Let's Get Behind Some REAL (Decent) Candidates! (Norman Solomon)

Yes, "they" are getting rid of Dennis Kucinich's district in Ohio. They can't defeat him any other way. And it's a fact that the majority of the people in this country want a decent government responsive to the majority of its inhabitants in a viable, sustainable world. Someone is beginning to put the plan together:

. . . wouldn't it be nice to really have one of us in Congress? Wouldn't that be useful if the tide began to turn, whether slowly or in an immediate upheaval?

As I write this, Republicans in Ohio are working on eliminating Congressman Dennis Kucinich's district. They're not trying to vote him out, but to erase his district from the map so that he has nowhere to run for reelection, at least not in Ohio. Also, as I write this, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, longtime chair of the Progressive Caucus and ally of the peace movement, is announcing her intention not to run for reelection.

Yet a possibility is opening up of replacing Woolsey with someone who clearly has the potential to be even better than Kucinich has been thus far.

No matter how Woolsey's district is redrawn in California, it will remain a very progressive district. This means that nationally those who pay attention to and work on elections, as well as those who want their children to have a decent world to live in, ought to take some interest in replacing Woolsey with a real progressive leader, not just someone who will vote the right way most of the time, not just someone who will say the right things, not even just someone who will stick their neck out and take the lead on matters that are deemed controversial within the Beltway, but someone who will educate, encourage activism, and organize within the government.

Luckily, that candidate is available and running, and he's running against one -- possibly two -- Obama followers. No Republican or independent is going to be elected to Congress from Marin County. The representative is either going to be a robotic Democratic drone who votes as the President instructs, thus inverting and perverting our system of checks and balances. Or the representative is going to be the person that progressives turn to for support from around the nation in the years to come: Norman Solomon.

If you don't know who Norman is, read his Wikipedia page.

Norman is one of the best activists I know, and one of the best book authors, possibly the very best columnist, and undoubtedly one of the easiest colleagues to work with whether we agree on something or not (we're working together on http://rootsaction.org ).

Norman may not agree with everything in this column. But I'm not looking for someone identical to myself to elect to Congress. I think Norman Solomon would make a better Congress member than I would, and than most of us would. I think he is ideally suited for it. I expect him to stay connected to the activist world, to make ideal use of independent and corporate media, and to build a caucus of Congress members that doesn't just add members to its ranks but actually takes actions that impact our public policy. When I say I expect these things, I don't mean that I am making these demands of Norman (though I am); I mean that we can safely predict that he will conduct himself in this manner if elected.

That's always a big if. The forces of mediocrity are always gathering strength against the exceptional. Let's nip in the bud the notion that California's Sixth District should be "represented" by a run of the mill hack. We can do that by pumping thousands of small donations from ordinary people all over the country into Solomon's campaign this week before the totals raised thus far are counted and announced at the end of June. Solomon has already raised over $100,000. If Rahm hadn't left for Chicago, the national machine to stop Solomon would be in full gear already. But people who stand for nothing are easily intimidated. I'm doing my bit to help scare them off right now. Won't you? Please give at least the price of a fancy coffee for the sake of having a people's leader in Washington when we need one: http://www.ActBlue.com/page/Supportathon.

Read the whole article here. _____________________

"Post-Orwellian Times" Truly Upon US: Pure "EVIL Emanates from Washington" DC - "The Collapse of Law Is Across the Board" Calling "Daffy Duck!"

Safety uber alles. That has become the motto of a once free and independent American people, who once were admired but today are despised. . . . The collapse of law is across the board. The Supreme Court decided that it is “free speech” for America to be ruled by corporations, not by law and certainly not by the people. On June 27, the US Supreme Court advanced the fascist state that the “conservative” court is creating with the ruling that Arizona cannot publicly fund election candidates in order to level the playing field currently unbalanced by corporate money. The “conservative” US Supreme Court considers public funding of candidates to be unconstitutional, but not the “free speech” funding by business interests who purchase the government in order to rule the country. The US Supreme Court has become a corporate functionary and legitimizes rule by corporations. Mussolini called this rule, imposed on Americans by the US Supreme Court, fascism. The Supreme Court also ruled on June 27 that California violated the US Constitution by banning the sale of violent video games to kids, despite evidence that the violent games trained the young to violent behavior. It is fine with the Supreme Court for soldiers, whose lives are on the line, to be prohibited under penalty of law from drinking beer before they are 21, but the idiot Court supports inculcating kids to be murderers, as long as it is in the interest of corporate profits, in the name of “free speech.” Amazing, isn’t it, that a court so concerned with ‘free speech” has not protected American war protesters from unconstitutional searches and arrests, or protected protesters from being attacked by police or herded into fenced-in areas distant from the object of protest.

Try to find any portion of the following essay with which you can intelligently disagree. And then let me know. I don't think very many fools (or easily led people) read this blog.

A World Overwhelmed By Western Hypocrisy Paul Craig Roberts June 29, 2011 Western institutions have become caricatures of hypocrisy. The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank are violating their charters in order to bail out French, German, and Dutch private banks. The IMF is only empowered to make balance of payments loans, but is lending to the Greek government for prohibited budgetary reasons in order that the Greek government can pay the banks. The ECB is prohibited from bailing out member country governments, but is doing so anyway in order that the banks can be paid. The German parliament approved the bailout, which violates provisions of the European Treaty and Germany’s own Basic Law. The case is in the German Constitutional Court, a fact unreported in the US media. US president George W. Bush appointed an immigrant, who is not impressed with the US Constitution and the separation of powers, to the Justice (sic) Department in order to get a ruling that the president has “unitary powers” that elevate him above statutory US law, treaties, and international law. According to this immigrant’s legal decisions, the “unitary executive” can violate with impunity the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prevents spying on Americans without warrants obtained from the FISA Court. The immigrant also ruled that Bush could violate with impunity the statutory US laws against torture as well as the Geneva Conventions. In other words, the fictional “unitary powers” make the president into a Caesar. Constitutional protections, such as habeas corpus, which prohibit government from holding people indefinitely without presenting charges and evidence to a court, and which prohibit government from denying detained people due process of law and access to an attorney, were thrown out the window by the US Department of Justice (sic), and the federal courts went along with most of it. As did Congress, “the people’s representatives”. Congress even enacted the Military Tribunals Commissions Act of 2006, signed by the White House Brownshirt on October 17. This act allows anyone alleged to be an “unlawful enemy combatant” to be sentenced to death on the basis of secret and hearsay evidence not presented in the kangaroo military court placed out of reach of US federal courts. The crazed nazis in Congress who supported this total destruction of Anglo-American law masqueraded as “patriots in the war against terrorism.” The act designates anyone accused by the US, without evidence being presented, as being part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or “associated forces” to be an “unlawful enemy combatant,” which strips the person of the protection of law. Not even George Orwell could have conceived of such a formulation. The Taliban consists of indigenous Afghan peoples, who, prior to the US military intervention, were fighting to unify the country. The Taliban are Islamist, and the US government fears another Islamist government, like the one in Iran that was blowback from US intervention in Iran’s internal affairs. The “freedom and democracy” Americans overthrew an elected Iranian leader and imposed a tyrant. American-Iranian relations have never recovered from the tyranny that Washington imposed on Iranians. Washington is opposed to any government whose leaders cannot be purchased to perform as Washington’s puppets. This is why George W. Bush’s regime invaded Afghanistan, why Washington overthrew Saddam Hussein, and why Washington wants to overthrow Libya, Syria, and Iran. America’s First Black (or half white) President inherited the Afghan war, which has lasted longer than World War II with no victory in sight. Instead of keeping with his election promises and ending the fruitless war, Obama intensified it with a “surge,” The war is now ten years old, and the Taliban control more of the country than does the US and its NATO puppets. Frustrated by their failure, the Americans and their NATO puppets increasingly murder women, children, village elders, Afghan police, and aid workers. A video taken by a US helicopter gunship, leaked to Wikileaks and released, shows American forces, as if they were playing video games, slaughtering civilians, including camera men for a prominent news service, as they are walking down a peaceful street. A father with small children, who stopped to help the dying victims of American soldiers’ fun and games, was also blown away, as were his children. The American voices on the video blame the children’s demise on the father for bringing kids into a “war zone.” It was no war zone, just a quiet city street with civilians walking along. The video documents American crimes against humanity as powerfully as any evidence used against the Nazis in the aftermath of World War II at the Nuremberg Trials. Perhaps the height of lawlessness was attained when the Obama regime announced that it had a list of American citizens who would be assassinated without due process of law. One would think that if law any longer had any meaning in Western civilization, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, indeed, the entire Bush/Cheney regime, as well as Tony Blair and Bush’s other co-conspirators, would be standing before the International Criminal Court. Yet it is Gadaffi for whom the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants. Western powers are using the International Criminal Court, which is supposed to serve justice, for self-interested reasons that are unjust. What is Gadaffi’s crime? His crime is that he is attempting to prevent Libya from being overthrown by a US-supported, and perhaps organized, armed uprising in Eastern Libya that is being used to evict China from its oil investments in Eastern Libya. Libya is the first armed revolt in the so-called “Arab Spring.” Reports have made it clear that there is nothing “democratic” about the revolt. http://www.english.rfi.fr/print/95867?print=now The West managed to push a “no-fly” resolution through its puppet organization, the United Nations. The resolution was limited to neutralizing Gadaffi’s air force. However, Washington, and its French puppet, Sarkozy, quickly made an “expansive interpretation” of the UN resolution and turned it into authorization to become directly involved in the war. Gadaffi has resisted the armed rebellion against the state of Libya, which is the normal response of a government to rebellion. The US would respond the same as would the UK and France. But by trying to prevent the overthrow of his country and his country from becoming another American puppet state, Gadaffi has been indicted. The International Criminal Court knows that it cannot indict the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity--Bush, Blair, Obama, and Sarkozy--but the court needs cases and accepts the victims that the West succeeds in demonizing. In our post-Orwellian times, everyone who resists or even criticizes the US is a criminal. For example, Washington considers Julian Assange and Bradley Manning to be criminals, because they made information available that exposed crimes committed by the US government. Anyone who even disagrees with Washington, is considered to be a “threat,” and Obama can have such “threats” assassinated or arrested as a “terrorist suspect” or as someone “providing aid and comfort to terrorists.” American conservatives and liberals, who once supported the US Constitution, are all in favor of shredding the Constitution in the interest of being “safe from terrorists.” They even accept such intrusions as porno-scans and sexual groping in order to be “safe” on air flights. The collapse of law is across the board. The Supreme Court decided that it is “free speech” for America to be ruled by corporations, not by law and certainly not by the people. On June 27, the US Supreme Court advanced the fascist state that the “conservative” court is creating with the ruling that Arizona cannot publicly fund election candidates in order to level the playing field currently unbalanced by corporate money. The “conservative” US Supreme Court considers public funding of candidates to be unconstitutional, but not the “free speech” funding by business interests who purchase the government in order to rule the country. The US Supreme Court has become a corporate functionary and legitimizes rule by corporations. Mussolini called this rule, imposed on Americans by the US Supreme Court, fascism. The Supreme Court also ruled on June 27 that California violated the US Constitution by banning the sale of violent video games to kids, despite evidence that the violent games trained the young to violent behavior. It is fine with the Supreme Court for soldiers, whose lives are on the line, to be prohibited under penalty of law from drinking beer before they are 21, but the idiot Court supports inculcating kids to be murderers, as long as it is in the interest of corporate profits, in the name of “free speech.” Amazing, isn’t it, that a court so concerned with ‘free speech” has not protected American war protesters from unconstitutional searches and arrests, or protected protesters from being attacked by police or herded into fenced-in areas distant from the object of protest. As the second decade of the 21st century opens, those who oppose US hegemony and the evil that emanates from Washington risk being declared to be “terrorists.” If they are American citizens, they can be assassinated. If they are foreign leaders, their country can be invaded. When captured, they can be executed, like Saddam Hussein, or sent off to the ICC, like the hapless Serbs, who tried to defend their country from being dismantled by the Americans. And the American sheeple think that they have “freedom and democracy.” Washington relies on fear to coverup its crimes. A majority of Americans now fear and hate Muslims, peoples about whom Americans know nothing but the racist propaganda which encourages Americans to believe that Muslims are hiding under their beds in order to murder them in their sleep. The neoconservatives, of course, are the purveyors of fear. The more fearful the sheeple, the more they seek safety in the neocon police state and the more they overlook Washington’s crimes of aggression against Muslims. Safety uber alles. That has become the motto of a once free and independent American people, who once were admired but today are despised. In America lawlessness is now complete. Women can have abortions, but if they have stillbirths, they are arrested for murder. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges Americans are such a terrified and abused people that a 95-year old woman dying from leukemia traveling to a last reunion with family members was forced to remove her adult diaper in order to clear airport security. http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/mother-41324-search-adult.html Only a population totally cowed would permit such abuses of human dignity.

