicka had no comparable experience or appreciation of his great suffering and sacrifice). As the door to the elevator began to close around the cowering Senator who was making good his get-a-way, Mrs. Hrdlicka raised a large photo of her POW husband Col. David Hrdlicka and thrust it at the elevator doors to show the Senator that she did indeed share in the suffering of POWs and family members and shouted that she had clear proof her husband David was still alive in captivity. Unfortunately, Mrs. Hrdlicka’s cries and pleas for help from government officials bent on closing the chapter on POWs fell on deaf ears and blackened hearts!

You know, but there is no group McCain will not pander to. He even offered up Cindy to be in the Miss Buffalo Chip contest at Sturgis which involves women performing simulated sex acts! Then there's his famous temper  even telling a fellow senator "F**k you", and the Keating Five ethics scandal.

And then there's the $520 Ferragamo shoes.

Ah yes, the economy is fundamentally sound ... for John McCain.

An Nguyen Checks In From Singapore

I asked An if he would comment on Singapore's Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and how it operates to help the citizens of Singapore in connection with my previous blog post, Sovereign Wealth Funds, State Capitalism and Corporate Socialism. The Singapore SWF is the world's third largest with $330 billion in assets. The interesting thing is that Singapore's SWF, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC) along with its sister fund, Temasek, owns equity stakes in many corporate enterprises such as Singapore Airlines. However, the enterprises are not nationalized in the sense that the government owns them in their entirety. So there's the capitalistic situation of share ownership combined with the socialist characteristic of government ownership combined with private ownership. Thus the modern world has left the old dichotomy of capitalism vs socialism behind. Those nations that are still mired in the capitalism vs socialism debate are out of touch with reality. That includes the US whose approach to government finance is antiquated at best not to mention that its government and private corporations are in debt to or are partially owned by the SWFs of other nations. A prime example is Singapore's bail-out of Citibank. So far SWFs have prudently not taken majority equity stakes in major US banks and corporations, but it's only a matter of time ...

 

Here is An's report:

 

In Singapore, everytime a worker gets paid, the government automtically deducts about 5% of his salary for the Central Provident Fund (CPF). His employer is required to contribute the same amount toward his CPF account. This fund will accumulate with interest until a worker is retired. At any time, a worker is allowed to borrow from the fund from his own account to buy a house or apartment, and also can use his CPF for his monthly payment.   He can continue to use the CPF for payment as long as he still owns the house and works. If he sells the house, the government will automatically deduct the amount that he has borrowed, plus interest, and put the rest back into his CPF account. During the course of his life, he can continue to borrow from the fund in order to purchase a house.   The CPF also can be used toward hospital bills. In Singapore, there are private and public hospitals. The public ones are just as good, if not better, than the private hospitals. They are heavily subsidized by the government and the cost is affordable by everyone.   A person can take one lump sum amount from his CPF account when he retires, or take monthly payments as he wishes. When he dies, the next of kin is entitled to the balance of his CPF.   The personal income tax in Singapore is extremely low compared to the US. For a yearly income of $50,000., a person pays less than $1000. for income tax. The government is making money by wisely investing the CPF and from its SWFs.  There are very few countries in the world that don't have deficits. In fact, the Singapore SWF is making a profit every year from overseas investments. Practically any of the corporations that the government owns are making good profits, from telecommunication, airline, real-estate, to shipping, etc. ... The profit is announced at year's end, and every citizen is given a share.   One could say that, because Singapore is a small country, it should be easy to manage. But the the truth is Singapore doesn't have any natural resources; even water has to be imported from Malaysia. Its wealth is credited to its intelligent government that really looks after its citizens.   Compared to Singapore, the US has a bundle of natural resources, and yet we are the biggest debtor in the world. Our people are still struggling everyday to earn a living. We owe money to almost all of the powerful friends that we have.   Our country is where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The capitalists are making billion of dollars in oil profits everyday at the expense of every decent hard working American.   I feel sad for our country. It's time for a big change.   Best regards, An

The Singapore CPF is a fully integrated retirement, home loan and medical insurance package, and each citizen can access his or her personalized account online. The web interface is very helpful and user friendly as opposed to US government websites. The CPF will help you start a business, make investments and provides many other useful services and benefits.

The US only knows how to go into debt, not how to make profitable investments, as witnessed by the huge budget deficits it runs and its $10 trillion national debt. Its antiquated Federal Reserve, lack of a true central bank and antipathy toward government ownership of equity assets has hamstrung it with respect to other nations. Its lack of beneficense towards its own citizens is exemplified by the 47 million people without health insurance and its large and growing homeless population. Meanwhile, Singapore, a nation of 4.5 million people, bails out Citibank, a major corporation in a nation of 300 million people!

In recent months, banks including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS have turned to investment funds, including the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), its sister fund, Temasek, and China Investment Corp, for funding that western investors were unwilling to give as stockmarkets plunged. ... Singapore's GIC, for example, which with funds of more than $330bn (£166bn) is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, spent more than £5.5bn on a 9% stake in UBS last year. Shares in the Swiss bank are down 46% so far this year. It spent a further $6.88bn in January as part of a $14.5bn funding round for the embattled US bank Citigroup.

Frank Thomas Checks in From Holland Via Robert Reich's Blog

I have been trying to add an international perspective and flavor to this blog by engaging with guest bloggers and commenters who live in countries other than the US, but who have lived in or are familiar with the US. My feeling is that US citizens could profit greatly from being made aware of how things are done in other countries, that the US is too insular and unaware of or too arrrogant to consider the fact that the way things are done abroad might be superior to the way things are done here at home. I think that we might be able to learn from others and that we shouldn't just assume that we as Americans have all the answers.

So far I have enlisted An Nguyen, an American citizen born in Vietnam, residing currently in Singapore. Also, I have permission from Frank Thomas, an American residing in Holland, who comments frequently on Robert Reich's blog, to post the following remarks regarding my post Sovereign Wealth Funds, State Capitalism and Corporate Socialism:

Couldn't agree more with your remarks about our "Democratic Capitalism" vs. "European State Capitalism." Excellent summary on your part!

I've been in the offshore oil business operating out of Rotterdam, Holland in the 70s, when the big discoveries were being made offshore UK and Norway (and later some smaller discoveries offshore the Netherlands). Since that time, I've always been appalled at how naive and irresponsible our government has been in its relations with oil companies, specifically concerning the tax concessions and the paltry lease deals made with oil firms for onshore drilling acreage, particularly for offshore drilling on oil-gas sites.

Now Washington seems to want to repeat the same mistakes with offshore tracts that appear very, very promising ... unlike Norway which has formed a 50-50 partnership for development of their offshore fields ... a business arrangement all parties are happy with whereby one party's equity input is the potential oil-gas Site (owned by the taxpayers of Norway) and the other party's equity input are the exploration and production development costs to bring oil and/or gas flows on stream to shore for refining.

This profoundly sensible business arrangement has made Norway energy independent while filling their Treasury coffers with considerable funds ... further enhanced by fact they are in addition net exporters of fossil fuels.

As for US Corporate Tax Rates vs. European Corporate Tax Rates, many ill-informed pundits claim (on prime-time TV stations) European rates are higher than US rates ... using this as an excuse to promote for EVEN LOWER corporation tax rates (e.g., McCain). This is typical devious propaganda permeating our political-social discussions in America that has little basis IN FACT.

Firstly, corporate taxes paid in America today are already at a miniscule level of less than 12% of all US taxes paid! Secondly, a recent study by a Congressional committee led by Carl Levin has confirmed that more than 65% of all corporations in America with sales of $50 Million to $250 million pay NO taxes due to special privileges and tax avoidance structures, e.g., involving tax evasion transfer pricing gimmicks to report no profits from US operations. The majority of Foreign firms operating in the States also pay little or NO taxes for same reasons. Thirdly, when taking these factors into account (including favorable tax concessions to oil firms and other larger firms), US EFFECTIVE Corporate Tax Rates are well BELOW European Corporate Rates.

Holland is an example of country that practices "State Capitalism" in many different ways. For example, the economy is going much slower now, so people are saying the government should not increase the current 19% Value Added Tax as planned. Government officials are listening and note that this will lead to a Euro 2 Billion(+-$3 Billion) Deficit in next year's budget. Will this Deficit amount be accepted and funded with Debt Borrowing? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Officials will find a way to cut spending somewhere because it's a Golden Rule here NOT to borrow for Spending shortfalls unless critically necessary ... Borrowing should be only for Long-term Investments.

Thus, Financial Prudence balanced against Social Protection Priorities is alive and well here. I look upon it as prudent "Capitalism with a Conscience," but I also like your phrase, John, "State Capitalism," but I would add, "Combined with Private Capitalism."

Amazing how we Americans continue to allow ourselves to be manipulated by self-serving ideological skulduggery, lobbyist insiders indirectly controlling the purse strings, and pure gross mismanagement of taxpayer monies and assets.

When is enough going to be ENOUGH? Optimistically, no doubt, I'm placing my bets on CHANGE in the next election where a measure of integrity, transparency, and leadership will hopefully return that focuses on the general welfare of ALL Americans.

What the article "Sovereign Wealth Funds, State Capitalism and Corporate Socialism" says about Norway's unique management of its national Wealth, especially from its offshore oil-gas developments, is entirely true. Today, they are only partially using the substantial annual Interest Earned on their gigantic accumulated Funds and preserving the base principle for future generations. In my offshore oil-gas entrepreneurial activities in the 70s, I had many commercial and personal meetings with established Norwegian businesses (quite a number being family owned for generations past and present).

I was always utterly impressed with their down to earth combination of human sensitivity, fairness, and pragmatic business sense. Found the same qualities in the Dutch, so I feel very fortunate. Wish we Americans could rediscover these qualities but am afraid our massive Debt situation places constraints on our imagination and ideological flexibility for how to come out of our convoluted excesses in a balanced, equitable way.

... Frank Thomas

Friday, 15 August, 2008

 

Sovereign Wealth Funds, State Capitalism and Corporate Socialism

The competition between capitalism and communism has morphed into a whole new scenario, one in which the US, the principal espouser of "free market" capitalism has voluntarily - due to its trade policies and energy consumption - placed itself in hock to "communist" nations, which are communist in name only, having morphed into a new form of capitalism: state capitalism. Thanks to policies started under Ronald Reagan such as deregulation, free trade and subsidies and tax breaks for big oil companies, other nations have accumulated huge war chests known as sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). In the meantime, the US has run up a $10 trillion national debt and has initiated policies which have resulted in one financial fiasco and meltdown after another, only the latest being the sub-prime mortgage mess. While the US espouses capitalism, the reality is that the government runs on a policy of corporate socialism: tax breaks and subsidies for wealthy corporations, bailouts for large corporations and banks, legislation that favors the phamaceutical and oil industries etc. The US taxpayer is on the hook for some of this. Other bailouts are arranged by the government but actually come from SWFs. Citibank recently was bailed out by Singapore's soverign wealth fund. SWFs stand ready to bail out US corporations in exchange for an equity stake, having tired of US Treasuries. They're also starting to buy US real estate including such landmarks as the Chrysler and Helmsley buildings in New York City.

The US has gone from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation in just a few short years and routinely goes begging to rich countries like China and Saudi Arabia for bailouts. It all started with Ronald Reagan and his tax cuts resulting in huge budget deficits which added to the national debt. The US has gotten dumb and the communist countries and assorted dictatorships have gotten smart. But some western countries like Norway have gotten even smarter fully integrating its sovereign wealth fund with its central bank and using the largesse to support its citizens. The US' problem partly is that it doesn't even have a central bank, the Federal Reserve being privately owned. As such it's function is limited to regulating the money supply, and by its very nature it can't be a repository of wealth like Norway's central bank can, for instance.

It didn't have to be this way. Jimmy Carter in 1970 put solar panels on the roof of the White House and tried to change the US energy policy. Ronald Reagan promply took them down when he came into office. The Saudis and other oil rich nations including the formerly communist Soviet Union (now Russia) have accumulated their war chests (SWFs) by selling us oil. Norway, a western non-communist nation, has a SWF with money accumulated from selling oil which it actually uses to provide its citizens with pensions and to counterbalance budget deficits in other parts of its national expenditures. China has a $200 billion SWF accumulated by selling the US cheap goods. The US has been dumb enough to run huge trade deficits with China. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if I sell you a dollar's worth of goods and you sell me 50 cents worth and we repeat this transaction over and over again, you're going to end up owing me money. It's as simple as that.

As the espouser of free market capitalism, the US has ended up essentially not with free market capitalism but with corporate socialism in which various private corporations use the state as a tool for furthering their own interests. The state, on the other hand, as it facilitates the enrichment of corporations while undermining its middle class, has not taken on the role of wealth accumulation as other countries have. Instead the US central government has financed itself in the traditional manner by taxation, and, since it is controlled by wealthy private interests, it has only lowered taxes thus driving up deficits and debts. It has not been fiscally prudent or responsible. With no other means of accumulating wealth, it has only run itself into debt. If it had natural resources such as oil that it could sell to the rest of the world or if it had manufactured goods that it could sell to the rest of the world or if it hadn't overreached itself militarily by supporting the world's largest military-industrial complex or if it had raised taxes to cover expenses, the present situation might not have occurred. But then all resources in the US are under private corporate control so there is nothing that would serve as a source of national wealth. Contrast that with Norway in which the state has a 50% interest in all oil sales. That still leaves 50% for Big Oil. For the US, however, 50% is not enough. the US gives essentially all the profits from oil finds on its property to Big Oil. Other states share the profits among their citizens and private enterprise. The US essentially has a weak central government controlled by lobbyists representing corporate interests. The US government itself, supposedly a democracy, does nothing to accumulate wealth in behalf of its citizens the way other nations do. Even Kazahkstan, the butt of the movie Borat's jokes, has a SWF. Kazahkstan may get the last laugh while the US has to eat crow. Are you ready for Borat, the sequel?

On the other hand, China, for example, or even Norway, has a much stronger central government than the US. The communists do not try to micromanage their economies any more, but they retain control over the "commanding heights" by setting overall policy, something the US does not do intelligently. Instead the US lets a swarm of lobbyists each pursuing their own special interests effectively set economic policy for the US in a piecemeal, hodgepodge manner. The result is an incoherent jumble which profits US (now global) corporations, but weakens the US and its citizens as a whole. The US, comprised of a bunch of special interests, has no interest in providing for the good of its people (the general welfare as the Constitution says), only in lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy.  The denouement is that countries with strong central governments both communist and non-communist are able to set policies which result in their nations' accumulating wealth which then can be at least partially distributed to its people. Sometimes it's just a few crumbs from the table, but that's not very different from the US supply side, trickle down economics. Qatar, for instance, uses its oil wealth to help its citizens attain a high standard of living. The communist countries like China have left economic production up to private enterprise but have retained central control of the commanding heights especially in the accumulation of capital. This is why they represent state capitalism. The SWF is the tool with which communism or state capitalism outcompetes the "free market" or corporate socialist economies such as the US. And it is also the tool with which capital formation can be used as a source of welfare for their people. The US with no strong central government exists primarily for the enrichment of private interests, and, therefore, is not in a position to offer comprehensive overall policies such as universal health care which would benefit its citizens. In fact universal health care would only be to the detriment of the private health care industry which accumulates tremendous profits. The self interest of US corporations has led to the US' impoverishment as a nation.

Meanwhile dazzling new office blocks and swanky Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons hotels are sprouting out of the sand to cope with all those who want to do business here. In the suburbs of Doha you can drive for miles past the shells of mansions being hastily — and lavishly — thrown up to meet demand for homes that would dwarf those in even the most affluent pockets of America. The 150,000 Qataris enjoy their prosperity. The per capita GDP is more than $20,000, comparable to much of Europe. But Qatari citizens receive many extra benefits from the Government, including a plot of land and a $180,000 interest-free loan towards a house, which the Government builds to the owner’s designs. Water, gas and electricity are free and each homeowner gets a $15,000 gift towards furnishing his home. Qatar has a remarkable welfare state; citizens do not pay income tax but still receive free education and healthcare, even if it means being flown to Britain or the US for an operation. With petrol so cheap that a luxury car can be filled for a few pounds there is really little to worry about, except the blistering hot summers when the temperature can reach 50 degrees. Many Qataris have solved that problem by buying summer homes in Europe and America.

As far as the US criticism of China as a "one party system," the US is a one and a half party system at best. The Republicans have set policy for almost 40 years. Even Clinton governed as a Republican. It was under his administration that NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Steagall took place. The Democratic party is at least half in the pockets of the corporations. The Republican symps in the Democratic party are known as "Blue Dog Democrats." No wonder they have been ineffective in getting the liberal agenda passed even though they have a majority in both houses of Congress. Half of them vote with the Republicans! The 2008 election is critical because it will determine whether or not there will be a change in direction for the US or whether it will continue down the same road started by Ronald Reagan and continued by the Bushes, the road of corporate socialism.

Let's consider the example of Norway in greater depth. Norway's SWF is essentially an endowment which spends the return on investment (but not the principal) on its citizens' welfare. This is what any prudent capitalist or wealthy person does. Only stupid people spend the principal itself. Intelligent people spend the return to capital. Thus rents, dividends and interest represent the return to capital. Refinancing your house represents spending the capital or principal itself. Norway's central government has fully integrated its SWF into its national budget so that future generations in perpetuity will enjoy the largesse thereof. The US has accumulated a huge national debt such that future generations of taxpayer/debtors will be required to pay it off. They are similar to the ones that refinanced their houses to support their lifestyle. Instead of passing on wealth to future generations such as in the case of Norway, the US will pass on debt to future generations so that wealthy people and corporations of the present generation can get even wealthier. Presumably, they will pass on the wealth to future generations of their own families thus creating an oligarchy. The following explains the exemplary features of Norway's SWF.

Norway's Government Pension Fund-Global (GPF) has a number of exemplary features that could serve as a model for other SWFs. The GPF is one of the largest and fastest-growing SWFs in the world, with total assets amounting to $373 billion at end-2007, or close to 100 percent of Norway's GDP. But size aside, the Norwegian GPF is mostly known for its features, which in many ways are considered best practices by international standards: • The GPF's stated aim is to support government saving and promote an intergenerational transfer of resources. The fund facilitates the long-term management of the government's petroleum revenues. Given the expected population aging in Norway, it serves to pre-fund public pension expenditures. • The GPF functions as a fiscal policy tool, which, together with the fiscal guideline, serves to limit government spending. The fund's capital consists of revenues from petroleum activities. The fund's expenditure is a transfer to the fiscal budget to finance the non-oil budget deficit. The fiscal guideline, introduced in 2001, calls for a limit on the non-oil structural central government deficit of around 4 percent of the assets of the GPF. Since 4 percent is the estimated long-run real rate of return, this rule amounts to saving the real capital of the fund and spending only its return (akin to an endowment fund). • The fund is fully integrated into the budget.The net allocation to the fund forms part of an integrated budgetary process. This process makes transparent the actual surplus of the fiscal budget and the state's use of petroleum revenues. • It pursues a highly transparent investment strategy. The Ministry of Finance—the fund's owner—reports regularly on the governance framework, the fund's goals, investment strategy and results, and ethical guidelines. The Central Bank—the fund's operational manager—publishes quarterly and annual reports on the management of the fund, including its performance and an annual listing of all investments. Detailed information on the fund's voting in shareholders' meetings is also published. • Its assets are invested exclusively abroad. This strategy ensures risk diversification and good financial returns. Moreover, it helps to shield the non-oil economy from shocks in the oil sector, which can put pressure on the exchange rate (so-called "Dutch disease" effects). The GPF has small ownership shares in over 7,000 individual companies worldwide (the average ownership stake at end-2007 was 0.6 percent, against a maximum allowed of 5 percent). • Its high-return, moderate-risk investment strategy has been hitting the mark. Currently, the fund is adjusting its portfolio to its new strategic benchmark of 60 percent of assets in equities and 40 percent in fixed income. There are plans to move gradually into real estate, to improve the risk-return tradeoff. The investment strategy has produced a healthy 4.3 percent average annual real return during the past decade.

