Come Together?

Ralph Nader has a new book out, called Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. In it, Nader argues that some elements of the Right and Left are beginning to come together as they slowly realize they have a common enemy, Wall Street in particular, corporatism in general.

Progressives, including Nader, had much of this figured out long ago; whether it be the corrupting influence of wealth and privilege, the contradictions of neoliberal economics, the laughable asininity of supply-side economics, the  illogical and self-serving gospel of free trade and more: It was the Left, the true Left, not the Clintons and their Democratic Leadership Council, nor the New Democrats, nor other Republican Lites, including President Obama, that long ago saw the corporate train wreck heading our way.

Only now, with so much evidence that even Fox cannot spin it all away, we see at least some working and middle class conservatives, including those who identify with the Tea Party, are finally realizing they have been played by the Republican establishment, those at the very top of the conservative wealth and power structure. 

The Left, broadly defined, has long wondered how the reactionary Right, especially working class rank and file Republicans, could so blindly and aggressively support Republican politicians who so clearly violate what teabaggers claim they stand for, or what they consider to be morally sound.

Nader is not alone on this. I myself have argued there is a substantial ideological and policy opening that could allow the two otherwise disparate forces to work together. Issues such as an abusive financial sector, corruption, inequality before the law, the bill of goods called free trade, secret offshore bank accounts -- an issue that hurt Romney with working class Republicans --are issues that animate both the Left and more than a few Tea Party adherents.

Mike Konczal argues that the Tea Party and Wall Street actually get along just fine. He makes some good points, but it is important to note that Konczal's focus is on elected politicians, those whose elections are financed by Wall Street, and not rank and file teabaggers. It is this latter group's interests which diverge most strongly with the plutocracy, even if they often seem doggedly unaware of it.

And ultimately, this is why Nader's belief that liberals and teabaggers will work against a common enemy may be wishful thinking, at least until even more pain is felt. Few conservatives, and especially tea partiers, even now, will listen to arguments made by progressives. Or to put it differently, many teabaggers will be open to an idea or policy until they realize it is a progressive one, or on those occasions when President Obama supports it. As an aside, I might add they also don't realize how often President Obama sides with the center-right, such as through his enforcement of domestic spying programs initiated by Bush, his unwillingness to prosecute Wall Street banks, or the continued care and feeding of a bloated military.

Their common sense is overwhelmed by a condition that Fox News has worked hard to develop. Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes once said he was less interested in giving viewers the news than in how they felt about it. Blame it on cable TV and the Internet, but fewer of us are willing to listen to, and think through, viewpoints we don't like and may not want to hear. Authoritarians, which populate the Tea Party, are especially impervious to uncomfortable facts and are especially rigid, often contradictory, in their views, but we are all susceptible. Add to this a visceral hatred for liberals that runs deep in America, even though conservatives support liberal policies far more than they realize, that ensures that many on the right will reject policies and programs they would otherwise support if psychology played less of a role and evidence-based economics played more. It does not help that progressive views are relatively complex and do not lend themselves to easy bromides, slogans, or bumper stickers.

It would undoubtedly gall many teabaggers, were they suddenly to acquire a more rounded education, that Marx was right; class defines everything. Those at the very top have always used the state for their own ends. The enduring challenge for the rest of us, one we are currently failing, is to keep in check the predatory nature of the neoliberal overclass.   

Innovation is Secondary

Ever notice how little time politicians spend debating the core issues that concern the politically literate? And how easily our media chases after, or creates, secondary issues? It was painful enough to watch the tepid and interminable process known as the presidential election campaigns. And now with mid-terms approaching, we are reminded just how shallow American elections, and the media that feeds off them, have become. What really is killing us is the abject inability or unwillingness to understand and confront our rigged and dysfunctional system. Our overclass has no intention of letting public discourse ever become constructive and insightful. Our corporate media is only too happy to fixate on the trivial, or otherwise shine its investigative spotlight on important but secondary issues, including education, the federal debt, and other seemingly constructive topics such as innovation.

As America continues to struggle, many continue to tout the value of innovation-- in technology and commerce, mostly-- but also in education and government. President Obama himself has often stressed the importance of innovation; how we once had it in abundance, how it now is eroding, and what we must do to get it back. The value of innovation would seem to be something that progressives and conservatives could mostly agree on, and that helps explain why the President talks about it. It seems, on its face, to be non-partisan.

