Category: politics

“It’s very hard to get any agreement if there’s no consensus on what the underlying facts are.”

Jerry Brown via Huffington Post:
He was California’s youngest governor and now its oldest.

Very gradually, the productivity rate of our country declined. “We used to export oil,” Brown noted, not long after the Arab oil embargo. “Cars, television, cameras, watches… We had no peer.”

Then the decision was made to expand war abroad and to pursue a Great Society at home, a strategy of “guns and butter.” We began to decline, Brown said, as we did not fund these projects “from current dollars, but from fiscal gimmickry, borrowing from the future.”

“This country,” Brown declared, “has pursued a path that Rome and Germany after World War I have pursued, running the printing presses of money.” Three percent a year growth in wealth declined in the ’70s to less than one percent, and “we began to fight over our decline in purchasing power.”

The Republican response to this decline was ‘to avoid regulation and taxes.’ This was the time, Brown said, that “the credit card came into vogue.” Private and public debt accelerated to prop up the slowing economy that was once the giant of the planet.

Japan, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, all manufactured cars, watches, and other products of great quality, entering “the latter part of the century with great momentum.”

Our great cities, he said, were declining, and poverty was on the rise.

It’s time, he said “to reindustrialize.” Surely, he argued, we don’t have to rely on a war to revitalize the economy. Time, he said, to invest in new technologies, protecting environment, educating people, to make America “once again a society with upward momentum.”

“Our leaders,” he declared, “can’t tell us the truth. We’re in decline.

Washington Post:

The United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation’s history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies – Britain and Israel, to name two – are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

More than a dozen Washington Post journalists spent two years developing reports on Top Secret America.

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death.

“Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.

“Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.

“Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” – Bertrand Russell

We live in a period of enclosures unparalleled since the sixteenth century.

• The freedom of all types of cultural and literary acts is vital. • All practices that hinder freedom of publishing should be eradicated. • Linguistic oppression is unacceptable. • Digital media is essential for freedom of thought and expression.

“How often in history do you have a person, a woman, who never curses, never steals anything, never does anything illegal and you put her under house arrest for 24 years, it is just insane.”

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
—W. H. Auden

Umair Hague:

The untapped capacity to create significance (and all the stuff that follows on from it — higher purpose, a sense of meaning, animating passion, intrinsic motivation) has never been more important: I’d gently suggest it’s the wellspring of 21st century advantage.

…the real roots of this crisis are that 20th century institutions, whether banks, governments, or corporations, are becoming more and more useless to people, communities, and society. They’re extracting wealth from them, instead of creating enduring, authentic value for them. And that game of musical chairs is this Great Stagnation writ large.

Matt Taibbi, where good rant is extraordinary relief:

Week after week, month after month, we watch politicians who disappoint us, not just as leaders but as people, failing to achieve the basic life-competency standard we expect of most grown-ups, doing things we wouldn’t tolerate from 15-year-olds.

It’s sad but true, but in 99.9% of all cases, you wouldn’t think of looking up to an elected official as a moral role model. Which is why Bernie Sanders is such a rarity, and people should appreciate what he’s doing not just for his home state of Vermont, but for the reputation of all politicians in general.

Here’s how Bernie put it:

“How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the power, we’ve got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That’s the world, get used to it. Rich get richer. Middle class shrinks.”

Roger Ebert is asking, really asking, when will women break free of cruel institutions?

Only two weeks ago, a Republican filibuster in the U. S. Senate prevented passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have added teeth to measures for equal pay.

The Republicans presumably feel they have some support from women on this subject, especially those following religions which preach that a woman must submit to the will of her husband: Either her actual husband, or her legislatorial surrogate.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, ex- US National Security Advisor :

SPIEGEL: And the American decline. Are Americans aware of that trend or does the fate of Carter await President Barak Obama should he openly address the issue?

Brzezinski: I am very worried that most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

SPIEGEL: Yet the American right is still convinced of American exceptionalism.

Brzezinski: That is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.

Henry Porter:

Publication of the cables has caused no loss of life; troops are not being mobilised; and the only real diplomatic crisis is merely one of discomfort. The idea that the past two weeks have been a disaster is self-evidently preposterous.

Yet the leaks are of unprecedented importance because, at a stroke, they have enlightened the masses about what is being done in their name and have shown the corruption, incompetence – and sometimes wisdom – of our politicians, corporations and diplomats.

More significantly, we have been given a snapshot of the world as it is, rather than the edited account agreed upon by diverse elites, whose only common interest is the maintenance of their power and our ignorance.

Are the American people obsolete?

Michael Lind:

The richest few don’t need the rest of us as markets, soldiers or police anymore.

Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes.

In every industrial democracy since the end of World War II, there has been a social contract between the few and the many. In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority.

In North America and Europe, the economic elite agreed to this bargain because they needed ordinary people as consumers and soldiers. Without mass consumption, the factories in which the rich invested would grind to a halt. Without universal conscription in the world wars, and selective conscription during the Cold War, the U.S. and its allies might have failed to defeat totalitarian empires that would have created a world order hostile to a market economy.