Here's another reference that explains the relationship between Norway's central government and the oil companies. If the US made oil leases contingent on the oil companies' sharing the profits with the American people, the US might be able to (1) provide for social security as Norway has done and (2) pay off its $10 trillion national debt. The US could follow the Norwegian model of state capitalism combined with socialism for its citizens, but prefers to follow the model of corporate socialism combined with "fend for yourself" capitalism for its citizens. The results are clear. Norway has the highest standard of living of any country in the world.

For the last four years the United Nations (UN) has ranked Norway as having the highest standard of living in the world. This annual ranking is based largely on average levels of education and income, combined with expected length of lifetime, but also factors like human rights and cultural freedom. Norway is weighed high for its high literacy rate in addition to educational levels and material wealth.

Since 2001 Norway has ranked number one six times in human development, which combines life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment and GDP per capita, edged out only by Iceland in 2007.

Drill Here. Drill Now. Heck, They Could Have Started Drilling Yesterday.

The oil companies already have 68 million acres under lease that they're not drilling on. It doesn't take an act of Congress for them to start drilling there today or yesterday if they'd wanted to. So why the mantra, "Drill here. Drill now."? It just shows what a pandering boob John McCain is. The oil companies already have 68 million acres under lease in the US. Why aren't they frantically drilling already to bring down the price of gas for the American consumer? Put simply, they could care less about bringing down the price of gas for the American consumer and concomitantly their own profits. They just want to use the high price of gas to further their own interests, that is, to get even more acreage under lease so that at some time in the future when the price of gas as set by the world market is even higher, they can make even greater profits.

First, the oil companies in this country now hold 7,000 leases to drill offshore, yet only 20 percent of those leases are producing oil. That is 68 million acres for which they already have the rights to drill. Nearly 80 percent of our offshore oil is already available for leasing -- approximately 54 billion barrels total. They could be drilling in these areas, but they are not. Assuming oil companies drilled in new areas, it would take at least a decade for new production to begin. Just last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration concluded new drilling would have no impact on oil prices before 2030. Prices would still be determined by the world market, which will be adding billions of new consumers from growing economies in China, India and other countries. OPEC countries control two- thirds of the world's oil reserves. If we add a bit more oil to the market, they can cut their own output to keep prices high.

Now here's what Congress should do. 1) Require the oil companies to start drilling on leases they now hold. If they fail to do so, the leases should be taken back. 2) Require the oil companies to sell directly to the American people oil taken from leases in the US at a price of, say, 60% of the world market price. As the leases they now hold come under full development with the oil not placed on the world market but sold directly to the American people, Congress should then consider adding additional leases but not until then. Is this sufficiently nuanced that the American people cannot understand it? Oh, I see, they can only understand simple slogans like "Drill here. Drill now." Is their attention diverted elsewhere like on football games and reality shows? Poor babies!

Even Paris Hilton has a better energy policy than John McCain.

Drill Here. Drill Now? Why didn't they start drilling yesterday?

John McCain: I'm Responsible for the Surge

Mr. McCain, you've said that your expertise on military matters is why people should vote for you in the upcoming election. Is that correct?

McCain: Yes, you know it's all about who do you trust to be Commander-In-Chief. Are you going to elect a guy like myself who knows how to surge or someone like Obama? Now I'm not going to question his patriotism, but he doesn't know nothing about the surge. I'm responsible for the surge, and surges win wars. The only thing that wins war is surges, and I created the surge. I'm responsible for more than one surge ... two or three surges in fact. You see if you want to win the war in Iraq you had to have the surge, four or five surges ... it's as simple as that. Surges win wars. We won World War II with a surge. What do you think it was on D-Day? That was a surge when we added 20,000 troops to the European Theater. And I invented the surge. I patented the surge.

Mr. McCain, you've said the surge is responsible for the diminution of violence in Iraq, but isn't the diminution of violence the result of the so-called 'Anbar Awakening' in which the US bought off and co-opted the sheiks who then stopped fighting us and didn't that pre-date the surge?

McCain: Actually the Anbar Awakening was part of the surge. The surge started with the Anbar Awakening. The fact that we didn't actually put more troops in till later has nothing to do with it.

Colonel McFarland, in Anbar province, McCain said, "had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counter-insurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is quote the surge, part of the surge, would be, would be, successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this insurgency. Prior to that -- counter insurgency. Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counter-insurgency, the surge, entailed going in and clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course, later on, there were additional troops, and General Petraeus said that the surge would not have worked, and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place, successfully, if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops." "So I’m not sure frankly that people really understand that a surge is part of counter-insurgency strategy which means going in, clearing, holding, building a better life, providing services to the people. And then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help insure the safety of the sheiks, to gain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge would continue to succeed as a counter-insurgency.’’

But, Mr. McCain, you say you want to win a glorious vistory in Iraq. You want to lead this country to an honorable victory rather than an ignominious defeat. How exactly do you define victory? What do you mean by "winning."

McCain: I'll tell you one thing. You don't win wars without a surge ... even two or three surges. And I'm the man who knows how to win wars. We're going to stay there until we win if it takes 10 surges, even 20 surges because you can't win a war without a surge. Now my opponent is a nice guy, but he's totally inexperienced. He doesn't know how to win wars. He doesn't know how to surge. Why it's the only thing that allowed us to be victorious in Korea and Vietnam. In fact they called me Surgin' John McCain. My Pappy and his Pappy before him knew about the surge. We McCains are a military family that knows about surgin.' And then when I was shot down in Vietnam, I outfoxed my captors when, under torture, they asked me about my squadron mates. First I told them they were Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. Then I went on to name Willie Mays and Duke Snider. I also named Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax. I followed that with Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson and all the other members of the Green Bay Packers and San Diego Padres.

Mr. McCain, the current head of the Iraqi government, Mr. al-Maliki told the German magazine, der Spiegle, that he wanted US troops out of Iraq in 16 months thereby endorsing Barack Obama's timetable for troop withdrawl. What do you have to say to that?

McCain: Timetable! Timetable? That's how you lose wars ... with a timetable. My opponent wants to lose in Iraq. That's why he has a timetable. I'll give you a timetable ... another surge ... that's how we'll win. I want to lead our troops to victory. Too many have died to have a timetable. I understand that. I know how to win ... not with a timetable but with a surge. We have to surge on to victory. You know, my friend, it's the surge that has allowed us to be victorious in every war we've fought. It was the surge that won the Civil War. If Pickett hadn't surged, we'd never have won. And I'm the one that's responsible for the surge. I want an honorable victory in Iraq.

But, Mr. McCain, how can you have an honorable victory in a war of aggression that was based on a bunch of lies. Wouldn't it be the honorable thing to apologize to the Iraqi people for starting the war in the first place and then get out as expeditiously as possible? After all the war has been responsible for killing as many as 1 million Iraqis and displacing 2 million. All the intelligentsia have fled. The country has been turned into a trash heap because Bush and Cheney wanted to reinsert ExxonMobil and British Petroleum back into Iraq after Saddam kicked them out 36 years ago.

McCain: Look, I'm not going to question how we got in this war, but now that we're in it, we've got to win. My opponent wants to lose in Iraq. He wants to bring the troops home on a timetable. That's a formula for losing. I know how to win wars. It may take more surges ... maybe 10 or 20 more. I don't know. I'll leave that determination to the commanders on the grounds. If the facts on the ground require it, we'll do 30 or 40 more surges. We may do 50 surges a year for the next 100 years. That would be honorable. I don't question Barack Obama's patriotism, just his judgment. Here's a man that says surges don't work. I know better. If Washington hadn't surged across the Delaware and caught the German troops drunk in their bunks on Christmas Eve, we would have lost the Revolutionary War, and I'm responsible for that surge too. You know I'll do whatever it takes to win. After I consult with the commanders on the ground, I'll consult with the commanders in the air. Then I'll consult with the commanders on the high seas. Consulting with commanders is what I do best ... that and surges. Our military must prevail, and you can't prevail without a surge.

Mr. McCain, you talk a lot about honor, but didn't you throw your first wife under the bus, so to speak, after she was disfigured in a car accident and take up with the beautiful and rich Cindy?

McCain: I won't interject my personal life into a Presidential campaign. It has nothing to do with the surge.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit. ‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. ‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better. ‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’ One old friend of the McCains said: ‘Carol always insists she is not bitter, but I think that’s a defence mechanism. She also feels deeply in his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.’ Carol remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to publicise her support for the man who abandoned her. Indeed, the old Mercedes that she uses to run errands displays both a disabled badge and a sticker encouraging people to vote for her ex-husband. ‘He’s a good guy,’ she assured us. ‘We are still good friends. He is the best man for president.’ But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics. ‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said. ‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

Mr. McCain, Barack Obama wants to take two brigades out of Iraq and send them to Afghanastan. What do you say about that?

McCain: I'll take three brigades out of Iraq, maybe four. No, I'll take 5 or 6 brigades out and send them to Afghanastan. We'll win in Afghanastan too by having another surge. We'll surge in Afghanastan just as we've surged in Iraq. You know the derivation of the word 'sergeant? Originally it was spelled  'Surgent.' I looked it up on the internets. The French spell it somewhat differently, but that's the etymology of the word. Sergeant, Surgent. It all means the same thing. You know a doctor that cuts people up. He's a Surgin'. It all comes from the same idea which I patented. It's all due to me. Modern Surgery, the Surgent at Arms. Barack Obama, I'm not going to question his patriotism, just his experience and judgment. When it comes to military matters, he doesn't know from nothing because he doesn't believe in the surge that's won every war we've ever fought. It won the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the surge is what won at the Bay of Pigs. Don't tell me you can win wars if you don't know nothing about surges, and I'm the one that's responsible for maybe 60 or 70 surges in Iraq. It's the only thing that's allowed us to win.

Well, Mr. McCain if the surge has allowed us to win in Iraq, why don't we just declare victory and come home?

McCain: Now, we can't do that. That's how you lose. We have to ensure an honorable victory. You can only do that by building more military bases and staying there for 100 years. Look, we've been in Japan for 70 years; we've been in Korea for 50 years. That's how we do things. When we win a war, we don't come home. That's how you lose the peace. We build military bases and then we stay. That's how you win. What have we won? Why, we've won the right to build more military bases, and don't forget it's the surge that's won us that right. Obama would just leave without permanently occupying Iraq. That's the definition of a loser. If you win, you stay. You don't cut and run.

Mr. McCain, the Iraqi people want us out of Iraq, the American people want us out of Iraq, and now the Iraqi government wants us out of Iraq.

McCain: What do they know? They haven't talked, as I have, to the commanders on the ground. They don't know the facts, and the fact of the matter is that surges work. I will win a glorious, honorable victory in Iraq and build military bases in every province. I want to see Old Glory waving over every bastion and outpost. That's how you know you've won. That's honorable, and if I'm elected that's what will be the outcome in the war of Iraq ... complete and total and honorable victory. You know winning is the only acceptable thing. My opponent, Barack Obama, wants to lose. He doesn't know from nothing because he refuses to acknowledge that the surge that I created is what has been responsible for winning in Iraq. Winning in Iraq is how I'll give the American people the full measure of my devotion, my friend.

Unions' Demise Is Democratic Party's Chance to Reposition Itself As Champion of Middle Class

Ronald Reagan's first act as President was to fire the striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers' Organization (PATCO) union employees. Since then it has been open season on unions with union membership declining from a high of about 35% in the 1950s to about 12% today. The union movement in the US was responsible for getting benefits such as health insurance, pensions and paid vacations for their members and also for non-unionized workers as well. However, I always felt that the focus of unions was too narrow, that they were only interested in gaining benefits for their own members. As a result the whole idea of "benefits" was too narrowly focused. Such things as paid vacations, pensions and health care should be available to every member of society and not just to those in unions. Although unions arguably lifted non-union workers by the unions' bootstraps, still many citizens were left out, and the unions themselves became petty oligarchies with corrupt leaders in many cases. Other societies, Europe, for example, while having stonger union movements than the US, have gone beyond the narrow focus of the union movement and have extended benefits to its citizens as a whole. So being a member of those societies guarantees benefits not just being a member of a union. So while we can thank the union movement for introducing and fighting for benefits for its members, it's time to move on and talk about societally guaranteed benefits for all citizens.

An important turning point came in 1981, shortly after Reagan took office, when he fired about 12,000 federal air traffic controllers who went out on strike. The controllers - represented by one of the few unions that supported Reagan in his bid for presidency, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers' Organization or PATCO - were fired for violating a law that forbids federal workers from striking. By carrying out his threat to fire the controllers if they did not return to work Reagan not only set limits for public employee unions, but also signaled that it was OK for businesses to play hardball with private sector unions. 'Sent a message' "The biggest thing that that did was it sent a message to the private employer community that it would be all right to go up against the unions," Craver said. "Whether he intended to do that, I don't know." After the PATCO strike, the number of union members began to decline.

The demise of the union movement in the US has given rise, in a Hegelian sort of way, to the opportunity for the Democratic Party to reposition itself as the party representing the middle class. It used to be the party that represented unions. Now it can be the party that represents virtually all US citizens. This dynamic is already happening and is in fact well under way. We can see this in the movement towards universal health care. Instead of seeing health care as something one obtains from one's employer, US citizens are coming to see it as something that should be guaranteed by society as a whole much as it is in all other industrially developed societies. So the idea is to detach the idea of benefits from one's relationship to one's employer and to make them something that is guaranteed by one's relationship to society as a whole. In this way they become the rights of citizenship and not just the rights of workers, the rights of employees. Just as companies no longer are interested in providing benefits for workers, employees are no longer interested in maintaining a paternalistic/subservient relationship with their employers, and many workers are self-employed, part time or transitional. They don't want to be stuck with one employer in order to maintain their benefits. Europe has managed to transcend the notion of benefits as something only provided by the employer-employee relationship and see them as something provided by the citizen-society relationship. It's now time for the US to do the same, and the Democratic party can be the engine which moves the US in this direction by positioning itself as the party of the middle class and not just the party of workers or union members. In a way this role has been thrust upon it by Reagan's declaration of open season on unions, by his throwing down the gauntlet and firing PATCO workers.

Today the traditional relationship between employee and employer in the US is breaking down, and I say it's for the better. The traditional relationship was one of paternalism, one of dependency. Workers had to bow down to their capitalist employers except when they had enough power via their union to go up against them. As soon as they joined a company they effectively lost their right of free speech since anything they might say that was critical of their employer made them a marked man or woman. Whistleblowers were frowned upon by corporations. Capitalists and workers were continually fighting over the granting or taking away of benefits whether it was paid vacation, health care, sick leave or pensions. Powerful unions could demand more; weak ones had to settle for less. Projecting the quest for worker rights onto society as a whole and making it a quest for citizens' rights is nothing more than most advanced societies have done already. The Democratic party is in a positioon to be the standard bearer for this quest and by picking up this standard can guarantee itself the majority of voters and change the direction of this country. The Republican party unmasked is nothing more than the party of the wealthy, the party of entrenched economic interests, the party of the corporations. They've catered to their interests for years and used advertising to sell themselves to the American people as something they're not whether it be compassionate conservatism or the party of "freedom." They represent the party of freedom for the wealthy, the party of servitude for everybody else. The American people are waking up to this fact after the Republicans have made a shambles out of the economy through deregulation and hyper-capitalism, capitalism on steroids. Globalization stands for the export of good jobs and the import of cheap goods, in short selling our collective souls for a mess of pottage. Import and export have been features of every economy and nation for hundreds of years, but there is a way to do it intelligently, a way that benefits the middle class, and a way that only benefits large corporations which is the situation we find ourselves in today.

Jimmy Carter wanted to make us energy independent from foreign oil in the 1970s and installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. Ronald Reagan, when he was elected, promptly took them off. What a different country this might have been if we had had a long succession of Democratic Presidents like Jimmy Carter for a second term, Al Gore and John Kerry. What if we had had a President Bobby Kennedy? Then the hopes, aspirations and values of the 1960s might have become institutionalized instead of the values of reaction. Then instead of the Republican pandering to the middle class while in the act of destroying it, we might have had a build-up of the middle class. Instead of wars based on lies and deceptions, we might have had a reduction in the military-industrial complex and Presidents willing to tell the truth to the American people. The American people thought they were electing Presidents they could sit down and have a beer with. Instead they were electing Presidents who were drinking champagne with their corporate buddies while conspiring to raise the price of beer for everyone else.

Republicans have been successful in selling themselves to voters whose economic interests they don't really represent by introducing wedge issues such as guns, homosexuality and abortion. There are people out there, in fact a lot of them, who will evidently vote against their own economic interests if a party will only pander to their non-economic values. This is really dumb. However, by selling a philosophy based on independence and freedom, traditional American values, Americans have come to really want to live in a way that exemplifies those values and this has come back to bite the Republicans in the ass. Americans don't want a semblance of those values; they want to really live those values, and this undermines the traditional employer-employee relationship which depends on sucking up to the boss. You are only independent when you can tell your boss to go to hell and not lose your health care. The Republicans, starting with the Reagan Revolution, have been successful in beating back the middle class which was riding high in the 1950s and produced the cultural revolution of the 1960s. However, the tide has turned once again and the Democratic party, hopefully, will be as aggressive in pursuing their agenda once they have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress again as the Republicans were in pursuing their agenda for the last 30 or so years. So it's up to the Democrats once again in power not to wimp out, not to sell their souls to the corporations the way the Republicans have and to pursue the real interests of the middle class which are to reduce the military-industrial complex to a reasonable size and pursue the economic agenda of the middle class which is to create good-paying, non-military jobs, rebuild the infrastructure of America, end dependence on oil (foreign or otherwise), and extend the social safety net to all citizens, workers or not.