However, when President Obama talks about the importance of innovation, he has often, inadvertently or not, folded it in with other conservative talking points. We need to "work harder," "stay in school," --or go back to school-- and get that degree or those credentials. It's a competitive world out there; if you can't get the job you want, it's because you are not properly trained and credentialed. And, of course, you cannot blame corporate America if you don't have the proper skills. We must not let down them down; work harder and prove your value to the job creators. This is the central tenant of individualism.

It's all quite clever, really, for the constant adulation of individualism tends to shut down debate and analysis of US political economy. It is all up to you. The rich earned all they have, and if you don't like your lot in life, it is your fault and only you can change it. This mantra allows the overclass to largely avoid honest media examination or a concerted pushback from a mostly insouciant population that is chockablock with low-information voters, has a short attention span, allows itself to be constantly distracted by inanity, and takes solace in religion. Corporate media operates within this milieu, invariably giving voice to conservative operatives who lecture and berate as class warfare any attempt to lay bare our breath-taking inequality. The ideology of individualism allows our overclass to pin society's ills on our growing underclass.

Obviously, there is much to be said for staying is school, seeking additional training, or more broadly, the role of innovation. American commerce still provides sundry example of where hard work and innovation can take you; they are the twin edges we must sharpen if we are to meet future challenges.

However, every speech devoted to either of these takes the focus away from the underlying causes of US difficulty; jobs, to be sure, but also wage levels for the jobs we still have. Most people are in fact employed, and most jobs have not been outsourced or lost to foreign competition. What is not being acknowledged is that a disproportionate number of the jobs Americans now have face little foreign competition. That's the good part; the bad part is modest wages, benefits, and skill requirements for so many of these jobs. You don't need a degree to work fast food, retailing, and the like. And what about that other more technical job you went to back to school for, got a degree in, and now are heavily in debt for? Sorry, that job has been filled.

The problem of our sluggish economic growth is not a lack of innovation. We have bought into an economic doctrine that sanctifies free trade, financial deregulation, including unfettered flow of capital, and an obsession with credit and debt. It is a system designed by and for banks and the investor class, with little regard for main street or the middle class. The result is an indifference to massive trade deficits, dangerously leveraged banks, and an increasingly ability of the wealthy to avoid taxation and accountability. Employees are seen as a mere input in this profit model. Low wages are good since they improve the bottom line. If workers are recalcitrant and actually want a living wage, management should be free to outsource production to low wage countries. To hear some tell it, management is virtually obligated to fire its American workers and seek cheap unregulated workers abroad for improving the bottom line is management's only real responsibility. It's what the investors want, you know.

And the people who work for the company? That's labor, an input. Lower input costs mean higher profits. Why pay more? Any manager who does not seek to maximize profits is doing a disservice to investors, just like they were all taught in American business schools. It's all very rational and efficient, don't you see?

Innovation does not directly address any of this. We have innovated like crazy and what are the results? Entire industries have been shipped overseas. Because we have allowed our industrial base and concomitant skills to erode, seeking out overseas producers has become the default position. A generation has grown up assuming that American reliance on foreign manufacturers is the natural order of things.

Nor do the calls for greater innovation say who will benefit from the results. Asia is a huge beneficiary of US economic policy. For generations our tax dollars have poured into basic R&D, much of it going to public universities. It has been a great success story, and it has played a key role in America's development. As with the recent rounds of stimulus spending, many of those tax dollars end up in Asia. Working harder, as both Republicans and Obama have exhorted, does nothing to change the imbalances. US corporations already have what they always want; cheap labor, huge profits, and a compliant, cheer-leader government. The investor class took a hit in 2008, but they have recovered nicely, and have fat dividends and lightly-taxed capital gains to show for it.

So the middle class needs to work harder? Because corporate America's profits are not high enough? Because the job creators need help? Americans are already working harder than elsewhere in the OECD; we also have, in recent decades, relatively little to show for it. Wages have been suppressed, union membership has plummeted, and pensions and benefits have become even more rarefied, not because of foreign competition, or globalization, but by design. It is the direct result of illegitimate policies made in response to legitimate economic challenges.

Innovation will help; it always has. But the role of innovation has been undermined for the same reason our middle class and techno-industrial base have. A little history shows that nations that support each of these have thrived. Those that let their financial sector dominate have crumbled. America will not be an exception.