In a June 27 interview on National Public Radio, Ban Ki-moon, Washington’s South Korean puppet installed as the Secretary General of the United Nations, was unable to answer why the UN and the US tolerate the slaughter of unarmed civilians in Bahrain, but support the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Gadaffi for defending Libya against armed rebellion. Gadaffi has killed far fewer people than the US, UK, or the Saudis in Bahrain. Indeed, NATO and the Americans have killed more Libyans than has Gadaffi. The difference is that the US has a naval base in Bahrain, but not in Libya. There is nothing left of the American character. Only a people who have lost their soul could tolerate the evil that emanates from Washington.

And if you thought that was enough for one day, think again. (Do you get the feeling as I do that the all-powerful people behind the scenes are enjoying herky-jerking the strings attached to Obama? I even heard today that he's told his audience (not his golf buddy Boehner though, I'm betting) in solemn tones that taxes MUST be increased on the wealthy. As if.) Russ Baker, our man on the scene of injustice, strikes again (emphasis marks added - Ed.):

LIBYA UPDATE…Featuring Media and Congress As Daffy Duck

Russ Baker on Jun 29, 2011

Article Summary: The why of the massive bombing of Libya continues to grow more nonsensical. Congress is baffled into paralysis, and our major media stick to the most honorable interpretation — despite evidence to the contrary.

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Are you following the growing madness that is Libya policy?

We’ve been harping on this for some time, so if you’re a regular visitor to our site, you know all about this. If not, get a primer here, here and here. Last week, we reported on the bizarre insistence by the bipartisan duo of Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Senator John McCain that the US Congress needs to authorize US military involvement in Libya for up to a year. Their justification: unspecified but urgent “national security” concerns.

This contradicts the original claim that it was humanitarian concerns that motivated the NATO-US involvement — the need to protect Libyan civilians from the forces of Muammar Qaddafi during a supposedly spontaneous uprising. (An uprising which, as we note, was getting a whole lot of help from CIA and the like.)

On to the latest insanity:

Last Friday, the House of Representatives made an unexpected split decision that only underscores the Looney-Tunes nature of the Libyan debacle. The House rejected a resolution that would have officially authorized the involvement of US troops in Libya. But, on the other hand, it also rejected a tough attempt to restrict funding for the same Libyan adventure.

The first bill, let’s call it Legislation A, is the House version of what we previously reported was being pushed by Senators Kerry and McCain, and will be taken up by the Senate this week.

Here are key parts of Legislation A, the full wording of which you can read here: . . . .

Bottom line — a majority in the House doesn’t want to authorize continued US operations in Libya, but neither does it want to block it outright. The top Republican in the House, Speaker John Boehner, supported what we’re calling Legislation B, but 89 of his own Republicans voted against it.

What we’re seeing is a chaotic bipartisan free-for-all, with some pro-Obama Democrats going along with whatever he wants to do, and some war-oriented Republicans abandoning partisanship and saying, “why sure, bombs away!”

Here’s what the Washington Post said about it:

The two votes highlighted the way that a decade of war has scrambled the politics of foreign policy, and left both parties deeply divided over the Libyan conflict and American warmaking in general.

Contrary to this assertion, the two parties are not just “deeply divided.” They’re terminally confused. In other words, they, like the American people, have absolutely no clear sense of what is at stake, or of why this country is involved in Libya.

Things are so bonkers that the Republicans are now a big factor in the anti-war element, and the New York Times is pro-war. In an editorial, the Times argued for Legislation A, and against Legislation B. About the House, it said

…There are two main proposals — and a clear choice to be made. We fear they are leaning in a wrongheaded and dangerous direction.

About Legislation B, it said

…the damage to this country’s credibility, and its leadership of NATO, would be enormous. Any sign that the United States is bailing out could lead others to follow.

Well, yes, that would be the idea—to encourage an end to the bombing. The Times editorial continues:

…It is hard to view this bill as anything but a partisan play to embarrass the president.

Or, maybe, its supporters actually think the US has no business bombing the heck out of another country—or intervening for unclear or morally dubious reasons. No consideration of this by The Times:

…The one sure victor would be Libya’s strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who would see it as a sign that NATO’s resolve is faltering and another reason to keep brutalizing his people…We are certain if NATO had not intervened, thousands more Libyans would have been slaughtered.

You could say the same thing about other places, like, say, Syria. Or Sudan. Or….(you pick the place). Yet only Libya is invoked.

What is perhaps most intriguing here is that the Times is still buying the original raison d’guerre, that this is a humanitarian mission, while Kerry, McCain and others have long moved on to something else—some unspecified urgent, “national security” interest…

The Washington Post, like The Times, is still selling this hoary myth, as in this article, which characterizes the House vote as having

. . . revealed a Congress that has been fractured by a weary decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The debate over Libya showed that some Republicans and Democrats were fixated on moral questions – what is the American responsibility to defend democracy? Others were preoccupied with fiscal ones. How should the national debt affect a foreign policy built on the idea of America “bearing any burden” for freedom?