The corporations need to be put in their place. If they want to leave the country in order to escape taxation and oversight like Halliburton left and set up shop in Dubai, I say let them! Other corporations will spring up. Corporations who don't want to pay taxes shouldn't have the privilege of selling into the American market. Corporations shouldn't be rewarded for setting up shop overseas, using their cheap labor and then importing the finished goods back into the US to compete with products manufactured here. There is no way American labor can compete except by agreeing to lower their own standard of living and reduce their employer granted benefits. This process will turn the US into a two tier society: on the one hand you'll have the 1% of the rich who will own everything and on the other you'll have the debtor class which will be beholden to the rich in perpetuity, and the Republican plan is to use Orwellian tactics to promote this scenario. They will be successful as long as the vast majority of Americans lets themselves be swayed by advertising to vote against their own economic interests and to be sucked into a culture of perpetual war and occupation. The situation in Iraq is stark. The Republicans, obviously, want to occupy that country in perpetuity. Why else are they building dozens of enormous military bases? Barack Obama wants to get out of that country altogether.  It's a stark choice, but both sides have to use euphemisms to sell their point of view. The Republican point of view, however, is becoming increasingly threadbare. How else do you explain al-Maliki asking us to leave and Bush saying in effect, "Oh no, you need our protection a little longer." They're saying get the hell out, and we're saying we can't do that, you need our protection. The emperor is naked and people are starting to see that. People aren't so dumb that they can't see right through (finally) the fact that the emperor has no clothes. Platitudes are no longer acceptable as a rationale, and euphemisms no longer cloak the deception. A trillion dollars of American tax payers' money has been flushed down the toilet in Iraq in order to assuage the Bush Administration's ego and protect the American way of life for ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum. They've been rewarded with no-bid contracts to pump Iraq's oil. The American people are no better off in terms of gas prices, and they never will be until they empower themselves and generate their own energy via solar panels on their own rooftops. Americans are in a position to take back their power (literally) from the corporations, but to do this they have to wake up and change their way of life.

US Government to Rich: We're Here for You. US Government to Poor: Fend for Yourselves

When the government bails out large financial institutions by providing hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars, conservatives don't have a problem with that. But if government dare raise their taxes to help poor people, well, all of a sudden, that's "immoral" and "stealing." Why the government is taking money out of their pocket to give to someone else, the very definition of immorality! What morality are they talking about? The morality of Ayn Rand, that great conservative philosopher, who was an atheist?

Ayn Rand was one of the best known atheists of the twentieth century. Unlike many non-believers who find much to commend about religion, Rand’s evaluation was almost entirely negative. In this respect she was ahead of her time and has more in common with today’s “new atheists” such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins.

So conservatives are basing their morality of not helping people by virtue of their tax dollars on the morality of an atheist. Hmmm. The morality of most great religious traditions, especially Christianity, involves taking from the rich and giving to the poor, which is what governments who promote income equality are trying to do. Income inequality in the US has gotten so far out of hand that CEOs, on average, make 400 times the salary of average workers. But when it comes to bailing out large financial institutions, no amount of taxpayer money is too large. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about to fail? Well here, let's give them some more money. That's not immoral. Helping average people put food on their table or gas in their cars! We can't do that. That's immoral. What a twisted view of morality!

The over financialization of the US and global economic system is what's causing all the problems. It's a system built on debt. What does it say in the Bible about a house built on a rock versus one built on sand? The US - and now the global economy - is built on quicksand. But the government steadfastly refuses to alleviate the real human misery of desperate people who live in misery on a daily basis - not only people losing their homes to foreclosure, but people who didn't even have homes in the first place: the homeless. Government keeps adding to tax payer liabilities by bailing out billionaires - socialism for the rich - while promising to lower your taxes. Raise tax payer liabilities but promise to lower taxes. What's wrong with this picture? Meanwhile, European societies take care of their people while evening out income inequality by essentially transfering money from rich to poor. They provide universal health care, free education, maternal leave, paternal leave and more so that everyone - not just the rich - has a good standard of living. The rising tide raises all boats, not just those of the rich. In the US money talks and shit walks. With the top 10% making 50% of the money, unless tax policy is used to equalize incomes, a de facto aristocracy is being created that will be perpetuated for generations.

The concept of work in exchange for money, with no government intervention to equalize income, has reached a limit. It used to be that economists said that, as long as productivity was increasing, workers' wages should increase due to the increased productivity. But productivity today comes about more from automation and robotization - i.e. from capital - than from workers working harder or more proficiently. There's no connection between productivity and worker pay, and the connection was always tenuous at best. And there's less work that needs to be done because machines are doing most of it. The only work left is the servile, dirty work that can't be automated, work in the financial sector that amounts to squeezing more money out of debtors and sales work because, with a glut of goods on the market, selling them, getting rid of them, takes on an ever more urgent importance.

As long as profits are good, don't touch my money with taxes. But when I lose my shirt, I want a government bail-out. Socialize the losses, privatize the profits. Such a world is insane, and has lost all connection with any meaningful morality. Europe takes care of its people but still has its share of billionaires. So a society can't provide for its people and still produce billionaires? Give me a break. Look at IKEA. Its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, drives a 15 year old Volvo and buys his furniture from IKEA which he assembles himself. He started from scratch in 1965 and now he's the world's seventh richest person with a fortune of $32 billion.

In his faded coat, tinted prescription glasses and scuffed shoes, he looks like just another pensioner scraping by on a tight budget. But the man pictured here is Ingvar Kamprad, the reclusive Swedish founder of Ikea. And he is worth £15.7billion. That makes him the world's seventh richest man, but the 81-year-old admits he is still "a bit tight" with money. He takes easyJet flights, drives himself around in a 15-year-old Volvo, and has furnished his modest house almost entirely with Ikea items - which he assembled himself. He boasted that he fired his barber of many years' standing after finding another who would cut his hair for only £6. And when he arrived at a gala evening recently to collect a businessman of the year award, the security guards refused to let him in because they saw him getting off a bus when he arrived. ... His eagerness to save money extends to his visits to London, when he shuns taxis and prefers to use the Tube or buses. ... He now lives in semi-retirement with his wife Margaretha in a villa in Switzerland. The couple are often seen dining out in cheap restaurants and haggling over prices in the market. He always does his food shopping in the afternoon, when the prices in his local market start to fall. Recently, a statue of him was erected in his Swedish home town, and he was invited to cut the ribbon. It was reported that instead he untied it, folded it neatly and handed it to the mayor, telling him he could now use it again. Explaining his frugal nature, he said: "I am a bit tight with money, a sort of Swedish Scotsman. But so what? "If I start to acquire luxurious things then this will only incite others to follow suit. It's important that leaders set an example. "I look at the money I'm about to spend on myself and ask if Ikea's customers could afford it. From time to time I like to buy a nice shirt and cravat - and eat Swedish fish roe."

And he did it in a society which provides free health care for all its citizens, free education - total social security! Its a myth that only in the US can someone start with nothing and become a billionaire and, in order to protect everyone's right to do this, in order to have freedom, we can't provide a high level of social welfare for all people because this would lead to dependency and no one would want to get ahead. They would just live off the government teat. Well go tell that to Ingvar Kamprad who grew up in a coddled welfare state and still went on to become a billionaire even with the enormous amount of taxes he had to pay there. And, furthermore, he represents an example that people with enormous wealth can still live simply, that happiness doesn't come from conspicuous consumption.

With all the natural disasters that are being produced thanks to global warming, not to mention wars of our own creation, millions of people are displaced persons. The homeless are displaced persons too. In fact being a displaced person and being homeless are synonomous. These people can't survive without the charity of other more fortunate people. But don't raise a conservative's taxes to help these poor displaced persons because that would be immoral. It's much more moral to let them fend for themselves. A billion of the world's population live in abject poverty. Their job prospects are slim to none. Either governments just give these people a basic standard of living or their lives are going to be miserable not because they're not willing to work but because there's no work for them. In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis details the plight of the one billion earth inhabitants living in abject poverty. It's not because of lack of goods and services. It's because of lack of distribution of them, lack of jobs and concentration of wealth in the hands of a relatively few people. For this growing population sector, a depression is not a looming possibility but a present reality.

And don't forget: in a democracy such as the US, you are 1/300 millionth of the government. If your morality is to help people in need, that will determine how you vote, how you want your tax dollars to be used. If you want them to be used for war, if you want them used to bail out the rich or if you want them to be used to guarantee all people a basically decent standard of living and true social security in the broadest sense, that will determine your vote, that will determine your voice. The followers of Ayn Rand don't want their tax dollars to be used to help people but don't mind them being used for war and to help the rich. That's their morality. But Jesus said "inasmuch as you've helped the least of these my brethren, it's as if you've done it unto me." Did he qualify that by saying "the deserving poor"? Heck, no. Jesus based his morality on the fact that each individual whether individually or collectively (and that means via government) had a responsibility to help the poorest of the poor, the least of these, and that doesn't only mean private acts of charity but collective acts as well. Only government can guarantee comprehensive welfare for all people. Private acts of charity, though admirable, can by their very nature only be piecemeal. That's why a moral government is under an even greater mandate to set a minimum guaranteed basic standard of living for all people. Most people will be able to attain it without government's help, but government should be there to help those who are unable to make it on their own. Private charity can indeed be a valuable contributor and can even be included as a sub-contractor of charity, if you will. But government needs to oversee and regulate the whole process so that no one "slips through the cracks," something that's easy to do when charity is piecemeal. Redistribution of wealth needs to be a stated goal of government, nothing to be ashamed about, but a morally desirable end. And government's role in a sane society really is to provide insurance, not to encourage dependency. In fact it is just the opposite: to give people the tools they need to be independent, but to provide them with the help they need if they falter. Actually this encourages risk-taking and entrepreneurship since people will know there is a safety net. Just ask Ingvar Kamprad!

And as for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, those quasi-private, quasi-public corporations, I can see opening the discount window to keep them afloat, but why is the government offering to buy their stock? Buying their stock doesn't infuse capital; it's just a trade among investors. It only raises the stock price. In other words it bails out investors since the stock price has nothing to do with their underlying operations. Hmmm. You don't suppose it has anything to do with their outrageous CEO salaries, do you? Oh yeah, I get it. All those executive stock options would expire worthless if the stock value tanked. We can't have that! The government needs to step up to the plate and see to it that those stock values stay up!

Last year, for example, the Chair of Freddie Mac took home a cool $18,289,575.
Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd reaped a 7 percent rise in pay to $13.4 million in 2007 while the company lost $21 billion and its share [price] fell 33%. Nice work if you can get it.

As Ronald Reagan said, "The 9 most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" That is unless you're a wealthy CEO or investor. Then those 9 words are the most cherished in the English language.

And lest we forget, the architects of this Reagan revolution were Phil Gramm, John McCain's economic adviser, and his lovely wife, Wendy.

Hows about some “tough love” for those bankers suddenly in trouble? You know, the sink-or-swim approach of “welfare reform” that Gramm and Clinton applied to poor people to end their addiction to government handouts. Or, perhaps a heavy dose of “faith-based” personal responsibility initiatives to get those knaves who messed up our entire housing market back on the straight and narrow. Sounds ridiculous I know, because nothing but the bleeding-heart, big-government, throw-money-at-the-problem approach will do when it comes to salvaging corrupt corporations. That is the real legacy of what has been ballyhooed as the “Reagan Revolution,” which Clinton went along with, but which found its full flowering in the administration of George W. Bush. The bookends of the Bush years are the Enron debacle and the federal bailout of bankers drunk on their own greed. And no two people in this country are more responsible for enabling this sordid behavior than the power couple Phil and Wendy Gramm. Enron, lest we forget, was their baby. Then-Sen. Gramm sponsored the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which allowed Enron’s scamming to happen. As Ken Lay, who was chair of Gramm’s election finance committee, put it quite candidly when asked for the secret of Enron’s success, “basically, we are entering or in markets that are deregulating or have recently deregulated.” Part of that deregulation involved rulings of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, then chaired by Wendy Gramm, who upon retiring from that post became a highly compensated member of the Enron board of directors, serving for eight years. She even was on the board’s audit committee during the time of the corporation’s despicable financial shenanigans. While on the Enron board, Wendy Gramm also chaired an anti-regulatory think tank that received funding from Enron and other corporations that benefited directly from the policies her institute espoused.

How US Government Screws Senior Citizen Social Security Recipients

By fiddling with statistics, the US Government is able to come up with any figures it wants to, and, of course, it wants to come up with the figures that make it look good. Therefore, unemployment rates and inflation are doctored to make them lower than they actually are. GDP is doctored to make it seem larger than it actually is. The pernicious part is that seniors count on their cost of living adjustments (COLAs) which are pegged to the inflation rate to help them keep their heads above water. By understating the inflation rate seniors have been cheated out of their COLAs to the tune of 70% of their entire check by some estimates.

And, of course, the Bush Administration does not have to admit that we're in a recession by understating the inflation rate at 2% whereas by assuming the inflation rate is 5% (which is more in tune with reality), we would definitely be in a recession. So a recession - like beauty - is in the eyes of the beholder and the government technocrats who lie with statistics have a different definition of beauty than you or I do. Why does understating the inflation rate get the government out of a recession? Because when you adjust for inflation, it lowers the GDP to the point that we've had negative growth for two straight quarters and - bingo - that's the "definition" of a recession. Of course, you could define it in a different way...

Kevin Phillips has done an excellent job in running down the inflation boondoggle:

Billionaire California bond manager Bill Gross calls it "a haute con job." Bloomberg News columnist John Wasik describes it as "a testament to the art of economic spin." More and more shoppers and consumers simply disbelieve it. The subject of this scorn is the federal government's vaunted Consumer Price Index or CPI. Americans are now beginning to understand that this indicator has its own share of gimmicks not unlike a sub-prime mortgage or the six pages of fine print that accompanies your credit card agreement. Some of these CPI ingredients -- product substitution weightings, "hedonics" (price reductions for added product quality or satisfaction), and use of owner's equivalent rent (instead of home ownership costs) -- have a comic aspect suitable to mockery by Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart. But in a larger sense, they're not remotely funny. That's because the federal minimalization and misrepresentation of inflation, pursued statistically over the last 25 years, has been the main buttress of Washington's over-favorable and self-serving portraiture of the U.S. economy.

Understating the inflation rate has meant that the government has limited payouts to seniors whose social security COLAs are linked to the CPI. It also means that wage contracts tied to the CPI have saved corporations tons of money while underpaying workers. According to Phillips some $250 billion a year could be involved. Understating inflation also means that savers get a lower rate of return on their savings accounts while banks get to borrow money more cheaply.

Now anyone who has purchased gas or food recently - isn't that all of us ... hello! - knows that the price of these commodities has skyrocketed. Although the price of housing has deflated recently, anyone who bought a house say in the years from 2000 to 2006 knows that the cost of buying a house increased tremendously during those years. Yet neither housing costs nor food nor gas has been included in the CPI by the government.

Oil is up over 80 percent in the last twelve months. The New York Times' consumer reporter, W.P. Dunleavy, wrote on May 3 that his own groceries now cost $587 a month, up from $400 a year earlier. That's a 40 percent increase. Reports in the financial press make frequent reference to foreign investors who distrust the U.S. dollar because they calculate true U.S. inflation at 6% to 9% including food and energy. California economist John Williams, who runs an organization called Shadow Statistics, contends that if Washington still used the CPI measurements applied back in the 1970s, inflation would be in the 10 percent range. My own analysis, set out in much more detail in an article in the May issue of Harper's, comports with that of the cynical foreign investors. Therein lies the danger. If the current inflation rate is really 6-9 percent instead of the 2-3 percent claimed by government and most U.S. money managers, then Washington's official estimates that the economy still grew at a rate of some 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008 become nonsense. Subtracting a 6-9 percent inflation rate from nominal GDP growth would identify an economy that was deteriorating and shrinking, not growing. Concerned foreign dollar-holders would become even more concerned.

The deception started in the Kennedy Administration where the jobless statistics started taking a toll on the "Camelot" image. What to do to get the jobless rate down? Well, how about this? Stop counting "discouaged workers" or those who had "dropped out of the labor force" or "those who were not actively looking for work." I suppose all those had also decided to drop out of the eating and drinking force as well. Lyndon Johnson continued the deception by combining the social security budget with the general budget in the "unified budget". This masked the budget deficit. 

Now Richard Nixon topped them all by defining inflation downward and excluding food and energy costs from the CPI because they were too "volatile". In this way he arrived at "core inflation." What? Excluding the most essential aspects of economic life in order not to be embarrassed by the inflation rate? Yes, this is what Nixon actually did. Consequently, why should any American believe what the government tells them about inflation, recession, unemployment etc.? And why shouldn't social security recipients demand back payments on all the money they've been cheated out of by the government's redefining of statistics? Oh, and don't forget all that economic activity the government talks about is largely confined to the top 1% of income earners while the vast majority see their economic situation deteriorate.

In 1983, under the Reagan Administration, inflation was further finagled when the Bureau of Labor Statistics decided that housing, too, was overstating the Consumer Price Index; the BLS substituted an entirely different "Owner Equivalent Rent" measurement, based on what a homeowner might get for renting his or her house. This methodology, controversial at the time but still in place today, simply sidestepped what was happening in the real world of homeowner costs. Because low inflation encourages low interest rates, which in turn make it much easier to borrow money, the BLS's decision no doubt encouraged, during the late 1980s, the large and often speculative expansion in private debt—much of which involved real estate, and some of which went spectacularly bad between 1989 and 1992 in the savings-and-loan, real estate, and junk-bond scandals. Also, on the unemployment front, as Austan Goolsbee pointed out in his New York Times op-ed, the Reagan Administration further trimmed the number by reclassifying members of the military as "employed" instead of outside the labor force. The distortional inclinations of the next president, George H.W. Bush, came into focus in 1990, when Michael Boskin, the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, proposed to reorient U.S. economic statistics principally to reduce the measured rate of inflation. His stated grand ambition was to move the calculus away from old industrial-era methodologies toward the emerging services economy and the expanding retail and financial sectors. Skeptics, however, countered that the underlying goal, driven by worry over federal budget deficits, was to reduce the inflation rate in order to reduce federal payments—from interest on the national debt to cost-of-living outlays for government employees, retirees, and Social Security recipients. ... Nothing, however, can match the tortured evolution of the third key number, the somewhat misnamed Consumer Price Index. Government economists themselves admit that the revisions during the Clinton years worked to reduce the current inflation figures by more than a percentage point, but the overall distortion has been considerably more severe. Just the 1983 manipulation, which substituted "owner equivalent rent" for home-ownership costs, served to understate or reduce inflation during the recent housing boom by 3 to 4 percentage points. Moreover, since the 1990s, the CPI has been subjected to three other adjustments, all downward and all dubious: product substitution (if flank steak gets too expensive, people are assumed to shift to hamburger, but nobody is assumed to move up to filet mignon), geometric weighting (goods and services in which costs are rising most rapidly get a lower weighting for a presumed reduction in consumption), and, most bizarrely, hedonic adjustment, an unusual computation by which additional quality is attributed to a product or service. The hedonic adjustment, in particular, is as hard to estimate as it is to take seriously. (That it was launched during the tenure of the Oval Office's preeminent hedonist, William Jefferson Clinton, only adds to the absurdity.) No small part of the condemnation must lie in the timing. If quality improvements are to be counted, that count should have begun in the 1950s and 1960s, when such products and services as air-conditioning, air travel, and automatic transmissions—and these are just the A's!—improved consumer satisfaction to a comparable or greater degree than have more recent innovations. That the change was made only in the late Nineties shrieks of politics and opportunism, not integrity of measurement. Most of the time, hedonic adjustment is used to reduce the effective cost of goods, which in turn reduces the stated rate of inflation. Reversing the theory, however, the declining quality of goods or services should adjust effective prices and thereby add to inflation, but that side of the equation generally goes missing. "All in all," Williams points out, "if you were to peel back changes that were made in the CPI going back to the Carter years, you'd see that the CPI would now be 3.5 percent to 4 percent higher"—meaning that, because of lost CPI increases, Social Security checks would be 70 percent greater than they currently are. Furthermore, when discussing price pressure, government officials invariably bring up "core" inflation, which excludes precisely the two categories—food and energy—now verging on another 1970s-style price surge. This year we have already seen major U.S. food and grocery companies, among them Kellogg and Kraft, report sharp declines in earnings caused by rising grain and dairy prices. Central banks from Europe to Japan worry that the biggest inflation jumps in ten to fifteen years could get in the way of reducing interest rates to cope with weakening economies. Even the U.S. Labor Department acknowledged that in January, the price of imported goods had increased 13.7 percent compared with a year earlier, the biggest surge since record-keeping began in 1982. From Maine to Australia, from Alaska to the Middle East, a hydra-headed inflation is on the loose, unleashed by the many years of rapid growth in the supply of money from the world's central banks (not least the U.S. Federal Reserve), as well as by massive public and private debt creation.