Enrichment for the Few

Former AT&T Broadband CEO Leo Hindery recently acknowledged that executive pay in America has gotten completely out of control, and that it has caused a "structural breakdown of the meritocracy of our nation."

Hindery says it is "born out of cronyism." Well, yes, shameless cronyism is certainly a defining feature of American corporate culture, but who are the cronies and how do they get that way? Cronyism is an American way to avoid the obvious Marxian reality that corporatism in America is and always has been class-based and is intended to be an enrichment mechanism for the well-placed and the wealthy. It is all about enriching the upper class and not Americans in general.

All the same, Hindery's disgust is fully merited. In a recent interview;

Hindery observed that, even as CEO pay has skyrocketed in recent decades, it has not "trickled down" to workers, who must increasingly borrow money to finance their spending. That dynamic helped set the stage for the most recent recession and helps explain today's sluggish recovery.

That's exactly it; rich CEOs are not directly the problem, but more of a symptom. The real problem is how little of the country's growth in the last 30+ years has gone to the middle and working class and instead has gone to those at the very top, the 1/10th of 1%, a class of individuals who were already rich when inequality was merely significant instead of obscene. 

The problem is that too many of us must hunker down just to pay the basics. There is nothing left in a growing number of paychecks for families to buy groceries, pay the rent, pay or save for education, and put away some for retirement. So at the end of the week, something must go. A low-wage economy, which America now is, means increasing numbers of us have nothing left for an occasional splurge on just the products corporations want so much to sell us. Neoliberal politicians, some Democrats, mostly Republicans, have forgotten that one company's employee is another company's customer.
  
As Hindery states; "The only time the U.S. economy and any of the developed economies prosper is when there's a vibrant middle class that grows from the bottom up...We've trashed that whole principle."

To make matters much worse, the figures on inequality generally do not include assets CEOs and their investor class enablers are able to shield from taxation. And that means many billions of dollars leave the US and end up in foreign banks accounts. That does nothing for the US economy, though it is quite beneficial for places such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Switzerland. It isn't the middle class that sends these huge sums offshore. It is the very wealthy, who quite literally have more money than they know what to do with. While some of that wealth continues to be productively employed, an increasing amount is pumped into the political process--overtly creating a plutocracy--or is frittered away on ostentatious displays; the hyperwealthy's version of crass consumption.

Recent evidence of the astronomical sums the super-wealthy hide or send abroad, you know, people like Mitt Romney, demonstrates we have been seriously underestimating the amount of wealth that has left the United States. 

In a recent article in Slate, Jordan Weissmann shares the findings:

Economists Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California–Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman, of the London School of Economics, are out with a new set of findings on American wealth inequality, and their numbers are startling. Wealth, for reference, is the value of what you own—assets like housing, stocks, and bonds, minus your debts. And while it certainly comes up from time to time, it has tended to play second fiddle to income in conversations about America’s widening class divide. In part, that’s because it’s a trickier conversation subject. Wealth has always been far more concentrated than income in the United States. Plus, research suggested that the top 1 percent of households had actually lost some of its share since the 1980s. 

That might not really have been the case. 

Forget the 1 percent. The winners of this race, according to Zucman and Saez, have been the 0.1 percent. Since the 1960s, the richest one-thousandth of U.S. households, with a minimum net worth today above $20 million, have more than doubled their share of U.S. wealth, from around 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Take a moment to process that. One-thousandth of the country owns one-fifth of the wealth. By comparison, the entire top 1 percent of households takes in about 22 percent of U.S. income, counting capital gains.

This is hideous, not because a few people are hyperwealthy, but because they helped create the deeply unfair and unsustainable economy that allowed them to attain that wealth. Now they dominate society, law, commerce, media, banking, and the democratic process to ensure their interests are protected and a Dixified, socioeconomic heirarchy is ever more institutionalized.

Say good bye to democracy. 

Cheap Labor Only, Please

Manufacturing and trade news do not get much coverage in our mainstream press. Japanese obsess over trade data, as do the Chinese, Koreans, and most others who take manufacturing seriously. This is obvious from reading any of the mainstream and  business-oriented newspapers overseas.