Thus, like the New York Times, it resolutely ignores the clear statement from Kerry and McCain that the Libyan intervention is essential to American “national security” concerns. At the end of its editorial, The Times does invoke “National Security,” but only in a very narrow and peculiar context:

Thankfully, some Senate Republicans also seem to understand the importance of the United States following through on its national security commitments.

“National security commitments” — represented as being about nothing more than willingness to go along with NATO. No indication of the underlying reasons for what is transparently—but never acknowledged” to be— an invasion to remove a foreign leader.

All to be revealed in future books, no doubt. Years from now.

"Hoary myth?" Hell, they're still selling 9/11. And speaking of selling lies daily . . .

Fearful of provoking further public resistance to naked airport body scanners, the TSA has been caught covering up a surge in cases of TSA workers developing cancer as a result of their close proximity to radiation-firing devices, perhaps the most shocking revelation to emerge from the latest FOIA documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

In a recent letter to President Obama’s Science Advisor, several University of California professors also complained of how,

“There is still no rigorous, hard, data for the safety of x-ray airport passenger scanners.”

The scientists noted how the safety tests for the scanners were carried out exclusively by manufacturers, and recommended an immediate moratorium on use of the devices until the health risks can be independently studied.

And it's not only cancer. Strokes and heart disease are also being reported in alarming numbers. Frequent fliers unite? (If no one else will.) _______________________

How Do They Get Respect? Mention "Dung Heap of History" Time for U.S. - You're Committed - Greece Gets Off the Pot? More Treachery at the Fed?

And you better be prepared to have your head bashed in because no one does it better than those hired by the rich. They will literally kill to protect their god-given right to rob you. They don’t like unions because unions make it possible for the people to be organized and protected from their greed.

Finally! Someone else is talking about the necessity for pitchforks and righteous house-clearing (make that Congress-clearing) anger. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

Like rubes at a Carnival Side Show we listen to the “two-party” Democrat(ic)/Republican political barkers yelping at us to come into their tent every election year and every election year the results are equally disappointing, regardless the tent we choose. Are we always going to be suckers, or will 2012 be the year we say HELL NO?

_ _ _ _

A comment by Homeroid, here on FDL (FireDogLake) started me thinking: Try as you might i doubt it will do much. Nothing will change from the degrading of our rights till the pitchforks come out and the streets are filled.

_ _ _ _

If you consider the people’s clashes with the rich in America down through the years, a good case can be made for the point that it does take violence in the streets to effect real change in the USA. And you better be prepared to have your head bashed in because no one does it better than those hired by the rich. They will literally kill to protect their god-given right to rob you. They don’t like unions because unions make it possible for the people to be organized and protected from their greed. Look at the Two Party Side Show that we have going on at this moment starring millionaire elected officials, John Boehner and Barack Obama, over raising the Debt Ceiling. Raising the Debt Ceiling is no solution and the majority of Americans know that. All raising the debt ceiling will do is increase our already staggering national debt and provide more revenue for Wall Street banksters to play with. Boehner has it half right in resisting raising the debt ceiling, but his solutions reflect an evil and greedy purpose of the rich to destroy entitlement programs which are independently funded by taxpayers and have NOTHING to do with the budget or deficit.

So the two of them put on their ridiculous sideshow. We already know how this farce will end. Boehner will allow the debt ceiling to be raised a little and Obama will allow the rich to take yet another bite out of Americans who can least afford it. Obama and the Democrats will pat themselves on the back for being “bipartisan.”

The Real Solutions to the National Debt?

1. End the $2 billion dollar a week war in Afghanistan. BINGO! $104 billion in one year

2. End all but the $500 million in farm subsidies paid to small farmers who still live on their land. BINGO! $19 billion in one year.

3. Start collecting taxes that are owed but not paid. BINGO! In the USA tax evasion added $3 trillion to the deficit over the past decade alone, an average of $300 billion a year, according to IRS data. This isn’t revenue lost from legal tax write-offs, like the mortgage interest deduction. It’s not even, as the IRS notes, “taxes that should have been paid on income from the illegal sector of the economy.” That $300 billion represents the amount of revenue lost from people deliberately cheating on their taxes every year. This includes underreporting income, hidden offshore bank accounts, sham trusts, and other ways to illegally stiff the IRS.

4. How about taking back what’s left of that $100 billion the American Taxpayers forked over to IMF in 2009?

These are only four suggestions off the top of my head that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars and I didn’t even mention repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

And two of the top three highest elected officials in the USA who purport to represent the majority are quibbling over cutting benefits on Seniors whose Social Security income averages $1,000 a month? What fakes! Both of them! They both should be kicked out of office.

What will it take for the pitchforks to come out? . . . Maybe it will be people like you and me telling the truth again and again and again until finally a critical mass has been reached. Calling them out for who they are and what they are doing. I don’t know what it will take. Already today all of the top 10 highest poverty rated cities in the USA have poverty rates that exceed the poverty rate of Egypt (23%) and Egypt took to the streets for their revolution months ago. Sometimes I think that hope is the greatest enemy of the American people. There is that hope of “hitting it big”, winning the lottery, grabbing the brass ring that keeps people in their places. Revolution won’t happen in the USA until more Americans realize that their ability to grasp the brass ring is totally in control of the carnies in DC and the “prizes” they give out are never worth the price you and I pay.

As long as we allow the millionaire and billionaire carnies to be in charge, they will always win because they are the ones who rig the game.

I've noticed that anytime I talk about, give figures indicating, etc., that the U.S. is approaching its "end date" (as a democratic republic) that I lose readers. No one wants to hear the news. (Big Surprise in the Land of Denial.) Although, only this type of news will stop the slide. And Paul Krugman has some very good advice concerning what to do about Greece ending its slide and the way it's economic choices are affecting Europe (and everybody eventually).

Distressed Greece; Delusional Europe Tuesday 28 June 2011

Paul Krugman's blog

(Image: CartoonArts International / The New York Times Syndicate)

The reaction of European leaders and institutions to the Greek crisis is a sight to behold. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that default would be very inconvenient, both as a practical matter and in terms of prestige. Therefore, default must not be considered a possibility, even though it has long been obvious that nondefault is not an option.

So will they kick the can down the road once again? I don’t know. What I do know is that the costs of this strategy of delay are themselves badly misunderstood.

I keep seeing statements along the lines that delaying a full resolution of the Greek situation is costing hundreds of billions of euros, because estimates of the size of the needed financial rescue fund keep going up. But such calculations totally miss the point. The European Stabilization Fund isn’t a transfer program; it’s a credit line designed to provide struggling euro-zone nations with enough liquidity

to get past a temporary cash squeeze. Since that’s not the actual problem, the size of the fund is a measure of European delusion, not a bailout cost.

Nor is Greece like a Texas thrift in the 1980s, using deposit insurance plus deregulation to make ever bigger gambles, and thereby blowing up the eventual cost of the bailout.

So what are the real costs of kicking the can down the road? I’d say that you want to think of it two ways: the costs to Europe as a whole, including Greece, and the costs to Europe ex-Greece.

For Europe including Greece, the costs of delay are the real costs to the Greek economy: delaying a realistic resolution of the debt problem means extending the period of high unemployment and depressed output. Add up the cumulating Greek output gap, and there’s one estimate of the true cost of delay.

For Europe ex-Greece, the costs of delay are whatever that delay does to reduce the amount that Greece will eventually pay its creditors. I think there’s a good case to be made that at this point demands for even more austerity are counterproductive, even in terms of creditors’ interests: the Greek economy is suffering long-term damage, the Greek political scene is being radicalized, and the chances of Greece just telling its creditors to take a hike while it devalues the new drachma are rising.

In any case, what you have to ask now is what Europe is waiting for. Why will six months more of credit lines and suffering make the situation any better?

Mike Whitney has a few words closer to home. As if we care about anybody else (emphasis marks added - Ed.).

More Treachery at the Fed?