70%?!! That means that seniors should be getting almost twice what they're getting now in their monthly checks. And since what seniors need most - food and energy - isn't even counted in the CPI - thanks to Nixon - the statistical deceit is appalling! Core inflation? Schmore inflation! The American public is being deceived - about unemployment, economic growth, inflation - you name it. The government's incentive is to misrepresent all these indices because it puts them in a more favorable light and it masks the economic distortions going on in this economy, the massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich and the increasing economic inequality. Economic activity looks good because most of it takes place among the very wealthy. Exclude the top 1% of income earners and the picture for the rest of the population looks dismal.

The real numbers, to most economically minded Americans, would be a face full of cold water. Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today's U.S. unemployment rate is somewhere between 9 percent and 12 percent; the inflation rate is as high as 7 or even 10 percent; economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a huge surge in the wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession. If what we have been sold in recent years has been delusional "Pollyanna Creep," what we really need today is a picture of our economy ex-distortion. For what it would reveal is a nation in deep difficulty not just domestically but globally. Undermeasurement of inflation, in particular, hangs over our heads like a guillotine. To acknowledge it would send interest rates climbing, and thereby would endanger the viability of the massive buildup of public and private debt (from less than $11 trillion in 1987 to $49 trillion last year) that props up the American economy. Moreover, the rising cost of pensions, benefits, borrowing, and interest payments—all indexed or related to inflation—could join with the cost of financial bailouts to overwhelm the federal budget. As inflation and interest rates have been kept artificially suppressed, the United States has been indentured to its volatile financial sector, with its predilection for leverage and risky buccaneering. Arguably, the unraveling has already begun. As Robert Hardaway, a professor at the University of Denver, pointed out last September, the subprime lending crisis "can be directly traced back to the [1983] BLS decision to exclude the price of housing from the CPI. . .With the illusion of low inflation inducing lenders to offer 6 percent loans, not only has speculation run rampant on the expectations of ever-rising home prices, but home buyers by the millions have been tricked into buying homes even though they only qualified for the teaser rates." Were mainstream interest rates to jump into the 7 to 9 percent range—which could happen if inflation were to spur new concern—both Washington and Wall Street would be walking in quicksand. The make-believe economy of the past two decades, with its asset bubbles, massive borrowing, and rampant data distortion, would be in serious jeopardy. The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope.

And then, as long as we're talking about social security, there is the little issue of funding it. I have blogged previously about the unfairness of capping social security contributions at around $100,000, annual income, when CEOs and hedge fund managers are making $100 million and more per year. These annual incomes are far in excess of anything remotely resembling what a person needs to live on. And then they charge self-employed people 15% of their earned income for their social  security contribution even if the person is receiving social security and still working because they can't live on what they're getting in social security. Of course, the rich have to make absolutely no social security contributions on their unearned income - income from rents, interest and dividends. And then there's the little issue of rich people who have sky high retirement incomes still receiving social security.  It's insane. They don't need it. It should be means tested. All in all the whole program from start to finish which ever end you want to look at is a total botch job, thanks to the Republicans whose goal is to eliminate it altogether.

Amid World Food Shortages, Texas Rice Farmers Paid Not to Farm

While millions are starving throughout the world because of a lack of rice, the US Government is paying subsidies to Texas rice farmers whether they plant and harvest rice or not just so long as rice had been planted there some time in the past. Some of this land has even been developed as "cowboy starter kits," divided into tracts and sold to people who build on one acre and collect farm subsidies on the remaining acreage. Tenant farmers have been put out of business by landlords who raise their rents in order to "capture" the farm subsidy as by law it has to go to whoever actually farms the land, in this case the tenant.

In an article, "Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm," the Washington Post reports:

Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years. Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice. Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post. Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709. ... In 1981, the Texas rice belt extended over about 600,000 acres. By last year, USDA records show, the amount of planted rice had shrunk to 202,000 acres, partly because landowners were able to get farm payments even if no rice was grown on their land. In fact, so many landowners and farmers are collecting money on their former ricelands -- $37 million last year alone -- that the acres no longer used for rice outnumber the planted ones.

Not only that but wealthy landowners can get property tax reductions on that portion of their land considered "agricultural" even though they have no intention of growing anything on it. In addition they can get "emergency disaster relief" even though they have not suffered a disaster.

On a clear, cold morning in February 2003, Nico de Boer heard what sounded like a clap of thunder and stepped outside his hillside home for a look. High above the tree line, the 40-year-old dairy farmer saw a trail of smoke curling across the sky -- all that remained of the space shuttle Columbia. Weeks later, de Boer was startled to learn that he was one of hundreds of East Texas ranchers entitled to up to $40,000 in disaster compensation from the federal government, even though the nearest debris landed 10 to 20 miles from his cattle. The money came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the Livestock Compensation Program, originally intended as a limited helping hand for dairy farmers and ranchers hurt by drought. Hurriedly drafted by the Bush administration in 2002 and expanded by Congress the following year, the relief plan rapidly became an expensive part of the government's sprawling system of entitlements for farmers, which topped $25 billion last year. In all, the Livestock Compensation Program cost taxpayers $1.2 billion during its two years of existence, 2002 and 2003. Of that, $635 million went to ranchers and dairy farmers in areas where there was moderate drought or none at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post. None of the ranchers were required to prove they suffered an actual loss. The government simply sent each of them a check based on the number of cattle they owned. ... Then, on Feb. 1, 2003, the shuttle exploded. To ensure recovery of the debris and pay for emergency costs, President Bush issued a federal disaster declaration. As an unintended result, most of East Texas was then eligible for livestock funds. Denton County's livestock owners collected $433,000, records show. "Speaking personally, I didn't think it was necessary at that point in time," said Calvin Peterson, an 81-year-old rancher who heads the local farm committee. "It might have been more political than anything." In Henderson County, about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, Nico de Boer felt the same way. When he arrived from the Netherlands 17 years ago, de Boer had 90 acres, a house, one barn and fewer than 200 cows. Today, he has 1,000 acres, multiple cow barns and sheds, 650 cows that produce 3 million pounds of milk monthly, a BMW in the driveway, a swimming pool, and two more farms in neighboring counties. The rolling hills surrounding his sprawling farm receive a generous average of 40 inches of rain annually. When the shuttle exploded, pastures were full and there hadn't been a drought or any other type of weather disaster in years, records show. But after the presidential disaster declaration, John Reeves of the local USDA office informed livestock owners in Henderson County they were eligible. They eventually collected $751,083 despite no shuttle damage. Reeves said he had no choice but to write the checks. "Congress passed legislation and approved us for that Livestock Compensation Program, and that's what it was," he said. "The closest debris I heard about was 10 to 20 miles away. There wasn't anything here," de Boer said. "Believe me, we would be better off if the government got out of the business and limited the payments to those who really need them."

Politicians in Washington have no respect for the taxpayers' money. It's all about getting special financial favors for constituents in their districts. There's no account- ability and very little transparency. Boondoggles such as this are rarely reported in the mainstream media. In addition to pissing away money to farmers or those who don't even farm under the aegis of a farm subsidy bill, they pour billions down the rathole of the war in Iraq and additional billions supporting the military-industrial complex to build boats the military doesn't even want. America surely is a nation in decline. The Republicans have set out to destroy government, and they have largely succeeded, destroying the American empire in the process. Meanwhile, Congress has come up with an even more costly farm subsidy bill.

Why We Need a Fighter, Not a Uniter

It looks like the long, drawn-out Democratic Presidential primary season will be over tomorrow after the superdelegates weigh in. Obama's quest to be a "uniter not a divider" is nieve at best since he could have all the people united behind him and still not sway the Republicans in the Senate who will filibuster every piece of Democratic legislation unless the Democrats have at least 60 seats in the Senate which seems unlikely. He will never unite the Republican Senators with the Democrats, and, despite having united "the people," it will all be for nought. That's why we need a fighter not a uniter, and Hillary is much more suited to that job. Task number one on day one of a new Presidency should be taking the Republicans head-on over the filibuster rules that allow them to filibuster just by threatening to do so. They don't have to give long-winded speeches to all hours of the night; they just have to say "we're going to filibuster" and whatever legislation is before that august body will be taken off the table and thrown in the circular file. That legislation is dead just on the Senate Republicans' say-so.

Obama's quest to be a uniter is a pipe-dream; it's pie in the sky. He doesn't know what determined fellows these Republicans are. They are fueled by the money heaped on them by wealthy interests represented by tons of lobbyists all pushing the agenda of the wealthy. A Democratic House and Senate combined with a Democratic President might actually get something done. But it would be necessary to have a filibuster-proof Senate. Otherwise, the Republicans will sit there and filibuster every piece of legislation not favored by the lobbyists to death. This is the fight the next (Democratic) President needs to take on right out of the starting gate. Otherwise, his or her Presidency will be for nought. I think Hillary (hopefully) understands this. Obama doesn't seem to have a clue. Sure he hasn't taken any PAC money himself. So what? How does this change the legislative proclivities of the Senate?

Bill Clinton was put in this same position because he faced a Republican Congress. It's now apparent that the Republicans can accomplish their ends even with a Democratic Congress by means of the filibuster rules. They told Bill Clinton "Either you cooperate with us (triangulate) or you'll accomplish nothing. You'll be a do-nothing President." They'll tell Obama the same thing, and he'll be pressured into triangulating. However, history has shown that it didn't work all that well for the first Clinton. He signed tons of Republican inspired legislation including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act which led directly to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Hopefully, President Hillary wouldn't let the same thing happen to her as happened to her husband. Anyway I'd bet she'd be more successful, having been around the block once, at taking on the Republicans than Obama would be.

The first step is using the nuclear option on the filibuster rules - obliteration of the filibuster - which the Republicans have perverted from its original purpose in order to serve their interests. And there are enough self-serving Democrats in the pockets of lobbyists that a Democratic President cannot even count on all of them. The Democratic Congress elected in 2006 has largely failed in its efforts because of its refusal to take on the Republicans over this issue. That makes it even more critical to take on the filibuster in 2009 and destroy it. The revolving door facilitates politicians who pander to lobbyists obtaining lucrative jobs with the corporations whose interests they represent once they leave "public service" if you want to call it that. For them though it's "special interest service." Their whole intention is to make a killing once they leave the government.

So, in conclusion, the stronger candidate in my opinion is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both she and Obama want to do the right things for the US. The question is who has the better prospects for actually being successful at it. And who is willing on Day 1 to be a fighter, trim the Republicans' wings and put them in their place. There is a lot of money in Washington almost all of which is betting that neither Obama or Hillary will be able to do so.

The US and Iraq: Locked in an Embrace Gnawing on Each Other's Heads in the 9th Circle of Hell

Dante wrote one of the allegorical classics of western literature: The Inferno, meant to be a description of Hell. In the 9th (and lowest) circle of hell he placed Count Ugolino of Pisa and Archbishop Ruggieri, both  men frozen in ice up to their necks with Ugolino gnawing on Ruggieri's head for all eternity. This is an apt metaphor for the US in Iraq: the US is frozen in the 9th circle of hell with Iraq gnawing on its head for all eternity. The US can never get away from Iraq because the logic for staying is always circular. If we're winning, we have to stay until the job's finished which it never will be, and, if we're losing, we have to stay until we win which we never will.

Stuck in hell gnawing on each other's heads - the US and Iraq will continue their dance of death until China decides to take away the baby bottle of finance and the whole enterprise collapses of its own weight bringing down the whole economy with it and turning US taxpayers into perpetual slaves as interest and debt are forever. The kind of violence that goes on in Iraq can continue to pop up on and on so there will never be an end game, there will never be a definition of winning, there will be nothing but interminable, intermittent violence leading to more and more death and destruction and pissing money down hell's rathole. And al Quaida is getting exactly what it wants - bleeding the US to death. The US, responsible for a million Iraqi deaths - mostly civilians - is not capable of liberating the people it's killing - only killing the unliberated. It's created 2 million refugees and displaced persons, people who cannot lead any kind of normal life and are condemned to a hellish existence despite their innocence.

Colin Powell's Pottery Barn metaphor for Iraq is not apt. We broke it but we can't  fix it so either we wash our bloody hands and admit our guilt for creating this chaos or we stay frozen in a deathly embrace gnawing on Iraq's head in perpetuity. This is a worse result than admitting that all the lives spent, all the money spent, was not only in vain but was res- ponsible for the des- truction of a nation and a people, reducing a some- what civilized society to a trash heap, a Humpty Dumpty that can't be put back together again. In fact the only hope for its ever being put back together is for the US to get out and let the chips fall where they may because the US prescence there is only making matters worse.

Whatever "improvement" there is in the situation there has come about because the US has bought off some of the fighters. Frantically trying to find every fighter to pay off is a fool's mission, but it's clear the only Iraqis who want the US there are those who have their hands in the US' pockets. The Iraqi government is corrupt; it's being paid off so it wants the US to maintain its prescence there so it can continue to get paid off. This is part and parcel of the gnawing on our neck which will go on until the US cuts the umbilical cord and leaves with past blood but not future blood on its hands - where the line of demarcation between past and future is the point at which the US leaves. Abandon all hope ye who enter here should have been the US' slogan for war in Iraq.

Christian Conservative, an Oxymoron?

Would Jesus be a Christian conservative? I don't think so. They stand for everything he didn't. For instance, Jesus was against capital accumulation, the private pursuit of wealth and for helping people less fortunate. What do Christian conservatives stand for: capital accumulation and not paying taxes which might help somebody less fortunate. Christianity has become a perversion of what Jesus stood for and proclaimed: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Basically, Christianity has come around to serving the needs of its constituents which are basically selfish. (So what else is new?) And their selfish interests have to do with getting their souls into heaven in the least onerous way. Helping others materially and paying taxes to support government programs which help the less fortunate is onerous. Tithing to the church and adopting a certain mindset of correct beliefs (allowing yourself to  be brainwashed) is less onerous. It doesn't require any physical exertion. Tithing is simply life-after-death insurance which corresponds to life insurance. The prudent person wants both.

Christianity in the US, especially modern day evangelicals, places all the emphasis on having a correct belief system. Any time believing a certain way is important, in my opinion, you're dealing with brainwashing. And if it's so important that, unless you have the correct beliefs, you're going to hell, the stakes are raised considerably and the brainwashing is commensurably increased. The Soviet Union used to brainwash its constituents politically. In the US that function has been off-loaded to conservative pastors who provide religious and political brainwashing, the political component of which dictates that government should lower taxes and eliminate social programs to help the poor. Even the pastors, including the Grassley six, advocate the private pursuit of wealth and capital accumulation as evidenced by their own conspicuous consumption and extravagant lifestyles. Jesus told the rich man: "Sell what you have, give it to the poor and come and follow me." (Oh, and, by the way, I live an impoverished lifestyle. Get used to it!) Modern day evangelicals preach a "prosperity doctrine" which teaches that private wealth is a sign of God's approval. It's a nice theory but it is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. Nor is it original. Max Weber in 1904 pointed out in "The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism" how Protestantism made Christianity more amenable to the private pursuit of wealth.

PHOENIX, Nov. 14 /Christian Newswire/ -- The head of a financial accountability group for Christian nonprofits says that the Senate Finance Committee is likely to be looking at three areas of operation of "the Grassley Six," as he calls them, major ministries headed by Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Eddie Long, Joyce Meyer and Randy and Paula White. Ken Behr, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, told Church Executive, a business magazine for larger and mega churches, that Senator Chuck Grassley is likely to probe into concerns over excessive compensation, income unrelated to the business purpose of the ministries, and perks or what is known as "excessive benefit transactions."

In a statement, Grassley said he was acting on complaints from the public and news coverage of the organizations. "The allegations involve governing boards that aren't independent and allow generous salaries and housing allowances and amenities such as private jets and Rolls-Royces," Grassley said. "I don't want to conclude that there's a problem, but I have an obligation to donors and the taxpayers to find out more. People who donated should have their money spent as intended and in adherence with the tax code."

Creflo Dollar has a Lear Jet, a Gulfstream 3 jet, a Rolls-Royce, a $3 million mansion in Atlanta and a more modest $2.44 million condo overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. These guys and gals have amassed personal fortunes, and their parishioners are stupid enough to keep contributing to them. They live like Wall Street moguls! Why? Didn't they read that part of the Bible where Jesus tells the rich man to give all his money to the poor or that part about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? These people would not necessarily have to live ostentatious and extravagant lifestyles. It is possible to accumulate a lot of money, live a modest lifestyle and use that money to do good works to help the poor and less fortunate. Some rich people even lead an impoverished lifestyle using their money to help others.

Jesus was against the private accumulation of capital: "Consider the birds of the field; they neither sow nor reap, but yet their Heavenly Father provides for them. Lay not up earthly treasure where dust and moth can corrupt, but seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things will be added to you." Jesus' only act of violence was overturning the money changers' tables in the temple. One could gather from this that money and all its manifestions was disgusting to him especially when it was an integral part of religion.

Christianity has had 2000 years to distort and pervert Jesus' teachings. It didn't start with the modern day evangelicals and their wealthy pastors. Renaissance Popes offered indulgences which bilked the faithful into paying money to get their souls or their dead relatives' souls out of purgatory and into heaven. Again life-after-death insurance or pay-to-play to get your soul into heaven much as you would pay a bribe to gain your body safe passage. Clergymen have been proficient for centuries in using the fear card to fleece their flocks. They've been proficient in getting their flocks to contribute to the church (meaning them) in order to enrich themselves while getting the flock to believe they were giving to God and promoting their own prospects for the afterlife. And the fear of death is the ultimate fear of the unknown.

According to Jesus, however, this particular theory is invalid. It's not what you believe that counts; it's not what you give to the church that counts. It's how much you help those who are less fortunate that counts. Suppose God is not really interested in whether you  believe in Him or believe in Jesus or not. What a refreshing breath of fresh air to be relieved of that brainwashing burden! By the way, a lot of religious people and good citizens don't believe in Jesus: Jews, for example.