Ours? The focus is more on Wall Street, corporate profits, and finance. Our corporate media does not want to spend much time on the implications of large, chronic, and structural trade deficits, except for the predictable paeans to free trade, how much we benefit, and how boorishly stupid you are if you are not a committed free trader. Honest analyses of how we arrived at our current condition are rare; most commentary is ideologically driven tripe that contends workers are overpaid and investors need more profits. 

To be sure, we have all read of the decline of American manufacturing. And for those who are determined to know, many websites and blogs, especially those hosted by academics, cover these subjects very well. But while complaints about Chinese currency manipulation and the hazards of doing business in China do get coverage, little is said in the mainstream media about the role of American corporations and how they turned over technology and manufacturing to China and other trade competitors, all in an effort to tap cheap labor, ignore the challenges and capital requirements of advanced manufacturing, boost short-term profits, and please the investor class.

As Chinese wages continue to climb, we are now seeing some evidence of a pick-up in US manufacturing. But a central conundrum remains: Should it be a matter of policy to promote the return of manufacturing to the US? Or is the market going to resolve domestic manufacturing, and perhaps give a boost to exports, without policy intervention?

It is hard to get enthusiastic about an improving manufacturing sector, especially in the face of new data. I once would have welcomed it more openly, but it is becoming increasingly clear that a global economy or neo-mercantilist trading partners are only secondary reasons. In other words, less blame should be attributed to cheap labor in China and more to the desire for cheap labor in the US. The current condition of the US, complete with massive trade and current account deficits, is the direct result of wealthy and well-connected purveyors of neo-liberal free markets. It is they who have hobbled government's essential regulatory role (derivatives anyone?) and facilitated the dominance of finance and the rentier class.

So there is little reason to think that newly created manufacturing jobs are going to pay very well. Neo-liberal policy wonks, along with right-wing politicians, have had a 30+ year run promoting ideas, policies, and legislation that has weakened labor unions, kept minimum wages low, undermined workers' rights and put into place an elaborate tax code that ensures that corporations will largely avoid taxes. All of that in addition to the glories of free and unfettered international trade.

All of which was always the goal. To the extent that corporations locate or relocate manufacturing in the US, it will only be in response to low wages, obscene tax giveaways from states, the absence of unions, and elaborate agreements with government officials that ensure corporations will continue to privatize the benefits and socialize that costs. If manufacturing does meaningfully increase in the US, it will only be because wages have been driven down. If wages go up, even in accordance with productivity gains, corporations will threaten to off-shore production once again.

Our Free Press is Failing Us

As a kid growing up, long before the Internet, I thought that any bit of substantive news that made it out of one source, such as a big-city newspaper, would inevitably get widely disseminated by other sources, another newspaper, then another, then the 6 o'clock news, the weeklies. It would all happen quickly and efficiently, whether you liked it or not.

Now, and only partly because of the Internet, several uneasy trends have become apparent:  1) that bit about "substantive news" getting widely disseminated was probably never true, though arguably more so than now, 2) news is more shallow and dumbed-down now than in the past, and 3) though the Internet has opened up numerous sites to tap for data and commentary, and has given us unprecedented opportunity to explore ever further afield, it has also made it easier for us to pursue our preferences and ignore the rest. In so doing, we have erected philosophical, ideological, and religious filters that tend to confirm our world views rather than challenge them.

Nor has the Internet compelled the mainstream media to be more balanced, or to even cover stories, viewpoints, and evidence that discerning readers--and alternative news enthusiasts-- know exist. And that can happen--is happening--with major subjects that affect us all.

Ask yourself how many corporate-owned news organizations are covering the efficacy of raising the payroll tax cap on Social Security. Over and over we hear the major outlets argue for, or repeat the talking points of the investor class on Social Security: it is in trouble, it is a big part of the budget deficit, and we need to cut benefits to those who desperately need it because doing so will narrow the federal deficit and somehow spur growth. Here is an example of how our feckless media allows conservative politicians to misrepresent Social Security.

The reality is that over the years Social Security garnered a roughly $2.5 trillion surplus, a surplus that Congress has tapped to fund other programs. And now Congress does not want to pay it back. Doing so would draw attention to ethically questionable action; messing with people's retirement. And yes, the claim that social security is nearly bankrupt, wrong in the first place, is especially galling given the surplus it ran up which Congress then "borrowed." The real kicker is that a simple tweak like raising the payroll tax would also reveal the viability of social security, which contradicts the mostly Republican narrative that Social Security is failing us. It should be clear now that Republicans don't actually want to strengthen social security. This is why they seem so tone deaf to simple solutions: They are not looking for solutions and they don't want talk of solutions to enter the debate. Policy experts, economists, and so many others have, often in great detail, made it clear the "sky-is-falling" talking points are egregiously inaccurate. Here are some facts on social security.