Mike Whitney

Global Research June 24, 2011

No one expects the Fed to announce a rate-hike at the end of the today's FOMC meeting, but that doesn't mean there won't be a few surprises. The problem is that the recovery has stalled and the Fed can't decide whether we've just hit a "soft patch" or if it's something more serious. If it is more serious, then the Fed will need a contingency plan for kick-starting the economy. So, what's it going to be; another round of Quantitative Easing (QE), rate caps on short-term Treasuries or something else altogether? That's what the financial media will want to know, and only Fed chairman Ben Bernanke knows the answers. But before we get to that, let's look at the economy. First quarter growth has been revised to an anemic 1.8 percent and economists are currently shaving their estimates for Q2. Some think that the high number of "black swan" events (Tsunami in Japan, debt problems in the eurozone) are mainly responsible for the poor growth, but that doesn't explain the sharp downturn in hiring, manufacturing, housing and consumer confidence. The US is experiencing a dropoff in demand at the worst possible time, just as Obama's $800 billion fiscal stimulus and Bernanke's $600 billion monetary stimulus are running out of gas. That means even less support for an economy that can barely stand upright as it is. Here's an excerpt from an article by Nouriel Roubini with a rundown on the economy: "...there are good reasons to believe that we are experiencing a more persistent slump.... the factors slowing US growth are chronic. These include slow but persistent private and public-sector deleveraging; rising oil prices; weak job creation; another downturn in the housing market; severe fiscal problems at the state and local level; and an unsustainable deficit and debt burden at the federal level.... If what is happening now turns out to be something worse than a temporary soft patch, the market correction will continue further, thus weakening growth as the negative wealth effects of falling equity markets reduce private spending." ("That Stalling Feeling", Nouriel roubini, Project Syndicate) More and more mainstream economists have joined Roubini in thinking that recent sluggishness is more than a soft patch. They think we may be headed for a double dip recession. Surprisingly, former chief economic advisor to the president, Lawrence Summers, has joined the Cassandras and is warning of stiffer headwinds just ahead. Here's a clip from Summers recent op-ed in the Financial Times: "...the US is now half way to a lost economic decade.....the problem in a period of high unemployment, as now, is a lack of business demand for employees not any lack of desire to work is all but self-evident... When demand is constraining an economy, there is little to be gained from increasing potential supply. ... What, then, is to be done? This is no time for ... traditional political agendas. ... The fiscal debate must accept that the greatest threat to our creditworthiness is a sustained period of slow growth. Discussions about medium-term austerity need to be coupled with a focus on near-term growth.... Substantial withdrawal of fiscal stimulus at the end of 2011 would be premature. Stimulus should be continued and indeed expanded by providing the payroll tax cut to employers as well as employees... We averted Depression in 2008/2009 by acting decisively. Now we can avert a lost decade by recognizing economic reality." ("How to avoid stumbling into our own lost decade", Lawrence Summers, Financial Times) Consider the irony of Summers - who designed Obama's $800 billion stimulus package and rejected the warnings of other prominent economists who said the stimulus was "too small" - recanting in the FT and pleading for a second round. Pretty shameless, eh? But the point is the leading economic indicators are pointed down, hiring has slowed to a crawl, household spending and personal consumption have tapered off, wages remain flat, and lending is barley staying even. In other words, the Fed's efforts to stimulate demand have failed. The economy is in another funk. So, what is Bernanke going to say at today's meeting? Ahhh, that's where the surprise comes in, but there was a clue in an article last week on Bloomberg News. Here's an excerpt from the article: "Federal Reserve officials are discussing whether to adopt an explicit target for inflation, a strategy long advocated by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke .... An inflation target could help quiet critics of record monetary stimulus and anchor public expectations for consumer prices should the Fed in coming months try to spur the recovery by keeping interest rates close to zero for longer. “My sense is that this may be a done deal, though not one likely to be implemented soon, and perhaps not until economic conditions return to closer to normal,” said Laurence Meyer, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC and a former Fed governor. “The chairman is obviously for it, and it is hard to find anybody on the FOMC who now is really opposed to it.” ("Fed Officials Said to Discuss Adopting Inflation Target Backed by Bernanke", Bloomberg) So, an inflation target is a "done deal"? Really? But what does that mean? Once the Fed sets an "explicit inflation target", then (if the CPI is below the target and rates are already at zero, as they are today) the Fed can buy as many bonds as they please until their goal is reached. If that sounds a lot like Quantitative Easing; it's because it's the same thing. (Although this time it will probably involve rate caps on medium-term Treasuries) Is that what Bernanke is doing; announcing a third round of his controversial bond purchasing program without using the same name? It sure looks like it. In fact, any mention today of "inflation targeting" at today's FOMC meeting should be taken as a sign that Bernanke is planning another bond buying binge, despite the fact that the only people who really benefited from the program have been investors who've seen stock prices skyrocket from the money that's shifted out of bonds into equities. All the gains from QE2 went to Wall Street. As for inflation targeting, Bernanke is not just an advocate of the policy, he's its biggest booster. He's even written a book on the topic titled Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience with co-authors Thomas Laubach, Frederic S. Mishkin, and Adam S. Posen in 2001. There's every reason to suspect that the neoliberal credo that Bernanke espouses in his book helped shoehorn him into the top-spot at the Central Bank. It certainly had nothing to do with his abysmal track record. So, what's so bad about an explicit inflation target anyway? Haven't other countries used the policy effectively? Yes, they have. But other countries (particularly in the EU) also have labor laws and a social safety net which tend to protect workers from the abuses of errant monetary policy. Not so in the US. If Bernanke executes his plan, high unemployment and slow growth will become a permanent feature of life in America. Here's an excerpt from an article by Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz mulling over the effects of inflation targeting in other countries: "Today, inflation targeting is being put to the test — and it will almost certainly fail. Developing countries currently face higher rates of inflation, not because of poorer macro-management, but because oil and food prices are soaring, and these items represent a much larger share of the average household budget than in rich countries. . . . Inflation in these countries is, for the most part, imported. Raising interest rates won’t have much effect on the international price of grains or fuel. . . ." ("What's wrong with inflation targeting?", Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate) But Stiglitz is talking about "developing countries". Does that same rule apply to the US? Yes, it does. If the Fed achieves its target rate, then Bernanke will raise short-term rates regardless of the effects on growth or employment. That's what inflation targeting is all about; it's a hat-tip to investors that the Fed will preserve their wealth at all costs, even if the broader economy has to be sacrificed. Here's a clip from an article by economist Dean Baker who draws the same conclusion as Stiglitz:

"Inflation targeting has led to an enormous economic and human disaster, likely costing the world more than $10tn in lost output and leaving tens of millions of people unemployed. If this experience is not enough to discredit a policy, it is difficult to imagine any possible set of events in the world that could lead the inflation targeters to change their minds.... ....the central bankers and others directing policy place the interests of the financial sector at the center of their concerns." ("Guess which policy your central bank will pursue", Dean Baker, Guardian.)

Get the picture? Inflation targeting is neoliberalism writ large, no different than "structural adjustment", "debt consolidation", "privatization of public assets" etc. It's another subsidy for speculators while ordinary working people get kicked to the curb. Here's one last blurb from economist James Galbraith who's even more skeptical of inflation targeting than Stiglitz or Baker. This excerpt is from Galbraith's blistering critique of Bernanke's book titled The Inflation Obsession: Flying in the Face of the Facts:

"....Inflation targeting in all cases coincided with high unemployment, and its main effect was to excuse central bankers from addressing this crisis.....("The Inflation Obsession: Flying in the Face of the Facts", James k. Galbraith, Foreign Affairs)

That's it in a nutshell. Bernanke wants to absolve himself of any responsibility to enact policies that will create "full employment". He'd rather shrug off the Fed's dual mandate ("price stability and full employment") and focus on inflation alone. That means that soaring unemployment and slow growth will be the norm for years to come. There's a reason why Stiglitz, Baker and Galbraith all oppose inflation targeting. It's bad policy.

Mike Whitney is one of the featured authors in the bestselling new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century (Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors): ________________________

Woody Allen's Next Academy Award Upcoming & Why Media Blackout at Calhoun & Who Survives End of Civilization?