Suppose that what really counts is how you live your life, especially in terms of whether or not you've helped those less fortunate than yourself. There are many ways to do this to be sure, and supporting a tax policy that redistributes wealth to help the poor and disadvantaged is surely one of them. Government can and should help the poor in a comprehensive manner while private charity is at best a hit or miss, hodge podge proposition. In other words, by its very nature, some people will always be left out. With a comprehensive government program, sufficiently funded and mandated, this should not happen. Everyone that falls into a certain category will be helped unless there's corruption and bribery which is all too common in government, especially in the Bush administration.

Religions other than Christianity don't place the same emphasis on having a correct belief system so they have a lot less of a load, a lot less of a mental burden on their shoulders. In the Pilgrim's Progress, Christian carried this burden on his back which was a metaphor for the mental burden of having to have a correct belief system or in other words to accept the brainwashing aspect of religion. Religions that don't try to indoctrinate their constituents into having correct beliefs place the emphasis elsewhere (like on living a good life), are much less involved in guilt and shame and free their constituents' minds so that they can function in a more creative manner intellectually. Therefore, they are far more likely to make real contributions to human knowledge than are people whose minds are hampered by religious brainwashing. Consider Einstein. Not being a Christian, his mind was free to ponder the universe without having to be afraid he was violating some sacred, correct belief system and that his soul was in in jeopardy. What a refreshing approach to life!

Finally, in Jesus' last teaching, before he was hauled off and crucified, according to Matthew, he told his disciples:

31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' 37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' 40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' 41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' 44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' 45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' 46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Is there any clearer exposition that, according to Jesus, what is really important is not what you believe but how much you help your fellow man especiallly those less fortunate?  This is the coup de grace to all those who have perverted Christianity into a belief system which condones the private acccumulation of capital and ignores or deemphasizes the pursuit of policies which help those in need. Jesus did not distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Being poor was in and of itself, de facto, a good enough reason that they should be helped. So may I suggest that supporting tax policies that redistribute wealth from rich to poor and provide support for people in need is quite a bit less severe than "selling what thou hast and giving it to the poor." Instead of a life-after-death insurance policy which involves tirthing to the church, real Christians should support governmental programs which redistribute wealth and help those in need. 

America's Trillion Dollar War Machine and the Wall Street Bail-Out

It's not mere speculation that the US is a huge war machine that neglects the welfare of its own people. When it comes to war, no expense is spared. When it comes to funding programs to help the American people, any expense is too much. The US government is very poor when it comes to welfare in the broad sense of the word, very rich when it comes to war and occupying the world and bailing out Wall Street. With over 700 military bases abroad, there are more than 3 bases for every country in the world. Meanwhile, veterans are made to beg for their benefits and go homeless in the streets. No government official or Presidential candidate is even talking about homelessness in America which is a major and growing problem especially among the elderly and veterans. In The Three Trillion Dollar War, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes write

The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined. The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War. And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop. Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been deferred, possibly to another generation.

As Fed chairman Bernanke continues to bail out Wall Street and in the process adds hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities to the Federal government and the American taxpayer, the US continues to increase its debts and liabilities. First, Bernanke arranged a deal for JPMorganChase to buy out Bear Stearns for $2 a share. But Bear Stearns shareholders were not happy with that so Bernanke in effect says "OK, then, how about $10 a share?" We can't have unhappy shareholders in a bankrupt company, can we?  We must do  something!

J.P. Morgan and Bear still needed the Fed's acquiescence to reopen negotiations. New York Fed President Timothy F. Geithner, with support from colleagues on the Fed Board of Governors in Washington and top officials at the Treasury Department, used that as leverage to negotiate the new deal.

The key word here is acquiescence. The Fed is acquiescing to everything in order to appease Wall Street investors, taking on even more liability in the new deal. The first deal had the fed assuming $30 billion in Bear Stearns liabilities. The second deal has it assuming everything over $1 billion. How is that a better deal for the American taxpayer? This is all a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the wealthy along with Bernanke's promise of $400 billion of liquidity to Wall Street banks. Now don't you think that the collective minds on Wall Street are going to figure out a way to cash in on all that liability? They will figure out how to work the system so as to manifest that transfer of wealth and cash in on every last dollar of the Fed's guarantees. When you add on the $160 billion stimulus package, you come up with the astonishing figure, depending on how you value the Bear Stearns liability, of around another trillion dollars for  the recent bailouts and stimuli. A few trillion here, a few trillion there ... pretty soon you're talking about real money!

From Robert Reich's blog:

So JP Morgan is raising its offer for Bear Stearns, hmm? Well, it still may be a good deal for old JP, because the worst that can happen is JP loses $1 billion. If losses turn out to be more than $1 billion, the Fed – that is, you and I and every other American taxpayer – will make it up to JP. Who knows what the assets are really worth? They may be worth 80 cents on the dollar, in which case Bear’s stocks are a huge value even at $10 a share (remember, their market price before the panic was around $70 a share). They may be worth 90 cents on the dollar – even better for JP. Or they may eventually (in the long run, when the crisis is over and housing values start trending upward again) be worth far more --- maybe, just maybe, even approaching $70 a share. JP doesn’t know. Bear doesn’t know. The Fed doesn’t know. Everyone is guessing. Bear shareholders are playing a giant game of “chicken.” They’re threatening to go into bankruptcy – that is, liquidate the firm and essentially sell off their assets in an auction – if they don’t get a better deal from JP than the $2 per share JP originally offered.

As part of the new Bear Stearns deal, the Fed's role was also renegotiated. The central bank originally had agreed to put public dollars on the line to guarantee $30 billion of risky mortgages owned by Bear Stearns. In the reworked deal, J.P. Morgan agreed to cover the first $1 billion in losses if the value of those securities falls, with the Fed responsible for any losses beyond that. The main point here is that what Bernanke and the Fed are doing is all guess work. They are in uncharted waters and they are playing by ear. But their main concern is the investors not the homeowners who are in or about to go into foreclosure. If they wanted to protect them, they'd mandate restructuring of their loans. But this would piss off the investors who were counting on the homeowners' mortgages resetting to higher interest rates. In other words the investors were counting on the homeowners getting screwed when they made their investments, and, by golly, it's not fair to change the rules of the game now and make their investments worth less. However, it's OK to bail out huge investment banks.

Wall street has become a huge casino and doesn't serve any positive economic purpose or function. It used to be that they provided venture capital for start-ups and assisted with initial public offerings (IPOs). Now Silicon Valley has their own venture capital firms, and Wall Street just provides ever more fancy investment vehicles for rich investors who are not satisfied with just buying stocks and bonds as in the old days. No, they want to bet that the values of these stocks and bonds will go up or down at some future date. They want to buy insurance against their bets. They want derivatives of derivatives. They want synthetic exposure to the bond market as opposed to real exposure. They want credit default swaps. Who needs all this stuff? Surely, it contributes nothing to GDP. 70% of GDP is consumer spending; the remainder is almost evenly divided between real investment and government spending.

[Investment] is defined as investments by business or households in capital. Examples of investment by a business include construction of a new mine, purchase of software, or purchase of machinery and equipment for a factory. Spending by households on new houses is also included in Investment. In contrast to its colloquial meaning, 'Investment' in GDP does not mean purchases of financial products.

In the $14 trillion American economy, if Wall Street and all its supposedly sophisticated investment vehicles disappeared off the face of the earth, the GDP would not be affected one bit! They are talking about regulating Wall Street banks; why not just outlaw all these fancy schmancy investment vehicles? They didn't rear their ugly heads until a couple years ago anyway, and right off the bat they've cost the American taxpayers almost a trillion dollars. Why not get back to a real  economy?

And, tying this all together, the US government is spending $3 trillion on war (and spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined), another trillion on bailouts and stimulus packages, and all the while running up the US national debt to almost $10 trillion. If the US government were to disappear altogether, the US GDP would still be roughly $12 trillion based on consumer spending and real investment. So my solution to this mess: get rid of Wall Street and get rid of the war based component of government spending. They say that in 10 years the government budget will be totally consumed with paying interest on the national debt, social security and medicare. But that doesn't account for the fact that war trumps social security and medicare. It's far more likely that the government budget will consist of paying interest on the national debt and war.

Three Cheers for the Failure of the Neocon Carlyle Group Hedge Fund!

The Carlyle Group, a bunch of neocons including former President George H W Bush, James Baker, former Secretary of State, Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Defense among others, who sought to profit off the war in Iraq by investing in defense contractors, have come a cropper! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! They had the inside information about war and the massive budget expenditures for war, and they sought to profit from this insider information and to profit off of war. For all essential purposes, they are war profiteers. But their greed did not stop there. Not content just to profit from war, they formed a couple of hedge funds in order to multiply their profits by investing in mortgage backed securities. Now those hedge funds have defaulted and I couldn't be happier. I hope these billionaires lose their asses. Just desserts I say.

A fund managed by the US private equity giant Carlyle Group has become the latest to be hit by demands from lending banks making calls on loans secured on mortgage bonds. Carlyle Capital Corp, a publicly traded fund that holds $21.7bn (£10.8bn) of securities, said it had received a default notice from one of its lending banks and expected at least one more after it failed to meet demands for extra security from jittery counterparties. The Guernsey-based fund has struggled to meet more than $60m of margin calls and demands for extra collateral since the start of the month. It met the calls until Wednesday, when it was landed with more than $37m of demands and missed four out of seven calls. John Stomber, the chief executive of Carlyle Capital, said counterparties were demanding margin prices that did not represent the underlying recoverable value of the fund's assets. Carlyle Capital's investments are all AAA-rated securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the US-Government-sponsored mortgage finance agencies. "This disconnect has created instability and variability in our repo financing arrangements," he added. "Management is actively working with the company's repo counterparties to develop more stable financing terms." The return demanded for agency mortgage bonds over 10-year US Treasuries has widened to the highest for 22 years, according to Bloomberg. Tumult in the credit markets as asset values of all but the safest of debt plummet is prompting lenders to investment funds to demand ever-greater security for their loans, forcing funds into crisis even if they claim the underlying assets are sound. Carlyle Capital's woes come after Peloton, a London-based hedge fund, was forced to liquidate its two funds and shut down because 14 lending banks had pulled credit lines. William O'Donnell, a UBS government bond strategist, said markets were "utterly unhinged". ... Carlyle Group has more than $75bn under management. In the 1990s, its advisers included John Major, the former prime minister, and George Bush, the former US president.

From a previous blog:

And then there's the Carlyle Group from which George Bush, the father, is making billions from the War on Terrorism. Even as the planes smashed into the WTC George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting with Osama Bin Laden's brother at the Carlyle Group. Quote from the website- the Bush- Saudi Connection: "It’s passing strange that even as the hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual investor conference. Shafig Bin Laden, brother of Osama Bin Laden, attended."

Now while the Fed is bailing out investment bankers by pumping liquidity into the system, they are not pumping liquidity into the individual motgagees who are defaulting on their mortgage payments and going into foreclosure. A slight difference in moral hazard whether you are Joe Six Pack or a high flying financial institution. They lecture the poor mortgage holders that they knew what they were getting into; therefore, they are acting irresponsibly if they walk away from their obligation to pay their mortgage. However, when a financial institution gets a government bailout instead of facing the full consequences of the decisions it made, it's clear that there is a different standard for Joe Six Pack than there is for the mega-rich CEOs and billionaire investors.

The government is simply protecting its own: rich investors. They made a bet that the  middle class would responsibly pay their predatory mortgages once they reset thus netting them juicy profits. That bet didn't work out so they went to Uncle Sam to bail them out. No such bail-out was extended to Joe Six Pack. Paulson and Bernanke tell you that the economy would grind to a halt if Wall Street investment banks fail. Nonsense! The only consequence is that all the rich investors would lose their shirts. They deserve to do so because of their greedy risk taking behaviour. In other words they rolled the dice and lost. Then they come crying to the government. When they are winning they chide that the government has no place interfering in the free market. The government should keep its nose out of their affairs. Wall Street to government: butt out. We rich bastards know what we're doing and we don't need government to regulate us. Privatize! Privatize! Hands off the economy.

I say let the hedge funds fail. They have nothing to do with the everyday needs of average middle class people. They only have to do with rich investors. Some hedge fund managers have made as much as $100 million a year. These people don't deserve to be bailed out by the government. It's just another example of the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich facilitated by the Bush Administration and lauded by Rush Limbaugh and all the true conservatives. After all the $400 billion promised by the Fed to cover shaky investment banks will ultimately come out of taxpayers' pockets. Or the Fed will print money causing hyperinflation and the dollar's demise. Either way it's more government debt and taxpayer liability.

Well the chickens are coming home to roost. A good portion of Wall Street could go out of business without affecting the real economy. It only serves the needs of investors, not average citizens. This portion of the economy should be allowed to "seize up." Then the economy could get back to its real function: providing goods and services for real people instead of providing investment opportunities for rich investors. Bernanke and Paulson are only watching out for the investment class not the middle class home owners going into foreclosure, otherwise known as the debtor class.

Why Obama Should Not Be the Democratic Nominee

There are a lot of reasons.  But before I start let me say that I'll vote for Barack if he's the Democratic nominee. He would be infinitely better than John McCain.

1. He wants to bring people together. Give me a break! The only people he needs to bring together are the Republican Senators who will filibuster every piece of Democratic inspired legislation to death and effectively stop anything the Democrats want to do. Think he'll get the bloc-voting, filibustering Republican Senators to come over to the Democratic side? Think again. He'll either get nothing done or triangulate as Bill Clinton did. Instead of triangulation what we need is a President who will take on the filibustering Republicans and the legitimacy of the filibuster itself. This might spark a constituional crisis but so be it!

2. As nominee, the Republicans will generate all kinds of rumors about his African connections. Half his family lives there. Then there are the rumors about his lack of patriotism. The Republican smear machine will go to work on Obama. You can see they are ambivalent about who they'd rather run against because they've already developed a well-spring of hatred and demonization for Hillary over the last 20 years or so. They'll have to start from scratch with Obama, but they're already working overtime to make up for lost time.

3. As President, there will be all kinds of pressure on him to intervene in Africa. We've already got a mess on our hands in Iraq, that road to hell having been paved with bad intentions. We don't need another one in Africa, this time the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Mia Farrow, Steven Spielberg and others have been pressuring politicians to intervene there. And who's already there siding with the bad guys? China. They want the oil and they don't give a crap about who gets pushed off their land in order for them to get it. We don't need a confrontation with China in Africa.

4. Lack of political sophis-tication. We don't need Amateur Hour in the White House.

5. More susceptible to cooption and selling out. He'll want to triangulate with the Republicans as Bill Clinton did (a big mistake in my opinion) in order to get anything done. Republican pressure will undermine his agenda and determine the course of legislation. (Witness Bill Clinton with Gatt-NAFTA and signing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which led directly to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.) Hopefully, Hillary has gotten beyond "triangulation," realizes the errors of her husband's ways.

6. Obama is more likely to pander to powerful interests. Hillary has been there, done that and has nothing to prove.

7. Obama still hasn't made his fortune; Hillary has nothing to sweat financially. This would make Obama more likely to sidle up to and be impressed by powerful financial interests.

8. Hip-hop in the White House? Oh, noooooooooo.

I'm Endorsing Hillary!

The Democratic nominee for  President will be either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, no doubt. I think Hillary is not only more electable but will bring with her far more resources in terms of actually changing the course of this country, not the least of which is her husband, Bill. In many ways Bill Clinton's Presidency was one shining hour in between the crap heaps of  the two Bushes. True, not everything he accomplished has turned out to be the best for this country, namely, repealing the  Glass-Steagall Act which led to the sub-prime mortgage mess and  NAFTA. But he did balance the budget, something that all Republicans, for all  their  conservative rhetoric, have failed to do since (and including!) Ronald Reagan.

Barack Obama is a sharp guy, but he's long on rhetoric and charisma and short on actual experience. The Republicans will make mince meat of him in the general election, and he will be too easily co-optible in the Oval Office. The lobbyists and corporate power brokers will swoop down on him like there's no tomorrow. Hillary's pretty much immune to being tempted by the trappings of power, in my opinion. She's seen it all; she's done it all. She knows most of the world leaders, and she would bring with her a powerful group of intelligent people. Hillary's got the grit to withstand the Republican onslaught. Did I say that she's been through it once already? I think Hillary's values are tremendous, her heart's in the right place and she will restore some sanity to this nation's policies both at home and abroad.

Barack Obama is promising a lot of stuff that a  President does not really have the where- withal to pull off. He's going to be a uniter. What does that mean? Does anyone really believe that all the white Republican southerners in all the red states are really going to rally around him? It'll never happen. I want a fighter not a uniter. That's realistic. I believe Hillary's a fighter, and she's got a good corner man in Bill. Together they have a wealth of experience and a proven track record. What's Obama's track record? He was against the Iraq war from the start? He gave a speech at the 2004 Democratic convention? Give me a break. Talk is  cheap. The Iraq war is moot at this point except for getting the hell out of there, not leaving behind any permanent bases and stopping the torrent of cash going there that's bankrupting the US. Any of the Democrats will try to do that, but it will take political skill and experience to actually get the job done and stave off the Republicans who have invested heavily in making Iraq a US client state in the mideast.

I have already pointed out the difficulty any Democratic President will have in getting his or her agenda passed through Congress. It's not going to be a hayride, folks. Any Democratic President is going to have the same problem the Democratic Congress has had for the last year in getting anything done. The last thing we want is a President who doesn't know the ropes (Obama) and will spin his wheels for two to four years getting nothing accomplished. The last thing we want is a Democratic President who is going to play ball with the Republicans and corporate interests to continue  business as usual. Obama may be inspirational, but we don't need inspiration at this point. We don't need to be "moved." We don't need a lot of long winded rhetoric promising this and that. We don't need naivete in the White House surrounded by novice advisors. Any fool knows what needs to be done. Hillary will just be more capable of doing it, that's all.

The last point is electability. My feeling is that it will be very tough sledding to get Obama elected. First of all no white southerner will vote for him. There's a lot of rednecks in the north who won't vote for him either, and he's red meat for the Republican hate machine. They'll try to skewer Hillary too, but she's had the experience of having been through it once, and she's a smart cookie. It won't be easy sledding for the Republicans this time. I think the smart  Democrats (and I put the  Clintons in this category) have thought this through and will be well prepared to deal with the Republican hate mongers  this  time around. Let the Lee Atwaters and the Karl Roves beware! They have been assasinating characters  and destroying Democrats at will for far too long. I would hope the Democats would put up a decent fight this  time, and I think Hillary is far more capable of doing so than Barack.

Barack appeals to the Democratic base more, but Hillary appeals far more to the general population of voters including moderates and independents, and, in the final analysis, getting a Democrat actually elected President is what it's all about. Another Republican in the White House and the US will go the way of the Roman Empire having lasted not anywhere near as long. Rome had its sage Claudius (correponding to Bill Clinton) after the disastrous Tiberius (Reagan) and in between Caligula and Nero (corresponding to the two Bushes). Let's hope that the lantern of enlightenment will be relit under Hillary Clinton!

Think There's Going to be 'Change' if a Democrat Occupies the White House in '09? Think Again.

