Welcome to Pottersville 2 (Blogging Against Fascism!): Madoff and Mankiw and Inequality: The Corporatist Ideology At Work (Angry Bear)

Ukraine Disinformation Battle: Little Green Men, Hamsters and the Fog of War

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There has always been a gap in how media on both sides of the former Iron Curtain have reported world events, and it’s growing as the crisis in Ukraine escalates. It has become increasingly difficult to obtain reliable information from any side — west, east, or further east — about what is going on in Eastern Ukraine. While powerful propaganda machines fill the public space with smoke and mirrors, one of the few facts that can be positively established in Eastern Ukraine is that the body count is steadily growing: a testament of just how easy it is for self-interested foreign powers to start, either intentionally or recklessly, a civil war in the heart of Europe. Continuing coverage is available at this link and this link.

Paul Krugman:

Paul Craig Roberts:

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US Media _________________
"Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda."

"The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media.

Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives — not by journalists — whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers.

Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."
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War On Terror _________________
Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and claims it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which constitute war crimes. _________________
Republican Party _________________
Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution. _________________
American Democracy and Oligarchy _________________
Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.

And that's what the Greeks are in the streets protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west.

Revolution is the only answer... We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?" _________________
Farewell Speech _________________
"Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It,"

Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins:

"There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest."

It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization.

He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future.

He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off." _________________

Liberal?

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal."

John F. Kennedy, 1960
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Citizen's United

"[T]his Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

– Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
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Sunday, January 8, 2012

Madoff and Mankiw and Inequality: The Corporatist Ideology At Work (Angry Bear)

I'm a little bit behind in posting this tidbit from The Angry Bear featuring the notorious black news hole (WaPo) and the "newspaper of record," so I'll catch up today. It's an important commentary about what we lose when we "march forward" without precisely defining and punishing the wrongs that have been done previously, as the Obamaniacs so trustingly preach daily (13-dimension chess? HA!!!). And we do not make any friends under the Rethug tent by doing so. Trust me. (And, yes, many good people (who sincerely want another candidate) will vote for him again because they don't have any other candidate, do they?)

It also gives some needed perspective about the voters who continue to march eagerly to the polls (and caucuses) who have very little comprehension about the change in the statistics governing the movement in this country of real wealth during the last 30 years as one of my commenters so ably discussed about my last post on a satire, which may have been over a few heads. Sorry, but we're marching on here too.

Madoff and Mankiw and Inequality - The Corporatist Ideology At Work

There are two Letters to the Editor in the (New York) Times today that are worth noting - as usual, the 'real' analysis is hidden in the interior pages, positioned next to a huge ad (for an investment adviser, no less). Chris Cannon from San Francisco notes that treating Madoff as the iconic symbol of the financial disruption caused by the credit bubble is problematic.

"Everyone agrees that Mr. Madoff broke the rules. But the damage done by those acting as allowed by our ineffective rules cost the public much more. 'Our troubled financial times' are the product of a bubble economy fueled by cheap money, an abject failure by rating agencies, regulatory agencies that have been hamstrung by regulations written by financial lobbyists, and a laserlike focus by some bank leaders on yearly bonuses." New York Times, Dec. 18, 2011.)
Steven Conn, Yellow Springs, Ohio, notes that Greg Mankiw (economic adviser to Republicans, and specifically to Mitt Romney) misses the boat on understanding the way that economics is burdened with ideology.

"He seems not to understand that economists aren't really objective and dispassionate scientists. Economics is merely a set of tools with which we build the kind of society we want to live in. Defining what that means is, of course, an ideological proposition, and thus all economic 'theory' is freighted with ideological baggage." (Letters, New York Times, Dec. 18, 2011.)
These two ideas are related. One of the reasons that someone like Madoff could get away with a long-term, enormous economic scam is that the reigning economic ideology from 1980 to 2010 has been the neoliberal belief in unfettered markets, taking power with 'reaganomics' and the acceptance of 'greed is good' corporatism that took hold in 1980, in which those that are sleazy, fraudulent or just intent on having things work out a certain way can take enormous means to achieve their petty ends - like hiring just-out-of-Congress people to panhandle for them in the halls of Congress and to hobnob with regulators, drafting the rules that govern the industry. It is the enormous expansion of this corporatist perspective that permits money to buy the rules that caused the financial crisis and that continues to pervade the policy solutions that can get through a Congress that is beholden to lobbyists and Big Money in various industries.

As long as we leave tax policy fundamentally to the corporatist moneybags and ideological economists, we can expect regulations to fall short of what they ought to do to protect ordinary Americans; corporations to make money out of failing to do what they ought to do to protect their workers, their customers, and their communities; tax laws that fail to exact a reasonable share of the fiscal burden from the very wealthy (such as the current trend towards decimation of the estate tax, often the only way that some extraordinarily wealthy families pay much of anything, because most of their income is in the favored form of capital gains and income on capital); and the passage of stupid laws that take away our most precious Constitutional rights - like the legislation under consideration that will permit the MILITARY TO DETAIN US CITIZENS WITHOUT DUE PROCESS.

And the result of these tax and economic policies will be a continuation of the trend towards a two-class society of the very rich and the rest of us that has been aided and abetted by reaganomics. See Allegretto, The Few, The Proud, and The Very Rich, Berkeley Blog, Dec. 2011.

The share of wealth held by the top fifth is about 87.2 percent while the bottom four-fifths share the remaining 12.8 percent of wealth — so the Occupiers are correct in their assessment. And, the riches of those in the top 1 percent are about 225 times greater than that held by the typical family — it was 125 times in 1962 — so, Grandma was correct too.

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In 2007 (the most recent SCF) the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 was $1.54 trillion or roughly the same amount of wealth held by the entire bottom fifty percent of American families . . . . Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons — all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart — were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007 — which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent! Id.
(Originally published at http://ataxingmatter.blogs.com/tax/2011/12/madoff-and-mankiw-.html.

Tim Worstall "Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons — all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart — were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007 — which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent!" As I have noted elsewhere. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/12/14/six-waltons-have-more-wealth-than-the-bottom-30-of-americans/ The fact is that the bottom 25% of Americans have no wealth at all, or even negative wealth. Meaning that you or I, with maybe $10 more assets than we have debts, have more wealth than the entire bottom 25% of Americans put together. That six billionaires have more than the bottom 30% is pretty much a "Meh" moment.