Yes. I just saw Midnight in Paris and Woody has done it again (with Sidney Bechet providing a brilliant beginning to the first scene). Critics say that it's his love letter to Paris and I have to add that if you're not already in love with Paris and would move there in a heartbeat if you could, prepare to change your mind. (I thought throughout of the line from Letters to Juliet where the protagonist's editor says "Buy stock in Alitalia." Buy stock in Air France!) I've been a fan since his early films. The memories of the out-of-the-ballpark comedy of Take the Money and Run, Bananas and Sleeper immediately flood the synapses (in some kind of order, I'm not sure which is first). I even liked the artistic pieces that his looking-for-the-funny fans detested like Interiors, which I thought showed him to be a man of varied interests and deep insight (and that was a good thing in a great artist from whom you wanted to see much more). My favorites were the more New Yorky ones liked Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose as well as Manhattan (all-time favorite) and, of course, Annie Hall. And lots of others actually as I could go into an exposition of his crime dramas like Small-Time Crooks, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Scoop, Matchpoint and Crimes and Misdemeanors, which I also enjoyed quite a bit even though they didn't fit the genre perfectly. (Whoops! Forgot Hannah and Her Sisters and Everyone Says I Love You.) (And, of course, how could I forget Bullets Over Broadway - you know how much I adore John Cusack?) Based on all I've seen before, though, and the competition out there from other American writer/directors, I believe he deserves the Academy Awards again (for both writing and directing) (and maybe a special one for coaching Owen Wilson). This movie seems to me uniquely almost totally unself-consciously delicious (from a man who has only seemed to make pretty self-conscious (but also delectable) movies heretofore). I was particularly taken with Wilson's (er, Gil's, er, Woody's) grasp of the appeal of a fabulously beautiful place in which to write that also was inhabited by all those who also understood and were captivated by its charms. But I could be wrong as I have not seen all 40-some movies he has made. (Heck, being stuck in the South for the last decade I didn't even know that a lot of them were made (that even a glance at a filmography provides).) In Paris at Midnight, Woody has taken Owen Wilson's laidback almost lackadaisical persona and used it in such a way as to make a very complicated yet seemingly simple character (Gil) totally unbelievable until the end of the movie where he gives his opinion about everything that has happened so laconically and yet so fluidly and full of erudition (and believably although it's pure Allen speaking) that you leave the movie thinking not only does Allen deserve the awards again but so does Wilson. And the verbiage about how nobody is pleased to live in the present when they are aware of the "golden past" is too dear for words in today's waking up from a non-golden dream of the past that passed itself off as reality for 30 years. The only element in the film that I thought initially ran untrue (in my own critic's worldview) was the Hemingway character who seemed portrayed as too gruff and outspoken for the well-educated individual that I had come to know through the biographies and diaries. By the end of this character's film moment though, I had been thoroughly charmed by Woody's use of his (Hemingway's) reputation to achieve some great comedic interplay with the other characters. I also initially found fault with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's characterizations as being too broad-brush and not subtle enough to portray his sensitivity to social scenes and her great talent which was expressed by Gil as being "all over the place." They seemed to be mainly utilized as a mechanism to visit different parties where he met other people. However, I really liked all the minor characters, especially Rachel McAdams' character's father and Kathy Bates as an incredibly straight talking Gertrude Stein - yes, I"m sure she was but it's still a shock after reading her books which were much more obtuse. The scenes with Dalí (Adrien Brody who screams out who he is over and over) and Gauguin and Degas (who don't) are priceless set pieces within. And don't get me started on the passing conversation between Gil and Buñuel as Gil gives that major film presence some direction. (I've seen that movie and Allen surpasses himself in this totally unnecessary(!) scene.) I see among the online reviews that one person has said Allen's "mise-en-Seine" is his masterpiece or something close to that. Wish I had said it. Damn! (I did recognize the Sidney Bechet piece at the movie's opening though - so that's something. I loved it in The Russia House too!) I am just a fool for the clarinet - and jazz. My last comment is "Rhinoceros!" (You'll have to see the movie to figure it out.) Go See It (movie fans)! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ When people say the earth can't survive if we continue on this path of carbon destruction, they aren't thinking of the fact that the earth will survive. Bet on it. At least for another couple of million years or so. The form and the people (if any) continuing the civilization, however, are the real mystery. Some examples of whom they might be still exist today:

Sunday, 26 June, 2011

THE TOULAMBI AND JEAN-PIERRE DUTILLEUX

Anjio, Head tribesman

Beyond the last ragged edges of civilization are the people that time has forgotten, living reminders of a vanished age, survivors of a world that has virtually disappeared.

This following series of videos is truly amazing. These people living as they did in the stone age, meet something they never believed existed ~ a white man. The whole episode is beautiful and a delight to watch as they see miracles for the first time. IE matches. Or light brown hair and white skin. .

Far from being a stupid primitive people, as can be seen in the eyes of Anjio above, the Toulambi are quick, clever, insightful, and very gentle. I like to think that, if the world fails as we continue hurtling to whatever apocalyptic future we create for ourselves, such people as these Toulambi, with their survival skills, would be hope for the human race to carry on ... they certainly have human traits long lost by the "civilization" process.

For centuries the hill tribes of the Owen Ranmge in Papua, New Guinea have lived in isolation to avoid war. In a landscape of dense tropical rainforests each tribe stays within a well established territory. This explains why some of them have survived into the new millennium without any contact with the outside world.

Others previously known have left their villages to move deeper in the forest to escape conflicts or the religious zeal of evangelical preachers only to be rediscovered and labeled as lost tribes. European explorers first encountered the Toulambi in 1993.

Toulambi Hammer

They were almost entirely decimated by malaria. Modern medicine helped to stop the ravages of the disease. They didn't believe white men existed but if they did, they must be the 'living dead.'

Taking a lot of care with their appearance, the Toulambi men wear a bone from the Cassowary bird through the nose, large necklaces of river shells and bird of paradise feathers in their hair. They must look their best to attract a mate and reproduce. They are hunters and gatherers.

The entire tribe moves in uncanny silence for fear of alerting the game. They know the migration trails of animals and the best time of year to find fish, the growing cycles of the palms, bamboo, wild fruits and the roots they rely on. Always on the move. The rhythm of their lives is that of the jungle. It gives them no time to create complex art, to develop science or conceive profound metaphysical philosophies.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ Then there's the question of our own time which may define the above.

Why Is There a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska? By Patrick Henningsen Global Research June 23, 2011 21st Century Wire Since flooding began on June 6th, there has been a disturbingly low level of media attention given to the crisis at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Facility near Omaha, Nebraska. But evidence strongly suggests that something very serious has in fact happened there. On June 7th, there was a fire reported at Fort Calhoun. The official story is that the fire was in an electrical switchgear room at the plant. The apparently facility lost power to a pump that cools the spent fuel rod pool, allegedly for a duration of approximately 90 minutes.

FORT CALHOUN NUKE SITE: does it pose a public risk?

The following sequence of events is documented on the Omaha Public Power District’s own website, stating among other things, that here was no such imminent danger with the Fort Calhoun Station spent-fuel pool, and that due to a fire in an electrical switchgear room at FCS on the morning of June 7, the plant temporarily lost power to a pump that cools the spent-fuel pool.

In addition to the flooding that has occurred on the banks of the Missouri River at Fort Calhoun, the Cooper Nuclear Facility in Brownville, Nebraska may also be threatened by the rising flood waters.

As was declared at Fort Calhoun on June 7th, another “Notification of Unusual Event” was declared at Cooper Nuclear Station on June 20th. This notification was issued because the Missouri River’s water level reached an alarming 42.5 feet. Apparently, Cooper Station is advising that it is unable to discharge sludge into the Missouri River due to flooding, and therefore “overtopped” its sludge pond.

Not surprisingly, and completely ignored by the Mainstream Media, these two nuclear power facilities in Nebraska were designated temporary restricted NO FLY ZONES by the FAA in early June. The FAA restrictions were reportedly down to “hazards” and were ‘effectively immediately’, and ‘until further notice’. Yet, according to the NRC, there’s no cause for the public to panic.

FORT CALHOUN: Under water now. Is it potentially the next Fukushima? A news report from local NBC 6 on the Ft. Calhoun Power Plant and large areas of farm land flooded by the Missouri River, interviews a local farmer worried about the levees, “We need the Corps-Army Corps of Engineers–to do more. The Corps needs to tell us what to do and where to go. This is not mother nature, this is man-made.” Nearby town Council Bluffs has already implemented its own three-tier warning system should residents be prepared to leave the area quickly. On June 6, 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration put into effect ‘temporary flying restrictions’–until further notice–over the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Blaine, Nebraska. To date, no one can confirm whether or not the Ft Calhoun Nuclear incident is at a Level 4 emergency on a US regulatory scale. A Level 4 emergency would constitute an “actual or imminent substantial core damage or melting of reactor fuel with the potential for loss of containment integrity.” According to the seven-level International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, a Level 4 incident requires at least one death, which has not occurred according to available reports. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen explains how cooling pumps must operate continuously, even years after a plant is shut down. According a recent report on the People’sVoice website, The Ft. Calhoun plant — which stores its fuel rods at ground level according to Tom Burnett – is now partly submerged and Missouri River levels are expected to rise further before the summer if finished, local reports in and around the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suggest that the waters are expected to rise at least 5 more feet. Burnett states, “Ft. Calhoun is the designated spent fuel storage facility for the entire state of Nebraska…and maybe for more than one state. Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway – but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it’s going to make Fukushima look like an X-Ray.” The People’s Voice’s report explains how Ft Calhoun and Fukushima share some of the very same high-risk factors: “In 2010, Nebraska stored 840 metric tons of the highly radioactive spent fuel rods, reports the Nuclear Energy Institute. That’s one-tenth of what Illinois stores (8,440 MT), and less than Louisiana (1,210) and Minnesota (1,160). But it’s more than other flood-threatened states like Missouri (650) and Iowa (420).” Conventional wisdom about what makes for a safe location regarding nuclear power facilities was turned on its head this year following Japan’s Fukushima disaster following the earthquake and tsunami which ravaged the region and triggered one of the planets worst-ever nuclear meltdowns. As was the critical event in Fukushima, in Ft Calhoun circulatin­g water is required at all times to keep the new fuel and more importantl­y the spent radioactive material cool. The Nebraska facility houses around 600,000 – 800,000 pounds of spent fuel that must be constantly cooled to prevent it from starting to boil, so the reported 90 minute gap in service should raise alarm bells. TV and radio journalist Tom Hartmann explores some of these arguments here:

Nebraska’s nuclear plant’s similarities to Japan’s Fukushima, both were store houses for years of spent nuclear fuel rods. In addition to all this, there are eyewitness reports of odd military movements, including unmarked vehicles and soldiers. Should a radiation accident occur, most certainly extreme public controls would be enacted by the military, not least because this region contains some of the country’s key environmental, transportation and military assets. Here is a video regarding the flooding experienced along the Missouri River in Nebraska: RISK: Levees in and around Omaha were not designed for 3 months of water. Angela Tague at Business Gather reports also that the recent Midwest floods may seriously impact food and gas prices. Lost farmland may be behind the price spike to $7.55 a bushel for corn, already twice last year’s price. Tague notes also:

“Corn is a key ingredient in ethanol gasoline, feeds America’s livestock and is found in many food products including soft drinks and cereal. Prices will undoubtedly increase steadily at the grocery store, gas pump and butcher shop throughout the summer as Midwest flooding continues along the Missouri River basin. Not only are farmers losing their homes, land and fields — ultimately their bank accounts will also suffer this season.”