We couldn't wait to elect Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in the elections of 2006. We thought they would end the Iraq war and reverse some of Bush's insane policies. Then not much happened. Why? Two things: the filibuster and the veto. The filibuster, according to the way the rules are set up in the Senate at the present time, allows 41 senators voting as a block to defeat any legislation sent to it by the House. It takes 60 votes for cloture which amounts to ending the filibuster and allowing the legislation to proceed. Since the House and Senate both have to pass the legislation before it's sent to the President, the House is simply spinning its wheels passing legislation, which it can do with a Democratic majority, but which will get stopped cold once it reaches the Senate where it will be filibustered by the Republicans voting in a block. Unfortunately, this legislation will never see the light of day, and the House is wasting its time, but it makes the Congress persons look good. They can say "I voted for this and I voted for that," but it's all to no avail so why bother? Any legislation that does get through both the House and Senate can and has been vetoed by the President if it's not to his liking and any Democrat inspired legislation is not to his liking. So even with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, not much has changed.

The filibuster may be well established in the popular consciousness — think of long-winded senators speechifying for days. But because modern Senate rules allow lawmakers to avoid the spectacle of pontificating by merely threatening the act, filibusters and the efforts to overcome them are being used more frequently, and on more issues, than at any other point in history. So far in this first year of the 110th Congress, there have been 72 motions to stop filibusters, most on the Iraq war but also on routine issues like reauthorizing Amtrak funding. There were 68 such motions in the full two years of the previous Congress, 53 in 1987-88 and 23 in 1977-78. In 1967-68, there were 5 such votes, one of them on a plan to amend cloture itself, which failed. For policy making, this is the legislative equivalent of gum on a shoe. It has produced a numbing cycle of Washington futility: House Democrats pass a bill, but Senate Democrats, facing a filibuster by the Republican minority, fail to get the 60 votes needed to end debate. Little wonder that approval ratings of Congress stink these days.

But, you say, wait till the elections of '08, and then we'll have a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Surely, the Democrats will be able to bring about change at that point. Unfortunately, the prognosis is not good despite what the Democrats running for the White House say. They are promising change, health care, jobs etc. etc. But the reality is that the Republicans will still be able to defeat any Democrat inspired legislation with the filibuster. Granted they won't have the veto and a Democratic President wouldn't use it anyway. Whether it's Hillary or Obama or Edwards, they would be sitting there willing and eager to sign legislation to get the country back on track and to reverse the insidious policies of the Bush Administration. The problem is that they would need a filibuster proof Senate in order to do that. In other words they would need 60 Democratic seats, and they're not going to get them. They'd need to pick up 9 Democratic seats and keep the ones they have, and 6 of the 9 seats up for election are secure Republican seats according to all estimates. OK, so even if the Democrats win the White House, which is not altogether a foregone conclusion, nothing is going to get done because it would have to get through a Senate which is controlled by a minority of Republicans using the filibuster to defeat all legislation that isn't suitable to them. 

So we would be right back where we were when Bill Clinton was in the White House. All legislation going to the President to sign would have to be triangulated which is nothing more than saying it would be Republican controlled. Do you really think Clinton would have repealed the Glass-Steagall Act (which led to the sub-prime mortgage mess), approved NAFTA and CAFTA (which led to the export of middle class jobs) and signed a bill on welfare reform without the Republicans breathing down his neck? His Presidency would have been quite different if the Democrats controlled the House and had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. A new Democratic President in 2008 is going to be faced with the same situation. Since the Democrats have already demonstrated that they won't take the Republicans to the mat, and the Republicans have demonstrated that they will take the Democrats to the mat, the Republicans will remain in control of the nation even with a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. It doesn't take Karl Rove to figure this out.

One possible way out of this morass would be to change the filibuster rule, to make the Republicans actually stay on the floor and filibuster rather than just say they were going to like the rules are set up now. However, it takes a two thirds majority to change the Senate rules and that's not going to happen any time soon. So forget that. We're stuck with a rule which effectively gives a minority of Senators voting in a block the power to defeat any legislation they so desire, and the Republicans have demonstrated time and again their willingness to use it. And, as we know, the Republicans play hardball. They will use every tool at their disposal, every weapon in their arsenal, to prevent any Democratic inspired legislation from ever getting to the President to sign into law. And the Democrats will capitulate because they are wimps and because some of them might as well have been Republicans. They won't vote as a block, and even, if they did, it wouldn't do them any good.

There is one other possibility, and that's been dubbed the nuclear option. The Republicans under Bill Frist threatened to use it. It boils down to a procedural end run around the filibuster.

In 2005, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to end Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees by something called the "nuclear option." It is actually a series of steps designed to bypass the two-thirds vote requirement to change rules: The Senate moves to vote on a controversial nominee. At least 41 Senators call for filibuster. The Senate Majority Leader raises a point of order, saying debate has gone on long enough and that a vote must be taken within a certain time frame. (Current Senate rules requires a cloture vote at this point.) The Vice President -- acting as presiding officer -- sustains the point of order. A Democratic Senator appeals the decision. A Republican Senator moves to table the motion on the floor (the appeal). This vote - to table the appeal - is procedural and cannot be subjected to a filibuster; it requires only a majority vote (in case of a tie, the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote). With debate ended, the Senate would vote on the issue at hand; this vote requires only a majority of those voting. The filibuster has effectively been closed with a majority vote instead of a three-fifths vote.

This is exacrtly what the Democrats should do and should use, but they're such wimps that I'd lay odds they won't do it. They'll play nicey nice with the Republicans, they'll try to be "collegial," they'll sell out to the same corporate interests, they'll be eager to dole out pork to their home districts. Forget universal health care (unless it benefits corporate interests), forget the reversal of NAFTA and CAFTA, forget taxing the rich, forget anything that threatens corporate interests. Even if Edwards gets in, he won't be able to take on corporate domination of the government without a filibuster proof majority in the Senate or without using the nuclear option which is really the only hope for meaningful reform starting in 2009. If the Democrats are serious about changing the direction of the US, they need to use every tool available even if it provokes a confrontation with the Repuiblicans. The Republicans aren't afraid of confrontation. The Democrats shouldn't be either. They should do whatever's necessary to make majority rule prevail and defeat the filibuster which is antidemocratic and gives a small bunch of Senators representing a small number of citizens overwhelming power. Consider that California and New York contain huge populations. But they only have two senators just like sparsely populated Rhode Island and Wyoming.

The Republicans have turned this country into a corporatocracy and turned it away from a democracy. They've gutted the middle class starting with Reagan. Their agenda is to privatize everything: education, social security, health care. Do the Democrats have the guts to take them on and be as partisan in the implementation of their agenda? Have they even articulated a coherent agenda? I don't think so. The Republicans, at least, have a coherent philosophy and agenda. Where is the Democratic equivalent? If the Republicans can enunciate clearly their philosophy of privatism, the Democrats should be able to enunciate a philosophy which is a rational, balanced combination of capitalism and socialism. Are they afraid of the word? The Republicans aren't afraid of theirs.

Porkmeisters 'R Us: the Sad Saga of Senator Byrd and Congressman Murtha

Earmarkmeisters Robert C Byrd and John Murtha are the worst offenders in the process of bringing home the bacon for their home districts (who return the favor by re-electing them) at the expense of all the rest of US taxpayers (outside their districts). These guys, among others, just attach their pork to any appropriations bill without any oversight, debate or other psuedo-democratic process. They do it solely by virtue of their seniority on whatever appropriations committee they happen to be chairman of. So we end up getting bridges to nowhere, four lane highways that suddenly end in dirt roads, studies of ridiculous subjects that nobody is interested in. And nobody reads the final reports because they're apropos of nothing. And these guys are proud of their work in bringing home the bacon. They brag about it. They're not at all sheepish about bloating the federal budget and transfering tax liabilities to US citizens outside their district.                                             

The following is a good explanation of earmarks:

What is an earmark? An earmark is a line-item that is inserted into a bill to direct funds to a specific project or recipient without any public hearing or review. Members of Congress—both in the House and the Senate—use earmarks to direct funds to projects of their choice. Typically earmarks fund projects in the district of the House member or the state of the Senator who inserted it; the beneficiary of the funds can be a state or local agency or a private entity; often, the ultimate beneficiary is a political supporter of the legislator. Earmarks are the principal means by which Members of Congress “bring home the bacon.” What’s wrong with earmarks? It’s not so much any single earmark that is the problem, but rather the entire process. There is no transparency or accountability in the system; members can secure hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for a project without subjecting it to debate by their colleagues in the Congress, or to the scrutiny and oversight of the public. Because earmarks are hard to identify, some members use them to secretly award their biggest campaign contributors or, in the infamous case of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, to exchange them for bribes. The secrecy of the earmarking process invites backroom deals and unethical—or even corrupt—behavior, part of a pay-to-play culture where lobbyists and contractors and well-connected individuals give campaign contributions to legislators in return for federal funding.

As the largest earmark porkmeister, Robert C Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia is not apologetic about his ability to bring home the pork to his constituents who then honor him by naming all their projects the Robert C Byrd this and the Robert C Byrd that. There's the Robert C. Byrd Metals Fabrication Center, the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, including the Robert C. Byrd Institute and the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center, the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building and Courthouse in Charleston (not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building and Courthouse in Beckley), the Robert C. Byrd Expressway (not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Freeway or the Robert C. Byrd Bridge), the Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center at Wheeling Jesuit University (not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Science and Technology Center at Shepherd University or the Robert C. Byrd Technology Center at Alderson-Broaddus College), the Robert C. Byrd Highway, the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, the Robert C. Byrd Telescope. CBS found more than 40 projects bearing the Byrd name. You know, this is just reprehensible that this doddering old fool is setting up so many monuments to himself in an unprecedcented show of vanity, egotism and corruption. No humility here. He wants every last vaingloroius vestige of personal adornment he can possibly squeeze out of a corrupt and reprehensible system that mocks white collar crime but is nevertheless perfectly legal because, after all, these are the guys who make the laws and of course they make them to favor themselvess and not to do right towards the American people in general. Since 1991, the "king of pork" has steered $3 billion in earmarks to West Virginia, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

"Yeah man, you're lookin' at Big Daddy. Big Daddy!" That's Byrd at the opening of the Robert C. Byrd Biotech Center, to which he generously gave $35.6 million of your tax dollars. "Our effort to construct this facility and create a stronger foundation for the biotech industry here in West Virginia began where? With a visit to my office. Yeah. Yeah man," Byrd said. "A visit to my office, yeah."

What hubris and egomania!

Defense earmarks are also at the heart of corruption scandals threatening to sink Congress to new lows in public esteem. In November 2005, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) of California resigned from Congress and was later convicted of conspiring to take $2.4 million in bribes from two defense contractors for whom he sponsored earmarks. But, alas, poor Randy just didn't know how to play the game. He should have taken the bribe as a campaign contribution, and then that would have been perfectly legal. Instead, he took it as antique furniture, yachts, real estate and sorties with prostitutes. Defense earmarks as well as defense spending in general maintain the US status quo as a militarized national security state, one devoted to war spending rather than one devoted to spending on projects of peace and constructive efforts to provide jobs for people in other than war related pursuits. For instance, if the money went to building infrastructure or providing health care or housing or transporation, or research or to clean energy, this would be a constructive use of Federal money. Instead it goes to war and war related pursuits. The Defense Department should be renamed the War Department, as it formerly was, to suit a nation that is in the advanced stages of unremitting imperial pursuits and ambitions.

Democrat John Murtha is no better than the Byrd when it comes to porkbarrel spending. As chairman of the Defense Appropriations Commmittee, he has sent a steady diet of pork back to his home district. Johnstown, PA might as well be renamed Johnmurthastown for all the money he has singlehandedly injected into the local economy. The way it works with Murtha and others is that former Murtha staffers take over jobs as lobbyists for favorite firms who then benefit from Murtha earmarks and joyously make large contributions to Murtha campaign funds which money is then spent on buying TV ads telling the folks back home how wonderful Murtha is and would they really want to kill the goose who lays the golden eggs in return for some upstart who has no seniority on any appropriations committee? Nosiree, Bob. Thereby, Murtha is continually reelected. After pricking our consciences about the Iraq war, Murtha decided he better not carry the rhetoric too far because after all, he may be against the war but he's not against war spending. A slight inconsistency there, but he has a point. Let's at least spend the money on the right war. Maybe his conscience is bothering him after all.

Most people outside of Western Pennsylvania may known Rep. John Murtha as the guy who first called for the troops to come home. But the Wall Street Journal presents a withering portrait of the congressman today as "old-fashioned political boss" who, as the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, has dubiously funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to his hard-luck hometown. No one could say the hamlet of Johnstown, population 27,000, couldn’t use the cash. The small town 60 miles east of Pittsburgh was once the world's largest steel producer. But by 1983, its unemployment rate was more than 24 percent. Today, thanks to Murtha's ability to bring home defense contracts through earmarks on appropriations bills, it's around 5 percent. But the Journal asserts that "Johnstown's good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else." Defense contractors have found that if they open an office there and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Techologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 people, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary, the paper reports. Murtha refuses to apologize. At a breakfast fundraiser this summer in Johnstown, he said that bringing federal dollars there "is the whole goddamn reason I went to Washington." And this is about the most G-rated thing that the Congressman -- who "curses like the Parris Island drill sergeant he once was" -- utters in the whole article.

So here's the game. Find out which Senators and Congressmen are on appropriations committees and then open a branch office in their home district. Hire former staffers of said Senator or Congressman as lobbyists. The lobbyists then get the earmarks and the corporartion then gives copiously to the politician's campaign fund which the politician then uses to get himself elected in perpetuity. Actually, this same game has been going on for years but not just with regard to earmarks. Research labs and companies that are private corporations or just governnment entities have been lobbying Congress for years in order to get money into their private corporation or government entity. This is what the military-industrial complex is all about. Civil service department heads want to get money into their departments so they spend most of their time lobbying Congress although it's not called lobbying when it's done by some civil service research lab. The end result is a chaotic assemblage of unrelated projects that serve no purpose as far as the overall strategy of the military is concerned and are soon forgotten as soon as the final report is written. What's wrong with this picture? It's a bottom up demand for funding for assorted unnecessary crap rather than a top down rational assessment of what's needed and then finding the best organization to do it. In short most funding is a wasteful and corrupt boondoggle. That's what the military-industrial complex is all about.

The following link is an aptly named blog on government waste, the Swine Line, http://swineline.org. I love it!

California Sues Federal Government Over Car Emissions!

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is suing the Federal Government because California wants to implement stricter standards for car emissions than the Environmental Protection Agency wants to allow. What? The EPA says no when a state wants to exceed their standards! It should be the other way around. They should be happy when a state or states wants to do even better than what the Federal Government mandates. But you have to remember that this Federal Governmenrt doesn't want so much to protect the environment as it wants to protect oil companies. Therefore, the more oil consumption the better, the more tailpipe emissions the better and hang the environment. Global warming, schmobal warming! Read it and weep!

California cannot bring in tough emissions laws without EPA approval California is suing the US federal government over its failure to back the state's tough new anti-pollution laws regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Two years ago, California passed legislation requiring car-makers to cut vehicle emissions by 30% by 2016. But for the measure to take effect, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must give its approval. State governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said there was no legal basis for the EPA to stand in California's way. An EPA spokeswoman said the agency planned to make a decision on the legislation by the end of December. If the legal action is successful, 11 other US states have said they will follow California's lead on emissions levels, and five more are considering the move. 'Our future' California needs the EPA to grant a waiver because the state's legislation seeks to implement stricter standards than those imposed under national law. Arnold Schwarzenegger believes the environment is a key issue Speaking at a news conference, Mr Schwarzenegger accused the federal government of "ignoring the will of tens of millions of people" by failing to approve the legislation. He said: "Our future depends on us taking action on global warming right now. "There's no legal basis for Washington to stand in our way." The 16-page lawsuit filed by the state attorney general's office warns that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles are rising more quickly than from any other source. "The longer the delay in reducing these emissions, the more costly and harmful will be the impact on California," it said. US car-makers are fighting California's plans to cut emissions levels in the courts. Industry groups say the proposed standards would raise the cost of vehicles and could force America's embattled car makers into further difficulties. In April, the US Supreme Court ruled that the EPA, which had challenged the California law, was wrong to say that it did not have the power to regulate exhaust gases from new cars and trucks. In a separate move, Mr Schwarzenegger last year signed a bill making California the first US state to impose limits on the state's greenhouse gas emissions, with a target of 25% by 2020.

Read what two Republican governors have to say about standing up to the Bush Administration who never met a greenhouse gas emission they didn't like!

Lead or Step Aside, EPA States Can't Wait on Global Warming By Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jodi Rell Monday, May 21, 2007 It's bad enough that the federal government has yet to take the threat of global warming seriously, but it borders on malfeasance for it to block the efforts of states such as California and Connecticut that are trying to protect the public's health and welfare. California, Connecticut and 10 other states are poised to enact tailpipe emissions standards -- tougher than existing federal requirements -- that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars, light trucks and sport-utility vehicles by 392 million metric tons by the year 2020, the equivalent to taking 74 million of today's cars off the road for an entire year. Since transportation accounts for one-third of America's greenhouse gas emissions, enacting these standards would be a huge step forward in our efforts to clean the environment and would show the rest of the world that our nation is serious about fighting global warming. Yet for the past 16 months, the Environmental Protection Agency has refused to give us permission to do so. Even after the Supreme Court ruled in our favor last month, the federal government continues to stand in our way. Another discouraging sign came just last week, when President Bush issued an executive order to give federal agencies until the end of 2008 to continue studying the threat of greenhouse gas emissions and determine what can be done about them. To us, that again sounds like more of the same inaction and denial, and it is unconscionable. Under the Clean Air Act, California has the right to enact its own air pollution standards, which other states may then follow, as long as the EPA grants California a waiver. The waiver gives California, and other states, formal permission to deviate from federal standards. California has requested more than 40 such waivers over the past 30 years and has been granted full or partial permission for most of them. By continuing to stonewall California's request, the federal government is blocking the will of tens of millions of people in California, Connecticut and other states who want their government to take real action on global warming. The EPA is finally holding the first of two hearings on the waiver request tomorrow, and we welcome the opportunity to call attention to the harmful effects that global warming is having on people and the environment. But we are far from convinced that the agency intends to follow the law and grant us our waiver. If it fails to do so, we have an obligation to take legal action and settle this issue once and for all. The threat is real. Scientists tell us that if nothing is done to stop the warming of Earth's atmosphere, we can expect an increasing number of droughts, greater risk of forest fires, a reduction in our snowpack, an increase in sea levels, more flooding in winter and hotter temperatures in summer. There can be little debate anymore on whether the effects of climate change constitute a looming threat to the public's health and welfare. Republicans and Democrats in statehouses around the country have already spoken loudly that federal inaction on climate change is unacceptable and have acted on their own initiative. Whether it is Northeastern states uniting to reduce greenhouse gases from electric generators or Western states looking to reduce emissions throughout the economy, momentum is building everywhere but in Washington. The federal government should not stand in the way of dealing with the most serious environmental challenge facing the world. While the United States represents just 5 percent of the world's population, it produces 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. With the landmark legislation authored by former assemblywoman Fran Pavley and passed in 2002, California demonstrated that it is serious about cutting down these emissions from cars. Connecticut also has a strong record on greenhouse gas reduction, which includes adoption of California's tough standards for vehicle tailpipe emissions. California, Connecticut and a host of like-minded states are proving that you can protect the environment and the economy simultaneously. It's high time the federal government becomes our partner or gets out of the way. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is governor of California. Jodi Rell, a Republican, is governor of Connecticut.