Globalization has eliminated the first reason for the rich to continue supporting this bargain at the nation-state level, while the privatization of the military threatens the other rationale.

In the face of what humanity is dealing with these days, incompetence might be history’s biggest word. OMG, is it true there’s no one running our ship?

This article is short. Who’s got the time to dig into friggin’ $trillions war culture? But between the lines, its conclusion is freaky on a lot of levels.

…the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit shares his thoughts with us on Afghanistan, Bin Laden’s current status and the importance of questioning the rhetoric of Western leaders.

A couple tidbits came to mind:

Of course there’s bizarre and caustic islands and crowds appearing, from Morocco to Mindanao, and one cause is our neglect. I spent the evening with one of Kuwait’s media chiefs many years ago, drinking good rum while encouraging him to set up a Muslim version of Sesame Street. Producing lo-cost media, 1000s of product, could encourage an apolitical culture of learning rather than deferring to myth dominated by oligarch. Salmon Rushdie commented the other day that dropping millions of Nintendo across the Islamist geography would do more than the State and Pentagon have ever dreamed.

I think civilian powers can do a great deal. The retired ambassador of Guatemala and I put together a proposal which I managed to get to James Baker during Reagan, not directly but through the Brown Group, a Whitehouse-directed outside team popular in its day.

Mullahs controlled spice trade. One of the premier is cardamom which is used daily in coffee as a ritual to ‘cleanse the breath’ prior to prayers. It’s like a religious currency and gives much power in local circles.  Central America is a top producer. Top cardamom berries are shipped across Islam while we get the smaller ‘leftovers’ in our market.

We argued that organizing a neutral supply, breaking containers into small lots along 100s of Muslim ports would dilute mullah influence and local oligarchs, building a simpler merchant system rather than mosque control. They mulled on it for a few days but called back and said, “Nice approach but not at this time….” We missed that small chance at good relations.

Lack of adequate response to various bell curves and hockey sticks.

We’ll figure it out, I suppose. Energy, waste, poison versus sustenance and prosperity, but there’s plenty of goofy days ahead. Would be nice to get a grip on the fools and thieves though. Petty dominance. They scramble for the pickings and wreck our focus.

A stronger goodwill rather than pepper and argument could keep us on track. But we haven’t spelled out where we’re going or how to get there. We need that. Don’t have it. Have you noticed? I guess we don’t know. It’s up to the ‘new guys’ to bring better tech and workable ventures and the ‘old guys’ just gotta soften up the rigid structures and relentless pilfering. Camel, needles, geesh. Darn near like prairie pioneering all over again.

Ending tax cuts for the rich is enough to give $30,000 jobs to 3 million !

Rep. Alan Grayson:

Madam Speaker, we’ve heard endless braying from the Republicans, time after time, demanding an extension of tax cuts for the rich in this country.

They tell us that somehow extending tax cuts for the rich will somehow create jobs. When we’ve had tax cuts for the rich for nine years and I haven’t noticed a lot of jobs being created in nine years.

They tell us it will boost the economy well I haven’t noticed that happening for nine years either. So you have to wonder why they persist in this mania, this obsession of theirs that we need to have tax cuts for the rich when the economy is flat on its back and unemployment is almost 10%.

I think I have the answer. The answer turns out to be very simple.

They want tax cuts for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves.

What do I mean by that?

Let’s take a look at the people who are really in charge, the ones who actually run the Republican party.

from MindBlog:

Members of Congress are more extreme than the voters they represent.

And:

Voting out one extremist led to replacement by someone equally extreme, but of the opposite party.

Strange, wacky, incredible. Voters are swapping extremists!

The median member of the 109th House of Representatives was more conservative than the median American voter, but the median member of the 110th House of Representatives was more liberal.

Gary Markstein:

Think on this. On both sides of illicit drugs is massive buying power.

1) On one side, Americans pay large sums of money to vast networks of people who grow, process, ship, smuggle, defend, and deliver drugs to the US.

2) On the other side, Americans also pay another network of people vast amounts to find, fight, arrest, and kill those whom we hire to provide the drugs to begin with.

“US dollars finance both sides of this bloody international battle.”

The four-decade ‘war’ on drugs has failed. Next?

Candidates and political committees spent ~$3 billion on midterm advertising primarily controlled by 15 Washington operatives paid fees of $400 million. Well how do you like that? Corporate henchmen with the GOP establishment creating and directing a Tea Party uprising. Yes.

Every country has scam artists, but only in a dying country are they part of the power structure. —Matt Taibbi

The Texan architect of Republican power in Congress was convicted yesterday of two felonies. Contaminant of our lives and damn the technicalities.

We need a better schadenfreude, not mere pleasure after justice, but recognizing we are deer that do not run from wolves.

On the goodness of the Puritans.

Isn’t the deeper issue what the people who came here were like, not what they ate in 1621?

What did they hope to gain by coming to the New World, and what values did they seek to practice?

The goodness of the Puritans is an ethics of the common good: Agree on what’s right and make it happen.

American theocracy? “The opposite is true,” says David Hall.

Overnight, most of the cruelties vanished.

Puritan rules and values are the basis of our separation of church and state… to restrain the clergy… to restrain the uses of power… to transfer authority to the people.