One of the lessons we can learn for Japan’s tragic Fukushima disaster is that the government’s choice to impose a media blackout on information around the disaster may have already cost thousands of lives. Only time will tell the scope the disaster and how many victims it will claim. More importantly, though, is that public officials might do well to reconsider the “safe” and “green” credentials of nuclear power- arguably one of the dirtiest industries going today. Especially up for inspection are those of 40 year old facilities like Ft Calhoun in the US, strangely being re-licensed for operation past 2030. Many of these facilities serve little on the electrical production front, and are more or less “bomb factories” that produce material for nuclear weapons and depleted uranium munitions. Perhaps ‘Fukushima’ could become an annual event for the nuclear industry.

Perhaps? This is my Father's (who adored good jazz) birthday. Thus, I dedicate this piece to his memory. To you, Dad, the best! ______________________

"Dung Heap" Time - Killing Democracy: The New "Armies of the Night" & The Economic Crisis Has An Honorable Solution (JUST DO IT!)

Poverty is brutal, consuming and unforgiving. It strikes at the soul.

Charles Blow in today's New York Times provides a picture of our current economic conditions that you won't get from any financial magazine (where people are cleaning up in the stock market) or Murdoch media focusing on all the fake "good" news.

. . . I am forced to assume that if Washington politicians ever knew the sting of poverty then they have long since vanquished the memory. How else to qualify their positions? In fact, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires, and between 2008 and 2009, when most Americans were feeling the brunt of the recession, the personal wealth of members of Congress collectively increased by more than 16 percent. Must be nice.

Poverty is brutal, consuming and unforgiving. It strikes at the soul.

You defend yourself with hope, hard work and, for some, a helping hand. But these weapons grow dull in an economy on the verge of atrophy, in a job market tilting ever more toward the top and in a political environment that would sacrifice the weak to the wealthy.

A vast subset is chronically unemployed and desperately searching for work. According to the Consumer Reports Employment Index, “In 23 of the past 24 months, lower-income Americans have lost more jobs than they have gained.” It continues, “Meanwhile, more affluent Americans seem to be gaining more jobs than they are losing.”

And the current election-cycle obsession to balance the books with a pound of flesh, which is being pushed by pitiless Republicans and accommodated by pitiful Democrats, will only multiply the pain.

Read the rest here.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.

In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

- Confucius

Although the Tea Party fools have touched the third rail of politics pretty handily now and are paying a price, keep in mind that prior to this moment in history, no one thought a political party could touch the third rail without being electrocuted (and never recovering). Bet your bottom dollar that the "compromises" they have extracted from the Obama administration (okay, given up without a whimper) were more than worth the casualties they will suffer from this extended rail encounter. (And Medicaid has already been tossed on the dung heap by its former advocates due to these fraudulent "negotiations," and the armies of poor, sick people will be on your street soon (talk about "Armies of the Night!").)

The Republican Party has spent the last several weeks receiving an education - by way of serial beatings delivered by constituents from sea to shining sea - on the awesome power of Medicare in America. When it became known that Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to turn the wildly popular program into a privatized disaster zone had been adopted as the battle standard for the GOP and its newly-muscular Tea Party bloc, seven different breeds of merry hell broke loose across the land. House member after House member climbed out of the DC bubble, went home to their districts, and were promptly set upon by furious people who deeply depend on Medicare.

These were conservatives, and liberals, and independents, as well as people who normally don't give even a single damn about politics, until politics came to their doorstep and promised to screw them to the wall. The GOP has invested itself in this attack on Medicare, going so far as to threaten to let the debt limit slip into default unless they get the cuts they want. This tactic has, to date, not fared well for them. At this point, House Republicans who support the Ryan Plan enjoy an approval rating just slightly to the south of scabies. They persist only because they have been boxed in by their own rhetoric, but the damage they have already done to themselves is so profound that a previously unthinkable possibility - a change in majority power in the House - is suddenly on the table in the upcoming 2012 congressional elections.

So, of course, the GOP is beginning to back away from this Ryan-led precipice. This does not mean, however, that the viciousness of their intentions has dissipated. Rather than retreat, it appears the GOP has decided to shift tactics and focus on the annihilation of Medicaid instead.

The threatened cuts to Medicare have gotten the lion's share of attention because the people who enjoy the benefits of the program have an enormous amount of political muscle, as well as powerful advocacy groups that can carry the argument against Ryan's plans to the airwaves, the newspapers, and the steps of Capitol Hill. They are listened to.

Medicaid, on the other hand, largely helps poor people, and they enjoy no such political clout or representation. The Democrats have made a great deal of political hay over the GOP's assault on Medicare, but appear willing to allow massive and brutal cuts to Medicaid that will absolutely devastate poor people, including elderly Americans who require nursing home care but can not afford it. If this deal goes down, growing old in America will once again mean growing poor, unless you happen to be one of the blue-chip one-percenters who can afford gold-plated bedpans and round-the-clock care.

The biggest problem with the American Dream is the fact that it makes people believe they will be rich someday, even though it is almost completely certain that won't happen. The rich in America foster and husband this belief, because it makes average people vote as if they will be rich eventually, too, and these votes help reinforce the high, gilded walls between the few Have's and the millions of Have Not's. Ours has become a cruel and callous country, willing to listen to pleasing lies from smooth talkers while the weakest and most vulnerable among us are turned out and turned away.

Medicare is threatened, and voices are raised in rage.

Medicaid is threatened, and there is hardly a whisper of dissent. Even the Democrats, self-styled as the defenders of these excellent programs, are standing mute in the face of savage cuts to this all-important program.

No more half-a-loaf politics, I say. If we can defend Medicare, we can defend Medicaid, for one is no more or less important than the other. Medicare has its heavy-hitting defenders, but no one appears willing to stand for Medicaid, and for the poor and needy who are sustained by it.

I think it's time to change that, and you and I must be the avatars of that change.

Don't let this happen.

Our friends at Antifascist Calling enlighten us about how we are losing our freedoms (due to the actions of this so-called Democratic administration) "one file at a time." It's terrifying to know that there is a group of so-called "Americans" who think this is a proper course of action. Against any type of threat. (Can you say "MICHAEL CHERTOFF?") (And it becomes clearer and clearer as we learn what these people are doing why Obama had to be the winning candidate (winning a Peace Prize for nothing - except possibly defusing the righteous anger coming up about his actions later). After all, he's a Constitutional scholar. He taught the meaning of the Constitution to young people, so he's got to know almost everything about its importance. (And he knows Kafka backwards.)) Speaking as a former Constitutional scholar at UNC myself studying with Professor Wallace, there's not a damn thing happening below that's hard to understand (under a fascist system). P.S. Cheney won. (See below.)

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Killing Democracy One File at a Time: Justice Department Loosens FBI Domestic Spy Guidelines

While the Justice Department is criminally inept, or worse, when it comes to prosecuting corporate thieves who looted, and continue to loot, trillions of dollars as capitalism's economic crisis accelerates, they are extremely adept at waging war on dissent. Last week, The New York Times disclosed that the FBI "is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention. "Under 'constitutional scholar' Barack Obama's regime, the Bureau will revise its "Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide." The "new rules," Charlie Savage writes, will give agents "more latitude" to investigate citizens even when there is no evidence they have exhibited "signs of criminal or terrorist activity." As the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) recently pointed out, "When presented with opportunities to protect constitutional rights, our federal government has consistently failed us, with Congress repeatedly rubber-stamping the executive authority to violate civil liberties long protected by the Constitution." While true as far it goes, it should be apparent by this late date that no branch of the federal government, certainly not Congress or the Judiciary, has any interest in limiting Executive Branch power to operate lawlessly, in secret, and without any oversight or accountability whatsoever. Just last week, The New York Times revealed that the Bush White House used the CIA "to get" academic critic Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment blog was highly critical of U.S. imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. The former CIA officer and counterterrorism official who blew the whistle and exposed the existence of a Bush White House "enemies list," Glenn L. Carle, told the Times:

I couldn't believe this was happening. People were accepting it, like you had to be part of the team.