A Districtless Congress

The US is divided up into political districts. Each voter gets to vote for one member of the House of Representatives and two members of the Senate in this bicameral national assembly. There are 435 voting members of the House so there are 435 congressional districts. The member from your district supposedly represents your interests, but none of the others do. In the Senate the political districts are the states. There are 100 senators, two from each state. The two senators from your state supposedly represent your interests but none of the other 98 do. So 1/435 or 0.22% of the members of the house represent your interests, and 2/100 or 2% of the members of the senate represent your interests.

This is a pathetic situation, and it's even worse if you did not vote for any of the congressman or senators who supposedly represent you. Say you're a Democrat and the congressman elected from your district (whom you didn't vote for) is a Republican. Then arguably you have no representation at all in the House. The same could be said of the Senate if you didn't vote for either of the senators who actually got elected. In other countries where they use other methods for making up the national assembly or congress like, for example, proportional representation, the percentage of the members representing each voter's interests is much higher. For example, if 28% of the electorate (including you) voted for the Green Party, then 28% of the seats in the national assembly would be Green Party members.

In a districtless congress each voter would vote for each representative, and each representaive would represent the interests of all voters. For example, if there are 300 seats in the congress and 500 candidates running for those seats there would be 500!/(300!)(200!) possible congresses or ways that this congress could be made up. In theory each voter could list each possible congress in order of his/her preferences, and then all the voters' specifications could be amalgamated to get the one congress that best represented the electorate as a whole. The problem is that it would be impractical for each voter to study the qualifications of each candidate and then come up with a list of all possible congresses. It would be too much work. However, there are ways to expedite this process as explained in more detail here. If each voter just listed the candidates (instead of the congresses) in order of preference, this list could be translated by software into an ordered list of congresses. Furthermore, the list of candidates could be simplified by using the recommend- ations of the voter's political party or other trusted experts in part or in whole. A customized list could be generated by taking eclectic recommend- ations cafeteria style. Or there could be different lists available to the voter depending on the voter's profile related to his/her political objectives. A simple questionnaire given to the voter could generate a list according to the voter's predilections. There are a lot of different ways any particular voter's list could be generated with the voter having complete control and the final say.

One way of amalgamating the list information is by range voting. Using this method each possible congress would be given a numerical rating, and the ratings for each congress would be added up over all the individual voters to determine the winner - the one with the highest overall social rating. There is no need to rank the possible congresses in order over the entire electorate since only the top rated one would be chosen. Therefore, Kenneth Arrow's model for social choice and his impossibility results as presented in Social Choice and Individual Values are invalid.  In fact Arrow's model which calls for a full social ranking doesn't apply to most political as well as most economic situations. The only thing it seems to apply to is combining judges' rankings in Olympic figure skating where it is important to know not only first place but also second and third. In political and economic situations it's necessary only to know the top rated or first place result.

The Republican Plan: Leave the Democrats a Total Mess!

The Republicans will probably lose the next election. But instead of their successors inheriting a country in good fiscal condition and in good standing in the world, the Democrats will inherit a mess - a fiscal mess and a mess in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the Democrats struggle to right the ship of state, the Republicans will lose no time in blaming them (the Democrats) for the mess itself. Bush is spending like a drunken sailor having accumulated more debt than all the Presidents preceding him including Ronald Reagan who accumulated more debt than all the Presidents preceding him. And they have done it primarily by reducing taxes for the rich. Sure the poor have had their taxes reduced too but by a pittance with the net effect being a gigantic transfer of the national wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich and to large corporations. Dick Cheney said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." And the sub-text to this is that, when there is the inevitable turnover of administrations, the Democrats will have all they can do to clean up the mess and fight off the accusations that it's their responsibility, and the Republicans will have no problem winning back the Congress and the Presidency in the next election cycle. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the US was the world's largest creditor nation ^i.e. more money was owed to the US by other nations than was owed to any other nation. Now we're the world's largest debtor nation ^i.e. the US owes more money to other nations than does any other nation.

Regarding Ronald Reagan, his chief of staff Donald Regan told the New York Times in 1986 that "some of us are like a shovel brigade" following the circus elephant, cleaning up his droppings along the parade. This same quote could also be applied to the Republican philosophy towards the Democrats which might be stated as follows "Leave the country a mess for the Democrats to inherit. They'll be so busy cleaning it up that they won't have any time to implement their own policies. Neither will they have any money. Blame them for the mess and capitalize on it for the next election." Bill Clinton actually cleaned up a lot of the mess. He inherited a long string of budget deficits and turned this around actually accomplishing several budget surpluses during his term in office. The Republicans could have none of this, however. Bush promptly turned this around running huge deficits again. Clinton's surpluses were just play money for Bush to squander. After all, what they want to acccomplish is to bankrupt government run social programs like social security and medicare. They want to make them insolvent so that they will have to be privatized, one of George Bush's goals. Their mantra is "privatize government functions and turn them over to corporations." God help us  when medicare is turned over to the likes of United Health Care whose CEO William McGuire takes home huge pay packages. His pay in recent years has topped $100 million annually and he's sitting on top of $1.6 billion in stock options.  

How does United Health Care, the provider of AARP Secure Horizons Medicare Advantage plans, do it? By denying health care to those who truly need it. Administrative costs for private insurance skyrocket mainly to pay high salaries to CEOs and other executives whereas in other countries with single payer government provided health insurance, administrative costs are very low. The medicare Advantage plans offer enticements to get people to convert from traditional medicare like a free physical exam once a year, an optional  dental plan and free eyeglasses every  two years. However, the enticements start evaporating as soon as you enroll. You start getting sheafs of paperwork which, if you had the patience to sift through it, would inform you that your benefits under the plan are diminishing. It's sort of like that credit card you were enticed into getting. Then you get a bunch of paperwork that's too small to read informing you that your rate has gone up. And why doesn't medicare in its infinite wisdom provide a free annual physical? It's been shown that early detection of disease reduces health care costs in the long run. It's because they want to make medicare as unattractive and costly as possible while making  private health insurance relatively more attractive so that more people will shift from traditional medicare to private health insurance which is what the Advantage plan really is. And you can get the Advantage plan for the same price as medicare .... for now. Once  they get you on it, they'll eventually cut the link so you can't go back to traditional medicare and then watch your monthly premiums go up.

The recession which is almost upon us was scheduled for next year after the Democrats had taken over, but it might arrive early. The Republicans will do whatever they can to stave it off so that  the mess flops down on the Democrats' lap. That'll give them something to do so they won't be able to reverse Republican "progress": bankrupting government and turning it over to private corporations, militarizing the  US economy and dominating the rest of the world. Those are the neocon goals. And then the Republicans can get on with their work of governing: the Blue Sky initiative which increases the level of pollutants  corporations can release into the atmosphere, the Wildlife Protection Act which allows oil drilling in game preserves, the Clean Water Act which raises the allowable levels  of arsenic in our rivers, the Labor Protection Act which makes it easier for corporations to get rid of unions and harder to get a  union started, the Child Health Act which defunds children's health insurance, the Product Inspection Act which lowers the standards for product safety and decreases the number of inspectors and so on and on. According to CNBC's Erin Burnett

A lot of people like to say, uh, scaremonger about China, right? A lot of politicians, and I know you talk about that issue all the time. I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. Ya know, if China were to revalue it’s currency or China is to start making say, toys that don’t have lead in them or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now, they’re keeping prices low and they’re keeping the prices for mortgages low, too.”

Spoken like a true Republican!

The Democrats will seek to "work together" with the rest of the world, a sign of weakness that's anathema to  the Republicans. The Democrats might try to protect American good paying jobs so that they're not shipped overseas, again something anathema to the Republicans who believe that corporations should get their labor "input" wherever they can get it most cheaply. Currently, China is a good source of cheap labor. Americans will have to gain wealth the traditional Republican way: by rising to a high corporate level or via real estate or the stock market. Of course, you could be an entrepreneur and come up with the next "must have" product. Forget about good paying middle class jobs. There  won't be any. If you're not a player in the real estate or stock markets, you will only be able to get a job as a telemarketer or a barista at Starbucks. Low paying jobs will proliferate. After all the rich need somebody to watch their children and work in their yards. But not to worry. Instead of that good paying middle class job with benefits, you will be offered a tax break!

Scott McClellan Implicates President Bush in Outing of CIA Spy Valerie Plame

Former White House Press Secretary Scot McClellan in a new book due out in April has implicated Bush, Cheney and their Chiefs of Staff, Andrew Card and "Scooter" Libby (who is already in jail on a charge related to the case), as well as Karl Rove in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame who has written a new book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," has maintained all along that her identity was leaked by the highest levels of the US government, an act that is manifest treason in a time of war and absolutely impeachable.

Here is the quote from CNN:

Amid a swelling controversy about the leak of Valerie Wilson's name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. In an upcoming book, McClellan says five administration officials were "involved" in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the involvement of Rove and Libby in the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity. "There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

We have this comment from No Quarter:

If outing a CIA intelligence officer collecting intelligence on our enemy during a time of war is not treason, then what is? George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby to help buy his silence. Why? McClellan’s revelation blows the cover on that sham. Bush was involved. Of course we will now witness the spectacle of Republicans, who delighted in castigating Bill Clinton for his confusion about the meaning of sex, themselves doing verbal gymnastics as they search for the true meaning of “involved”. Horseshit! This is an impeachable offense. George Bush not only helped obstruct justice, but continues to obstruct justice. The President is no longer an idle bystander. He is a participant in a cover up. He knew that Rove, Libby, Card, and Cheney were involved in leaking Valerie’s name. Yet the coward, the man who failed to complete his Reserve duty, went AWOL on his staff. He sent Scott McClellan out to lie to the press. We already knew that Bush was neither honorable nor a man or his word. Despite his vow to remove anyone involved in leaking the name of Valerie Plame Wilson, he kept Card, Rove and Libby safe in the White House until Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald blew the whistle. And even then, Bush refused to do the right thing. He acted immorally and illegally. Why should Scooter come clean when he knows his co-conspirator will get him off? And he did.

But wait. Now Scot McClellan's editor is saying something different.

Bloomberg News’ reports that: McClellan doesn’t suggest that Bush deliberately lied to him about Libby’s and Rove’s involvement in the leak, said Peter Osnos, founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan’s memoir next year.”He told him something that wasn’t true, but the president didn’t know it wasn’t true,” Osnos said in a telephone interview. “The president told him what he thought to be the case.” So Bush is a Moron? He’s not some janitor with an opinion. He’s ostensibly the Commander-in-Chief. And this begs more questions. Who did the President ask for information about this matter? Cheney? Card? Who lied to the President? Notably, no one lost their job even though the President supposedly belatedly discovered that he wasn’t given the straight poop? God save us from these deviants.

So ... Scott McClellan "unknowingly passed along false information." OK, so he didn't lie himself. Evidently he found out it was false just prior to writing his book, exonerating himself. But "five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself." So the President was involved in McClellan's passing along false information, but, according to Peter Osnos, the President's "involvement" was also "unknowing." He, therefore, didn't lie. So someone had given the President false information, the President had assumed it was true, and then told Scott McClellan to get out there and repeat it to the American public. Wouldn't you think that the President would have made damn sure that information of this importance was absolutely true, would have verified it absolutely before telling Scott McClellan to get out there and repeat it?

So who among those five top officials implicated by Scott McClellan knew the information was true (and therefore lied) and who among them unknowingly passed it along? Does Scot McClellan know or is he just whistling Dixie to sell books?

This is a very serious charge to implicate the President and Vice President of the United States specifically in a lie without clarifying and qualifying his implication as to exactly what their involvement was or at least to say he wasn't sure what their involvement was. But no, he comes right out and suggests in the strongest terms that they lied (without using the word "lied") and doesn't elaborate at all on what he means exactly by saying they were "involved." If he meant they were't involved in lying but were involved in some other way, he should have said so. Are we to believe that Scott McClellan and the editors of his book are so dumb that they would imply an accusation directed towards the President of the United States of treason and then not immediately qualify that if it were not true? Parsing the words and the meaning will not cut it in this case. Either Scott McClellan and his editors are guilty of the grossest negligence in writing this book, or the President is a liar and should be impeached. Plain and simple.

A Pit Bull in Sheep's Clothing

As Presidential politics heats up with the candidate debates, a little speculation about tactics and strategy is in order. In an ideal world the candidates would present their positions on the issues, what they're for and against, the voters would evaluate these positions, decide which candidate most closely represents their views and vote accordingly. But this isn't an ideal world. In all liklihood it seems like it will be a contest between Giuliani and Hillary, and it won't be about who has the best ideas. It will be about who can attack and smear their opponent most effectively - what I call the Michael Vick school of political campaigning. After all when you put a pit bull in the ring with a nice dog with good ideas, who's going to win? The Republicans have demonstrated time and again their willingness to attack their opponents' jugulars from the Willie Horton ads, which got Bush 1 elected (thanks to Lee Atwater who later recanted on his death bed), to Michael Dukakis in a tank, to the swift boating of John Kerry etc. etc.

The Democrats should have no illusions. It's going to take a pit bull to win. And that's why I think Hillary is the best candidate for the job. She's the only one that has the cajones to take on Rudy Giuliani, a notorious pit bull with a phony, sheepish grin. He likes to have pit bulls like Bernie Kerik at his side but, alas, Bernie will have to sit this one out. It seems like Bernie was screwing two mistresses near ground zero in an apartment reserved for exhausted fire fighters while his wife was pregnant (what an alpha! -he'd get the male vote though not the female). Ohhhhhh! What about the no show construction jobs. Ohhhhhh! Now he's a liability rather than an asset. But consider the Democrats. John Edwards is too nice a guy.  He's too idealistic.  He wants to help the poor, something that the electorate could care less about. You have to remember that most of them only want to help themselves. They want bread and circuses and football games. Idealism is a liability  when you're fighting a pit bull. Barack Obama is also too nice a guy, too young and inexperienced. The  Republican pit bulls will eat him for lunch. That leaves Hillary. She's been around  the block a few times and knows who she's dealing with.

Hillary, wisely, is positioning herself in the middle with her votes on Iraq and Iran. This disgusts her Democratic left wing base, but politics really isn't about revealing your true intentions as Republicans have demonstrated time and again. What ... are we going to sue George Bush for reneging on his campaign  promises? It's about appealing to the blood lust and greed of the electorate. Hillary is potentially picking up a lot of independent and middle ground voters who don't want somebody who is  weak on terrorism. Then after she's elected, she'll mop up the Iraq mess in short order, I would hope. At the same time, she's taking the wind out of Giuliani's sails who would like nothing better than to pit his toughness against Democratic weakness. If their positions on war are practically the same, Giuliani loses because that's his only issue. Hillary, on the other hand, has a ton of other issues the middle class wants implemented like universal health care, for instance. Hillary can rise above the fray while her operatives run ads using her huge war chest attacking Giuliani for being a cross dresser, associating with pigs like Bernie Kerik, cheating on his wives, putting his emergency headquarters in the World Trade Center in return for a campaign contribution etc. etc. Let the Republicans have to deal with a vast left wing conspiracy. Outfox them. Put them on the defensive. Make their heads spin. There's enough dirt  to go around. Mix this with a little water and - voila! - let the slinging begin!

Meanwhile, Hillary should attack the Republicans where they are strongest - appealing to the venality and avariciousnesss of the American people. Their mantra will be - as it always is - the Democrats will raise your taxes. Now someone in Hillary's camp needs to sit down and look at the Federal budget, then completely  restructure it. Their mantra needs to be: tax the rich, lower taxes for the middle class. And don't be sheepish about this! Forget the poor because, unfortunately, they don't count in American politics. Progressivity needs to be reinstated in the tax structure. Exempt  the first $100,000. of earnings from the payroll tax and uncap it! That should fix social security. Stuff that will appeal to the majority of the voters. That needs to be made very clear. For too long the Republicans have gotten away with transfering wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. That's what they're all about. Their technique is to give everybody a tax cut, with the poor getting a pittance and the rich making out like the bandits they really are. And middle class voters have sold their souls for a mess of pottage, which the kind of tax breaks they have gotten really is.

In the past Democrats have been too nice, principaled and idealistic. They've had good ideas to be sure. Republicans have proven that it's not about good ideas; it's about who has the stronger pit bull, which is why I call it the Michael Vick school of politics. They appeal to the fear, crassness and ignorance not to mention the selfishnnesss and greed of the American people while the Democrats have tried to appeal to their higher nature. Who has won? That's why the Presidential campaign of 2008 will be a mud slinging contest with the one having the largest war chest for TV attack ads (and the strongest pit bull) winning.

Remove the Cap On Social Security and Means Test It

Social security is screwed up. It's a regressive tax on the poorest people. The rich are exempted from paying it, but they still receive it although they don't need it, and then the government "borrows" it to pay for its wars and military-industrial complex. Then politicians complain that it's going to run out of money. Duhhh!! And it's only supposed to be for people who paid into it but a third of the recipients are disabled people so it's not really just a retirement plan for working people but a plan for people who otherwise would be destitute which is what it should be. Then why are the rich who have investment income and don't need it receiving social seceurity benefits?

They tax employees and employers each 6.2% for social security (real name "Old Age, Survivors and Disability" program) and 1.45% for Medicare for a total of 15.3%. Note that this is a regressive tax in that the tax rate is just the same for those earning $1 a year as it is for those earning $90,000. Income tax, on the other hand, is minimal to non-existant for low wage earners so that the poorest wage earners end up paying more for social security and medicare tax than they do for income tax. In addition, self-employed workers such as myself pay a whopping 15.3% (both employee and employer shares) for social security and medicare. There are several things to do both to increase the fairness of the tax and the fairness of the benefits: 1) Eliminate the cap on income after $90,000  so that the rich will pay on their entire income not just part of it. After all these are the people who can afford to pay more. 2) Means test social security so that people with large investment incomes, passive incomes, unearned incomes or whatever you want to call it receive less or no social security income when they retire. 3) Make the social security and medicare tax progressive so that poor people pay little or nothing and rich people pay more than 7.65% if they're employees and more than 15.3% if they're self-employed. By the way poor self-employed are paying a higher percentage tax for social security and medicare than rich hedge fund managers are paying in income tax, and the rich hedge fund managers, earning upwards of $100 million a year, are only paying social security tax of 6.2% on the first $90,000 of their income, a mere pittance. However, there is no cap on the medicare portion of 1.45%, a step in the right direction! 4) Exempt the first $50,000. from social security and medicare taxes instead of all income greater than $90,000. In other words cap the bottom not the top!