Ministers were not allowed to hold political office. Out went bishops. Out went centralized governance… The colonists turned away from all forms of hierarchy.

Obama to nation: ‘We’ve got to look out for one another’.

Our media shames us while she’s promoted.

Fox News: “How would you handle a situation like the one that just developed in North Korea?”

Sarah Palin: “But obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies. We’re bound to by treaty….”

Fox News: South Korean.

Sarah Palin: “Eh, Yeah. And we’re also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.”

The New Yorker’s airport security cartoons:

St. Petersburg Times:

The tragedy of how the richer made us poorer:

Why do you think John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are so intent on renewing the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans when they know it will bust another $700 billion hole in our national treasury over 10 years and prove their hypocrisy on fiscal responsibility?

It’s because cutting taxes for the richest Americans is the GOP’s No. 1 job. Nothing else comes close to being that important, despite the campaign rhetoric of these leading Republicans.

Not reducing the deficit, not supporting the troops, not cutting taxes for the middle class, not outlawing abortion, not even, dare I say it, protecting gun rights.

Boehner and McConnell are the four-star mercenary generals in a war launched by America’s corporate interests and superrich. This is what they were hired to do.

The disconnect between American politics and reality grows larger every day. Politicians are hearing from just one group: highly organized and monied interests bankrolling their campaigns.

The go-to party for America’s plutocrats is the Republican Party.

Winner-Take-All Politics, How Washington Made the Rich Richer —the operational battle plan that the superrich have been implementing for the last 30 years.

With piles of cash, they’ve built an army of beholden politicians, Republicans as well as Democrats, and an array of conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute to seed ideas and feed the public their arguments.

Washington is stuffed to the gills with lobbyists. It’s a party town for a Shadow Congress.

There are at least 126 locations in this Capitol Hill neighborhood alone where fundraisers have been held in the past three years.

70% are the homes or offices of lobbyists and lobbying clients.

There is a fundamental conformity across the news spectrum… NEWSVERTISING.

Most of the time news, soap-operas, reality shoes, pornography, and adverts blend seamlessly into one another, which is to be expected given that, fundamentally, they are all the same thing… [making] their money not through sales to readers, but through sales to advertisers.

The news, in other words, is not a product, which the reader or TV viewer consumes, but a by-product. The product is the reader, which the newspaper and news-channel sells to the advertiser.

Darren Allen

You may have noticed, while reading The Guardian, Le Monde or The New York Times, that no mention is ever made of the fundamental cause of conflict, the origin and nature of history, the best way to experience the center of the universe while making love, how another person can really be known, what death has in common with asking a girl out, how to be free of worry, what to do if you accidentally find yourself trapped in a prison, school or office, why things don’t go haywire anymore, what the coming world catastrophe has in common with cellular biology, why a beautiful shoe will always be beautiful, how to enhance empathy, why we have placed birth and death in the hands of experts, what trees have in common with improvised theater, why mystery and irrational generosity are illegal, the secret connection between modern art and corporate wealth-maximizing and what all this has in common with formality, play, metaphor, the oldest meaning of the word god, the color of Tuesday and why we smile when we meet a friend. Finally no mention is ever made of the reason why these, and thousands of other illuminating topics, never find their way into the pages of the news-media; why the reader has to look elsewhere for a beginner’s guide to democratic mind control…

One day–and the day is coming–there will be a genuinely alternative, genuinely independent news source.

It will sell nothing.

The unemployed can’t get work because there are five people needing work for every job opening.

• Republicans say we should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. • Embrace laissez faire capitalism. • Supply-side deregulation. • Tax holiday on overseas earnings. • Eliminate corporate income tax. • Complete privatization of the money supply. • Repeal financial reform. • Eliminate new infrastructure spending. • Government out of health care. • Cut minimum wage. • Move K-12 education to the private sector. • Restrict Medicare and Medicaid to only catastrophic health events. • Shorten unemployment insurance to encourage people to work. • Return the gold standard. • Privatize Social Security with cash grant to opt out.

Ideologues stumping to fix the problem without understanding what the problem is.

The secret money served it up, and the logic-impaired tea party irregulars swallowed the poisoned bait with relish. The net result of the vaunted populist rebellion of 2010 was a sharp turn toward corporate feudalism…

Hal Crowther:

Where’s the country’s conscience? Where’s its heart? Where’s its brain?

I can’t explain why Americans would vote to return to an economic philosophy that imploded in their faces just two years ago, causing most of the misery they’re bearing so unstoically. No more than I can explain why a majority of women, for the first time, voted Republican.

It may be that voters below a certain level of ratiocination, their logical faculties permanently maimed by reality TV and video games, are no longer able to resist the kind of attack ads that came at them in a $4 billion tidal wave. The big corporate contributors wouldn’t fund this operation so generously if they weren’t confident of a handsome return.

Never in human history has so much cash and so much expertise been devoted to what would once have been called mind control, or brainwashing, and is now called free speech.

There’s no apparent limit to what the right-wing coalition can spend, or will spend, to bring out the worst in Americans.

ratiocination: the activity or process of reasoning…