Ironically enough, the journalist who broke that story, James Risen, is himself a target of an Obama administration witchhunt against whistleblowers. Last month, Risen was issued a grand jury subpoena that would force him to reveal the sources of his 2006 book, State of War. These latest "revisions" will expand the already formidable investigative powers granted the Bureau by former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. Three years ago, The Washington Post informed us that the FBI's new "road map" permits agents "to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities" and can pursue "each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization." Accordingly, FBI "assessments" (the precursor to a full-blown investigation) already lowered by the previous administration will, under Obama, be lowered still further in a bid to "keep us safe" - from our constitutional rights. The Mukasey guidelines, which created the "assessment" fishing license handed agents the power to probe people and organizations "proactively" without a shred of evidence that an individual or group engaged in unlawful activity. In fact, rather than relying on a reasonable suspicion or allegations that a person is engaged in criminal activity, racial, religious or political profiling based on who one is or on one's views, are the basis for secretive "assessments." Needless to say, the presumption of innocence, the bedrock of a republican system of governance based on the rule of law, like the right to privacy, becomes one more "quaint" notion in a National Security State. In its infinite wisdom, the Executive Branch has cobbled together an investigative regime that transforms anyone, and everyone, into a suspect; a Kafkaesque system from which there is no hope of escape. Under Bushist rules, snoops were required to open an inquiry "before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database," the Times reported. In other words, somewhere in the dank, dark bowels of the surveillance bureaucracy a paper trail exists that just might allow you to find out your rights had been trampled. But our "transparency" regime intends to set the bar even lower. Securocrats will now be allowed to rummage through commercial databases "without making a record about their decision." The ACLU's Michael German, a former FBI whistleblower, told the Times that "claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse." Such abuses are already widespread. In 2009 for example, the ACLU pointed out that "Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as 'low level terrorism'." As I reported in 2009, citing a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Bureau's massive Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), is a data-mining Frankenstein that contains more "searchable records" than the Library of Congress. EFF researchers discovered that "In addition to storing vast quantities of data, the IDW provides a content management and data mining system that is designed to permit a wide range of FBI personnel (investigative, analytical, administrative, and intelligence) to access and analyze aggregated data from over fifty previously separate datasets included in the warehouse." Accordingly, "the FBI intends to increase its use of the IDW for 'link analysis' (looking for links between suspects and other people--i.e. the Kevin Bacon game) and to start 'pattern analysis' (defining a 'predictive pattern of behavior' and searching for that pattern in the IDW's datasets before any criminal offence is committed--i.e. pre-crime)." Once new FBI guidelines are in place, and congressional grifters have little stomach to challenge government snoops as last month's disgraceful "debate" over renewing three repressive provisions of the USA Patriot Act attest, "low-level" inquiries will be all but impossible to track, let alone contest. Despite a dearth of evidence that dissident groups or religious minorities, e.g., Muslim-Americans have organized violent attacks . . . the new guidelines will permit the unlimited deployment of "surveillance squads" that "surreptitiously follow targets." In keeping with the Bureau's long-standing history of employing paid informants and agents provocateurs such as Brandon Darby and a host of others, to infiltrate and disrupt organizations and foment violence, rules governing "'undisclosed participation' in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant" will also be loosened. The Times reports that the revised manual "clarifies a description of what qualifies as a "sensitive investigative matter" - investigations, at any level, that require greater oversight from supervisors because they involve public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars." According to the Times, the manual "clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs." In other words, if you don't have the deep pockets of a corporate media organization to defend you from a government attack, you're low-hanging fruit and fair game, which of course, makes a mockery of guarantees provided by the First Amendment. As I reported last month, with requests for "National Security Letters" and other opaque administrative tools on the rise, the Obama administration has greatly expanded already-repressive spy programs put in place by the previous government. Will data extracted by the Bureau's Investigative Data Warehouse or its new Data Integration and Visualization System retain a wealth of private information gleaned from commercial and government databases on politically "suspect" individuals for future reference? Without a paper trail linking a person to a specific inquiry you'd have no way of knowing. Even should an individual file a Freedom of Information Act request demanding the government turn over information and records pertaining to suspected wrongdoing by federal agents, as Austin anarchist Scott Crow did, since the FBI will not retain a record of preliminary inquiries, FOIA will be hollowed-out and become, yet another, futile and meaningless exercise. And with the FBI relying on secret legal memos issued by the White House Office of Legal Counsel justifying everything from unchecked access to internet and telephone records to the deployment of government-sanctioned malware on private computers during "national security" investigations, political and privacy rights are slowly being strangled.

Friends, please don't ignore the history that accompanies this essay's concerns. Obama was elected in 2008, the article below was written in 2009 and rings just as true today (more so with every passing day it seems to me).

The Economic Crisis and What Must be Done By Richard C. Cook Global Research November 23, 2009 The United States does not control its own destiny. Rather it is controlled by an international financial elite, of which the American branch works out of big New York banks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wall Street investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the Federal Reserve System. They in turn control the White House, Congress, the military, the mass media, the intelligence agencies, both political parties, the universities, etc. No one can rise to the top in any of these institutions without the elite’s stamp of approval. This elite has been around since the nation began, becoming increasingly dominant as the 19th century progressed. A key date was passage of the National Banking Act of 1863, when the system was put into place whereby federal government debt was used to collateralize bank lending. Since then we’ve paid the freight through our taxes for bank control of the economy. The final nails in the coffin came with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. In 1929 the bankers plunged the nation into the Great Depression by constricting the money supply. With Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, the nation struggled through the decade of the 1930s but did not pull out of the Depression until the industrial explosion during World War II. After the war came the Golden Age of the U.S. economy, when the working man, protected by strong labor unions, became a true partner in the prosperity of the industrial age. That era lasted a full generation. The bankers were largely spectators as Americans led the world in exports, standard of living, science and space exploration, and every measure of health, longevity, and culture. Roosevelt had kept the bankers subservient to the interests of the economy at large. The Federal Reserve was part of the New Deal team, and interest rates were held at historic lows despite a large federal deficit. One main impact was the huge increase in home ownership. After World War II, the G.I. Bill allowed home ownership to grow further and millions of veterans to attend college. The influx of educated graduates led to productivity growth and the emergence of new high-tech industries.

But the bankers were laying their plans. In the early 1950s they got the government to agree to allow the Federal Reserve to escape its subservience to the U.S. Treasury Department and set interest rates on its own. Rates rose throughout the 1950s and 1960s. By the time of the interest rate hikes of 1968, the economy was slowing down. Both federal budget and trade deficits were beginning to replace the post-war surpluses. High interest rates were the likely cause. In 1971, President Richard Nixon removed the dollar’s gold peg, allowing the huge inflation resulting from oil price increases that the international bankers engineered through control of U.S. foreign policy when Henry Kissinger was national security adviser and secretary of state. Nixon’s opening to China resulted in early agreements, also overseen by banking interests, to begin to transfer U.S. industry to overseas producers like China which had cheap labor costs.

By the mid-1970s, the U.S. had been taken over by a behind the scenes coup-d’etat that included events in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy that could only have been instigated by the highest levels of world financial control. In the election of 1976, David Rockefeller succeeded in placing fellow Trilateral Commission member Jimmy Carter in the White House, but Carter upset the banking community, thoroughly Zionist in orientation, by working toward peace in the Middle East and elsewhere.

I was working in the Carter White House in 1979-80. Unbeknownst to the president, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, another Rockefeller protégé, suddenly raised interest rates to fight the inflation the bankers had caused by the OPEC oil price deals, and plunged the nation into recession. Carter was made to look weak and uninformed and was defeated in the election of 1980 by Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. It was through the “Reagan Revolution” that the regulatory controls over the banking industry were lifted, mainly in allowing the banks to use their fractional reserve privileges in making mortgage loans.

Volcker’s recession shattered American manufacturing and hastened the flight of jobs abroad. Under the “Reagan Doctrine,” the U.S. military embarked on an unprecedented mission of world conquest by attacking one small nation at a time, starting with Nicaragua. Global capitalism was also on the march, with the U.S. armed forces its own private police force. With the invasion of Iraq under George H.W. Bush in 1991, mainland Asia was revealed as the principle target.

The economy was floated by productivity gains through computer automation and a huge sell-off of assets through the merger-acquisition bubble of the late 1980s which ended in a recession. This resulted in the defeat of Bush by Bill Clinton in the election of 1992. Clinton was able to create another bubble through a strong dollar policy that attracted foreign capital.

The dot-com bubble that resulted lasted all the way through to the crash of December 2000. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force led the way in the destruction of the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, whereby the international bankers took over the resource wealth of the entire Balkan region, and the U.S. military gained forward bases for further incursions into Asia.