Then they want to privatize it. Talk about compounding stupidity with insanity! First of all let's discuss the purpose of it. Shouldn't it be about providing people in their advanced years and old age with a minimally decent lifestyle regardless of their income from other sources such as life savings? If so, rich people shouldn't be getting it at all, right? But they should pay into it because there's no certainty that they will end up being rich. They could lose all their money and then they should be eligible for it. So means testing would guarantee that people not needing it wouldn't get it and people needing it would and in what amounts. The basic principle should be that the well off should help those less well off, a principle that's anathema to the Republican Party but a basic Christian principle. Jesus said to the rich man, "Sell what you have and give the money to the poor" or words to that effect and "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven", and "Blessed are the poor..." The basic Christian message is that the rich, because they have been extraordinarily fortunate, should help the poor because they have been extraordinarily unfortunate. Now these right wing Republican evangelicals believe the exact opposite disqualifying them from even being Christians in my view. Their philosophy is really social Darwinism - devil take the hindermost.

And Jesus didn't discriminate between the "deserving poor" and the "undeserving poor." So even the good for nothings who have squandered their money on drugs, made bad decisions one after another their entire life and were too lazy to get off their butts still deserve a minimally decent life in their old age or if they become disabled. Jesus never discriminated between deserving and undeserving poor. But right wing Republican evangelicals do. So-called megachurches with incomes in the tens of millions a year might qualify as Christian if they gave the bulk of that to the poor, but, if they don't, they're not Christian even though they call themselves that, in my opinion. Christianity has become a distortion and perversion of Jesus' teachings, but this is nothing new. Medieval popes collected indulgences (money constituents paid to get themselves or their relatives out of purgatory and into heaven), collected art, fought battles and in general lived the lives of secular humanists. Christianity would not even have been a major world religion if the Roman emperor Constantine had not made it the official religion of Rome in 325 AD. Theodosius made it the state religion in 392 AD. After that all other religions were forbidden. So Christianity has been subverted and perverted for 1700 years or more. This is nothing new.

Matthew 25 says: "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.' Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Jesus' so-called social gospel is at the heart of his ministry. The rich should help the poor. Social security at its heart represents an even lesser requirement in that, for the most part, it represents the average person paying into a fund to eventually help herself. Paying in according to income should go without saying. In fact the more one earns, the higher percentage one should pay. In other words the social security tax should be progressive. On the other hand the payout should be according to need. Rich people don't need to collect social security. Poor people do. But there is no way of knowing who is going to be rich and who is going to be poor. That's why it's an insurance program. And the refusal of most Christian churches, especially right wing evangelicals, to support government programs to help the poor and disadvantaged is why I'm not a Christian. At least not in their sense.

And then they try to parse it that they don't believe in government programs to help the poor, but they do believe in private or voluntary programs to help the poor. Give me a break! Government is we the people acting collectively. I'm sure the rich right wing Republicans were grateful for government help when their houses were about to burn in the recent California fires. There is an appropriate sphere for government activity and vice versa for private  enterprise. Some things can be done more efficiently and effectively by collective or government action, namely building roads, fire fighting and helping the poor. Private old age insurance would simply screw the elderly in order to generate higher profits for stockholders and higher salaries for CEOs.

Another thing: in order to qualify for social security one must work ten years. There are a lot of people who, for one reason or another, have not worked or have not paid into social security for 10 years. So what's to happen to them in their old age. Out on the street? Shouldn't everybody be entitled to some minimal assistance in their old age? Homelessness is a travesty, but that's what happens to poor people who cannot pay rent in the USA. Many of them are veterans. This is a double travesty. Alcoholics and drug addicts should not be given money but in kind food and housing. Nobody should be out on the street.

Current law exempts anyone from paying social security taxes on salaries more than $90,000. That means that someone earning a million dollars (or a hundred million in terms of hedge fund managers) pays the same social security taxes as someone earning $90,000. This is not right. And it isn't right that the Federal Government is actually using money that has been collected for social security and medicare to fund other parts of the government, namely, war and the military-industrial complex. Then the Bush Administration has no money for children's health insurance, the SCHIP program, that, if entirely funded, would represent about two weeks worth of the money spent on the war in Iraq. There's always money for war and tax reductions for the rich. The poor have to beg for crumbs from the table.

Ahmadinejad

It is fashionable among Americans to deride Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Columbia President Bollinger did in what I'm assuming was supposed to be an introduction. Instead he insulted Ahmadinejad by saying, "Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." Some introduction!

Actually, Ahmadinejad is an intelligent man who came from a poor background and got his university education (including a PhD) and his start in the world from excelling on his university entrance exams. His rise to the top of Iranian society is a rags to riches story in which he got where he is due to innate talent and not political connections. He seems to truly want to engage in a dialog with the American people, but the American people, for the most part, are having none of it. They want to see the world in black and white terms. Everyone is either on our side or they're our enemies. This attitude can never bring about peace in the world or a resolution of the world's pressing problems.

Ahmadinejad has been widely criticized and reviled for making two statements: 1) that the holocaust never happened and 2) that the state of Israel should be wiped off the map. There is some doubt whether he made these statements in such stark terms. According to aljazeera.net what he said at Columbia was this:

Ahmadinejad rejected accusations that he has denied the Holocaust actually happened, but argued for more research to be conducted on the subject.     "I'm not saying that it didn't happen at all," he said. "I said, granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"

Ahmadinejad has a point, but the real point is this: to deny something happened in the past or even to deny the earth is round, for example, is not something to be fought over. Everyone is free to believe what they want no matter how ridiculous unless their belief threatens an imminent negative action toward someone else. To believe the Holocaust never happened is not in and of itself a threat to the Jewish people or anyone else. One could quibble about the exact number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Some might say it was seven million; some might say it was 5 million. But so what? Is this something to fight over? I don't think so.   

As for Ahmadinejad's other supposed quote - that Israel should be wiped off the map - there seems to be doubt he ever said that - at least in such stark terms. According to npr.org:

For instance, the view that the Holocaust either did not happen — or that it has been blown out of proportion — is not uncommon in Islamic countries. Many Islamic countries, including U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, do not recognize Israel. Ahmadinejad has been quoted as saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map," but some scholars say he was mistranslated while quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini, who actually said "the regime that occupies Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of history."

Ahmadinejad claims not to be an anti-semite, but that the Jewish state of Israel has usurped Palestinian lands and is, therefore, illegal. It's certainly a debatable point, at least, to anyone who doesn't fervently believe that God gave the land in question to the Jews. What's holding up progress in resolving the situation is that too many people on both sides, including the Palestinians, fervently believe that God gave the land to them and no one else. This is the extremist position, one that will brook no compromise.

Here's what Ahmadinejad said at Columbia regarding the Jewish people:

We are friends of all the nations. We are also friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security ... in our constitution and our laws and the parliamentary elections for every 150,000 people we get one representative in the parliament. For the Jewish community one-fifth of this number they still get one independent representative in the parliament... What we say is that to solve this 60-year problem, we must allow the Palestinian people to decide about its future for itself.

So to clarify Ahmadinejad's position, I think it's fair to say that he doesn't hate the Jewish people. He just thinks the Jewish state was formed in such a way as to deprive the Palestinians of their legal rights, a common position among Muslims in the Middle East and one which should at least be understood and heard in a respectful manner. The disrespect shown to Ahmadinejad in his appearance at Columbia by President Bollinger and others served no useful purpose. It didn't help the cause of peace, resolution of the Israel-Palestine problem or reconciliation among peoples of the world with different views from our own.

Fractal Voting

Fractal Voting (FV) is a voting method I developed. It is one of a class of utilitarian methods similar to range voting (RV) in some respects. Other utilitarian methods are approval voting (AV) and Evaluative Voting (EV). RV, AV and EV are all special cases of FV. Utilitarian voting methods involve a ranking of candidates or alternatives from most preferred to least preferred. In general there are two types of rankings: ordinal and cardinal. Ordinal ranking involves a list such as ABCD where the position of the letter, for example, indicates its preference ranking in this case A is preferred to B is preferred to C etc. Cardinal ranking also indicates how much A is preferred to B and how much B is preferred to C etc. This "how much" is also referred to as preference intensity. With utilitarian methods  numbers are usually asssigned to the candidates and the differences between the numerical rankings of two candidates indicate the preference intensity. One of the differences between FV and RV is that voters don't assign numbers to the candidates but indicate  preference intensities graphically.

Fractal Voting consists of a graphical user interface (GUI) or we could call it a graphical voter (GVI) interface (we will use the terms voter and user interchangably) and underlying software which translates the voter's preferences into numerical values which can then be used to sum up the votes for  each candidate and  determine the winner. Range Voting involves a system defined scale such as 0-99, 0-9 etc. The voter assigns a number contained in this scale to each candidate, and then the numbers are summed for each candidate to determine the winner. With Fractal the voter determines the scale and the scale can be more finely determined or less finely determined in different segments as the voter wishes. For example, if the voter wants to differentiate among candidates near the top of the scale more finely, he or she can subdivide that portion of the scale more finely in order to make these distinctions. The fineness of the scale is called the sensitivity level.  The sensitivity level, in general, will differ for each voter depending on how finely a voter can distinguish between two candidates or alternatives. This concept can be generalized to include fine distinctions between tastes or smells for example. A person might be asked to distinguish and rank several wines. Some people would be able to distinguish them very finely and others would only be able to make rough distinctions, say between good and bad. With RV, the system defines the sensitivity level which is the same for all voters. RV with a scale 0-99 has a higher sensitivity level than RV with a scale 0-9 and allows finer distinctions among candidates to be made. For example, candidates A and B might each be given ratings of 5 with RV (0-9) but given ratings of 51 and 57 with range (0-99). So finer distinctions can be made the more levels are available. 

With Fractal, the user or voter has complete control over the sensitivity which is variable over the whole scale. For instance, at the beginning of the voting process, the first thing a voter would do is to choose the number of levels he or she would like to start out with. This might be just two - good and bad. So there would be two "buckets" if you will, the good bucket and the bad bucket. All candidates in the good bucket would be indistinguishable from or indifferent to each other. However, before choosing the number of levels or buckets, the voter would first choose their most preferred or favorite candidate or candidates and least preferred candidate or candidates. Then all others would be relative to those. So initially a screen would be presented to the voters with two buckets - one for most preferred and one for least preferred. The voter would drag appropriate candidates onto these buckets from a list arbitrarily located on the right side of the screen. Then the voter would choose how many buckets or levels to start with. Please note that, if the voter chose 100 buckets and didn't go any deeper or finer than that in terms of sensitivity level, the voting method would be the same as RV. After the initial choice of number of buckets, that number of buckets appears on the screen as well as the buckets at either end denoting most preferred and least preferred. Now the voter drags other candidates from the list onto the buckets. Then the voter has the option of clicking on any one of the buckets and further subdividing this segment of the  scale. Let's say that the voter started with 10 buckets, and, in all but one bucket, there is only one candidate. In one bucket there are 4 candidates. The voter may choose to click on that bucket and then choose to subdivide that bucket alone into, for instance, 4 finer levels. These buckets then appear on the screen along with the list of the candidates who were in the original bucket. The voter then drags candidates from this list onto one of the buckets that represent subdividions of the original bucket. This process can be repeated indefinitely leading to finer and finer distinctions. When the voter is satisfied he or she can terminate the process and submit his or her vote.

The final vote can be printed out as a paper ballot showing an overall scale subdivided as the voter has indicated and all candidates listed in order of preference, preference intensity and fineness of distinction or sensitivity. The underlying software can be implemented in terms of a push down stack where the first word in the stack contains the number of words in the stack. Initially, this would be 2 for most preferred and least preferred. These words might contain the numbers 1 and 0, respectively. As the voter adds levels or buckets, words are added to the stack.  The stack would be popped up to the level where the voter indicates that he or she wishes to add levels, and then the number of levels added that the voter has indicated. For instance, if the voter initially wants to order candidates just in terms of good and bad (a binary decision), two words would be added to the stack between the words corresponding to least preferred and most preferred. One might contain the number 1/4 (corresponding to the mid-point of the "bad" bucket) and one might contain 3/4 (corresponding to the mid-point of the "good" bucket). Continuing on in this way, the buckets are each defined in terms of a numerical value in a process that is totally transparent to the voter who just has to deal with a simple GUI and repeat the same process over and over to as many levels as he or she wishes. Then each candidate is associated with a pointer that points to the appropriate numerical value in the stack.

Since the process is the same for the voter no matter how deeply he wishes to proceed in terms of sensitivity level, we call this method Fractal Voting. Think of it as branches on a tree some of which are subdivided into smaller branches which are further subdivided and so on. At each stage the voter performs the same steps so the process is simple and intuitive for the voter.  This is the essence of the fractal process: no matter what the depth, the procedure is the same. At completion each candidate will be asssociated with a pointer which represents his numerical rank. The pointer will point to a word in the stack which will contain a value between 0 and 1 which represents the intensity  of that rank. Note that, unlike RV, the voter never has to assign numerical values to candidates making the provess simpler and more intuitive akin to punching a hole on a ballot or putting a check mark next to a candidate. When all voters have submitted their ballots, the numerical values associated with each candidate are summed and the one(s) with the highest value win(s).

The advantages of Fractal over Range are the following:

1) There are no "partial strength" votes. A partial strength vote is submitted in Range when a voter does not pin his most (least) preferred candidates to the limits of the range.

2) The voter has a simpler and more intuitive while at the same time more sophisticated interface which allows him or her more options in the voting procedure.

3) The voter can choose his or her own sensitivity level and can continue to refine this as the voting process continues.

4) The voter can go into detail selectively in those parts of the overall ranking that concern him or her while doing a rough ranking in other parts of the overall scale.

5) The voter need not be concerned with numbers at all, but only with a visual on-screen representation of the preference rankings and intensities.

Fractal Voting lends itself to delegable proxies since various parts of the tree could be designated and filled in by trusted parties who have pre-voted and whose results are only a mouse click away. For instance, the voter could select certain candidates, indicate he wished to make a proxy vote and then select Ted Kennedy from a list of proxies. Then these candidates would be added to the screen in exactly the way that Ted Kennedy had previously indicated he would vote. This method would lend itself either to touch screen or computer screen voting. Security of the vote could be guaranteed by different methods, but this is really a separate issue. Issuance of a paper ballot and receipt would be a start.

In summary Fractal Voting is a generalization of AV, EV and RV and a voter could choose to vote in any of these styles if so desired. It is a utilitarian voting method since the placing of each candidate on a line in order of preference ranking and intensity reveals the voter's utility for each candidate in some sense. Social utility could be measured for each candidate by simply adding up the numerical values asssociated with that candidate in the stack over all voters. This would not represent a social utility in an absolute sense but in a relative sense. The voter is allowed to make either fine or rough distinctions among the candidates according to his or her sensitivity levels and/or knowledge of the candidates, and also to rely on the advice of trusted experts who have studied the issues and/or candidates more closely. Both the GUI and the underlying software are easily implemented.

What Congress Should Do: Fund the Troops; Defund the Contractors

A new appro- priations bill for $50 billion to fight the war in Iraq will soon be before Congress. Bush will charac- terize it as support for our troops. If you don't vote for it, you will be accused of not supporting the troops. But wait a minute. This appropriations bill, like the others before it, if you read the fine print, will be about minimal support for the troops and maximal support for the contractors who are as numerous in Iraq as the troops themselves, and they earn 10 times as much as the troops. Couple this with the enormous profits that go to the companies that employ them, and you start to realize that the bulk of the money goes not to the troops but to the contractors. Why has Congress not realized this and made an issue of it? They should submit a bill that defunds the contractors but supports the troops. Bush's propaganda machine will go to work saying they're not supporting the troops. Let's have a pitched battle if necessary. If Bush keeps vetoing similar bills, who is not supporting the  troops?

The contractors in Iraq are a thorn in Iraq's side. They  are accountable to no one by fiats imposed by the US on Iraq. Recently, a Blackwater PSD (personal security detail) shot, killed and wounded a large number of innocent Iraqi  civilians. It's not the first time. The Iraqi government proceeded to kick Blackwater out of the country. However, after "consultations" with the US, they rescinded that order. This goes to show that they are a US puppet government not a sovereign state and besides they are totally corrupt. Who would want to serve in the Iraqi government unless they were getting their pockets copiously lined?

Congress should submit and then resubmit essen- tially the same bill. Stand up for what you believe, Congress- men and women. If it means that the whole war then becomes defunded because Bush keeps vetoing a bill that would provide funding for the troops (but not the  contractors), so be it. The war and US involvement in Iraq would be over. If Bush, as Commmander-in-Chief, wants to leave his own troops there to fend for themselves without adequate funding to get out of Iraq gracefully, let it be on his shoulders that he wouldn't accept funding that would have either allowed the troops to continue on their mission or be redeployed with a minimum of hassle. If the Dems don't stand up to this guy and end this stupid war which is costing several American lives and $300 million per day not to mention numerous innocent Iraqi lives and millions of internal and external Iraqi refugees, they will become political nonentities. They will be irrelevant. Why play for time? For what? To win the Presidency? Show the American people they have some cajones and do the right thing. Stand up to Bush and the Publican neocons. They're total f---ups!

Oh, and by the way, Bush has finally admitted that he plans for the US to have an "enduring relationship" with Iraq. How prescient of him to have started building the "enduring bases" as soon as the US invaded and took over. That and the enormous US Embassy. Why they thought they were going to be leaving as soon as the nasty business was done. At least that was what the American people were led to believe. But no, as it turns out, the best thing is to have an "enduring relationship." Finally, the neocons are owning the intentions they had in the first place: an American power base in the middle east and easy access to huge oil deposits. And Alan Greenspan admits in his book, "The Age of Turbulence," that the US is in it for the oil. Surprise. Surprise! Jeez, I thought it was only to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. They sure had me fooled. They were there for the oil and permanent (some say "enduring") military bases from day 1!

The  Democrats are disappointing because they have done nothing since they gained control of Congress except to wimp out. Why did Harry Reid even allow a vote on that stupid bill to censure MoveOn.org? If the  Republicans controlled the Senate, would they even let a Democrat sponsored bill come to the floor for a vote. You bet not!  The Dems have good ideas, but they need to play hardball as long as the Publicans are playing hardball. They're being too nice to them. And where has it gotten them? You can go back through the history of a lot of nice, well-intentioned, intelligent men who've gone down to defeat at  Publican hands simply because they were too nice, starting with Adlai Stevenson, an extremely capable man who was labeled an "egghead," dismissed and dispatched by the Pubs. And then there was "Happy Warrior"  Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry. Even successsful Democratic Presidential candidates with extraordinary achievements like Franklin D Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were and are still being mocked, castigated, demonized, vilified, derided and otherwise ridiculed. I don't have to go through the whole litany of how these gentlemen were  mischaracterized from being "soft" on communism", the Willie Horton ads, Dukakis in the tank, Swift Boating etc. etc.

Why do the American people fall for such garbage? Why did the German people fall for Hitler?  It is for similar reasons in  both cases. Emotional appeals to fear, hatred, egotism and selfishness seem to trump appeals to logic, reason, understanding, caring and compasssion. The headline in a British newspaper after George W Bush won the Presidency the  second time was "How can 159 million people be so dumb?" In a democracy you're stuck with the average mentality of the average voter, and, as long as the average voter is a son of a bitch, the average President will be a son of a bitch. Unfortunately, human nature is much more susceptible to