Do we need to say that none of this was ever voted on by the American electorate? But they bought into it nevertheless, both with their silence and through participation in a generally favorable job market in the emerging service occupations, particularly finance.

By the time George W. Bush was inaugurated president in January 2001, the U.S. was facing a disaster. $4 trillion in wealth had vanished when the dot.com bubble collapsed. NAFTA caused even more American manufacturing jobs to disappear abroad. The Neocons who were moving into key jobs in the Pentagon knew they would soon have new wars to fight in the Middle East, with invasion plans for Afghanistan and Iraq ready to be pulled off the shelf.

But the U.S. had no economic engine available to generate the tax revenues Bush would need for the planned wars. At this moment Chairman Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve stepped in. Over a two year period from 2001-2003 the Fed lowered interest rates by over 500 basis points. Meanwhile, the federal government removed all regulatory controls on mortgage lending, and the housing bubble was on. $4 trillion in new home loans were pumped into the economy, much of it through subprime loans borrowers could not afford.

The Fed began to put on the brakes in 2003, but the mighty work of re-floating a moribund economy had been accomplished. By late 2006 another recession loomed, but it would take two more years before the crisis of October 2008 brought the entire system down.

The impact on the job market was immediate and profound. By the time Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, the U.S. was mired in seemingly endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the worst recession since the Great Depression was picking up speed. In order to prevent total disaster, the Bush administration ended its eight years of catastrophic misrule with a flourish, by allocating over $700 billion in financial system bailouts to cover the bad loans the banks had been making since Greenspan gave the housing bubble the green light.

It is now November 2009. Since Barack Obama was inaugurated in January, unemployment has soared from 7.9 percent to 10.2 percent. A few hundred billion dollars were allocated for “stimulus” purposes, but most of that went to pay unemployment benefits and to keep state and local governments from laying off more employees.

A fraction has been distributed for highway improvements, but largely through the bank bailouts the federal deficit has been running at an annual rate of $1.5 trillion, by far the largest in history, with the national debt now topping $12 trillion. Ironically, those Americans who still have productive jobs continue to grow in efficiency, with productivity up over five percent in the last year.

So much federal money has been spent that the Obama administration has been struggling to make its health care proposals budget-neutral through a raft of new taxes, fees, and penalties, and by announcing in recent days that the government’ first priority must now shift to deficit reduction. The word “austerity” has been mentioned for the first time since the Carter administration. Yet Congress voted $655 billion in military expenditures to continue fighting in the Middle East. A U.S. military attack on Iran, possibly in conjunction with Israel, would surprise no one.

So where do we now stand?

At present, the Federal Reserve is trying to prevent a total economic collapse. Interest rates are near-zero, to the chagrin of foreign investors in U.S. Treasury securities, and close to half of new Treasury debt instruments have been bought by the Federal Reserve itself as a way of providing free money for federal government expenditures.

But the U.S. economy shows no signs of coming back, with no economic driver emerging that could bring it back. For all the talk about alternative energy, there has been no significant growth of any home-grown industry that could possibly make up so much lost ground in either the short or the long-term.

The industries in the U.S. that are holding up are the military, including arms exports, universities that are attracting large numbers of students from abroad, especially China, and health care, especially for the aging baby boomer population. But the war industry produces nothing with a long-term economic benefit, and health care exists mainly to treat sick people, not produce anything new.

None of this provides a foundation that can bring about a restoration of prosperity to 300 million people when the jobs of making articles of consumption are increasingly scarce. On top of everything else, since government inevitably looks to its own requirements first, the total tax burden continues to increase to the point where the average employee now pays close to 50 percent of his or her income on taxes of all types, including federal and state income taxes, real estate taxes, payroll taxes, excise taxes, government fees, etc. Plus the cost of utilities continues to rise steadily and threatens to skyrocket if cap-and-trade legislation is passed.

The Obama administration has no plans to deal with any of this. They have projected a budget for 15 years hence that shows the budget deficit decreasing and tax revenues going way up, but it is all lies. They have no roadmap for getting us there and no plans for following the roadmap if it portrayed a realistic goal. And yet the U.S. military is still trying to conquer Asia. It is madness.

And it is madness because the big decisions are not made by the U.S., by Congress, or by the Obama administration. The U.S. has, for half-a-century, been marching to the tune played by the international financial elite, and this fact did not change with the election of 2008. The financiers have put the people of this nation $57 trillion in debt, according to the latest reports, counting debt at the federal, state, business, and household levels. Interest alone on this debt is over $3 trillion of a GDP of $14 trillion. Failure of our political leadership to deal with this tragedy over the past three decades is nothing less than treason.

But then again, at some point the decision was made that the U.S. and its population would be discarded by history, the economic status of the nation reduced to a shadow of what it once was, but that its military machine would be used for the financial elite’s takeover of the world until it is replaced by that of some other nation. All indications are that the next country up to bat as military enforcer for the financiers is China.

There you have it. That, in my opinion, is the past, present, and future of this nation in a nutshell. Great evils have been done in the world in the last century, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Except…. and that’s what each person caught up in these travesties must decide. What are you going to do about it?

In mulling over this question, it would be wise to recognize that the dominance of the financial elite has largely been exercised through their control of the international monetary system based on bank lending and government debt. Therefore it’s through the monetary system that change can and must be made.

The progressives are wrong to think the government should go deeper in debt to create more jobs. This will just create an even deeper hole of debt future generations will have to crawl out of.

Rather the key is monetary reform, whether at the local or national levels. People have lost control of their ability to earn a living. But change could be accomplished through sovereign control by people and nations of the monetary means of exchange.

This control has been stolen. It is time to take it back. One way would be for the federal government to make a relief payment to each adult of $1,000 a month until the crisis lifted. This money could be earmarked for goods and services produced within the U.S. and used to capitalize a new series of community development banks. I have called this the “Cook Plan.”

The plan could be funded through direct payment from a Treasury relief account without new taxes or government borrowing. The payments would be balanced on the credit side by GDP growth or be used by individuals to pay off debt. It would be direct government spending as was done with Greenbacks before and after the Civil War without significant inflation.

Another method increasingly being used within the U.S. today is local and regional credit clearing exchanges and the use of local currencies or “scrip.” Use of such currencies could be enhanced by legislation at the state and federal levels allowing these currencies to be used for payment of taxes and government fees as well as payment of mortgages and other forms of bank debt. The credit clearing exchanges could be organized as private non-profit regional currency co-operatives similar to credit unions.

These would be immediate emergency measures. In the longer run, sovereign control of money and credit must be returned to the public commons and treated as public utilities. This does not mean exclusive government control to replace bank control. As stated previously, it would be done in partnership between government and private trade exchanges. Nor does it mean government takeover of business, industry, or the banking system, though all should be regulated for the common good and fairly taxed.

This program would lead to a new monetary paradigm where money and credit would be available by, as, when, and where needed, to facilitate trade between and among legitimate producers of goods and services. In this way trade and commerce will come to serve human freedom, not diminish it as is done with today’s dysfunctional partnership between big government trillions of dollars in debt and big finance with the entire world in hock.

Such a change would be a true populist revolution.

Richard C. Cook is a former federal analyst who writes on public policy issues. He is an advisor to the American Monetary Institute on its model monetary reform legislation soon to be introduced in Congress. His latest book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. His website is: www.richardccook.com.

A few final words on exactly where we are now from Professor Paul Krugman:

The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

Greg Ip points out that the Fed keeps expecting a vigorous recovery just around the corner, and it keeps not happening:

It’s kind of awesome. It was obvious very early on that this was likely to be a prolonged slump, requiring sustained policies to sustain demand if many years of high unemployment were to be avoided. Yet policy shops, including both the Fed and the White House, kept making optimistic projections. It’s hard to avoid the sense that this was and is wishful thinking, that people just didn’t want to face the responsibility of dealing with this big a problem.

So they didn’t, and the slump goes on.

Oh, and a side issue: why does John Taylor both say that this is a balance sheet recession — which is exactly what I’ve been saying — and oppose doing anything at all to help us deal with it?

Phony Deficit Hawks

So, just to summarize: Republicans are deeply, deeply concerned about the budget deficit; they believe that our nation’s future is at stake.

But they’re willing to sacrifice that future, not to mention risk the good faith and credit of the federal government, rather than accept so much as a single penny of tax increases as part of a deal.

Given all that, it seems almost redundant to mention that federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are near a historic low:

Federal receipts as % of GDP

So what’s it all about? The answer, of course, is that the GOP never cared about the deficit — not a bit. It has always been nothing but a club with which to beat down opposition to an ideological goal, namely the dissolution of the welfare state. They’re not interested, at all, in a genuine deficit-reduction deal if it does not serve that goal.

And everyone who has preached bipartisanship, who has called for a meeting of minds on the subject, is either a fraud or a chump.

Thank you, Professor! ______________________