One may disagree on complex policy issues while acknowledging that there is room for alternative views. Our media should be asking why Congress does not remove the Social Security cap. Let opponents defend their refusal publicly. Challenge their insipid talking points. But we are not even having that debate, not publicly, not with any consistency or honesty.

Class Warriors Explain Those Horrible Taxes

The picture below recently ran in the Wall Street Journal. It is a clumsy attempt to show us how horrible President Obama's taxes policies will be for us in 2013 what with those massive, job-killing tax hikes set to kick in.

I should not have to explain this, right? It is laughable, yes?

What? You're not laughing? OK, perhaps you cannot read the fine print, so here is my point. I will assume the Journal's calculations are correct. After all, taxes usually do go up when taxes are raised. However, the only way one can come up with attention-getting tax increases of up to $21,608 is to use outlandish income examples, as the Journal has done.

A single parent, with two children--and a $260,000 income. Uh, yeah, that is pretty typical. And that sad face she has; her kids look like they are out of a Dickens novel. The rest of them look as bad. The young single women in the bottom left will also be financially ruined; she only makes $230,000 per year, while the family of six squeezes by on $650,000.  Great time to be retired, I guess; no tax increase and hey!, $180 grand a year.

Does anyone think any of the four examples represents anyone other than the 1%? With massive deficits, rising poverty, and a right wing that howls incessantly about balancing the budget, how many Americans think that tax increases running from 0% to 3.3% on people earning in the range of a quarter million and more are where we should direct our tears of outrage?

The Journal could have used income figures of say, $40,000-$60,000, a range far more representative of most Americans. The problem is that the thousand dollar tax hikes it portrays would no longer hold true, and that, of course, is why the Journal didn't use them. It had to willfully and crudely mislead, and hope that we wouldn't notice.

Does the Wall Street Journal think it is being clever?  Or is it even more tone-deaf to America's reality than I thought?

Hat tip to Avedon Carol. Another read, with maybe a clearer picture is here.

Reactionaries Did Themselves In

So now that the elections are finally over, the recriminations have begun. I said earlier that if Romney lost, the Republican party would blame Romney and not its policies. Party big shots and their shills in the media would say they lost because Romney was a flawed candidate, or that he ran a weak campaign. And now we see that process has begun. But master operative Karl Rove is also taking a lot of heat for Republican losses that, amazingly, most of them did not see coming. Rove has been bitterly denounced for his failure to do lots of things, but basically, as far as the super rich guys were concerned, his failure to deliver on a campaign they were treating as bought and paid for.

Of course, Rove has a bit of defense; Romney really was a weak candidate. Rove provided various logistical services for a veritable swarm of candidates, and of course he provided boatloads of money for candidates who were only too happy to have the help. He didn't tell the various down ticket Republicans that they should put their foot in their mouths by offending gays, blacks, Hispanics, and women. Whatever was going through the minds of loathsome candidates like Joe Walsh of Illinois, Allen West of Florida, Todd Akin of Missouri, or Richard Mourdock of Indiana, came from their hearts, so to speak. They all ran on anger, divisiveness, and contempt for people not like themselves; they all lost.

What is not happening, for most Republicans, is a recognition that their policies are not supported by most Americans and their attitude, including, most certainly, Mitt Romney's, mightily pissed off way too many highly motivated voters. Their reactionary world view kept them from appreciating just how much damage they were doing to themselves and to the Republican brand. For many years Republicans at all levels have allowed themselves to retreat from a mainstream view of the world, of liberalism, Democrats, and especially President Obama. Instead, a parallel, deeply reactionary (and therefore not a traditionally-nuanced conservatism) alternative has grown to dominate the party.

At the center of that alternative universe is conservative media, dominated by the Fox News we have come to love, as well as Rush Limbaugh, but also a host of others, many of them owned or affiliated with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, as is Fox. The Republican party has for years helped develop and increasingly relied upon an ideologically-driven alternative media. It is a model, besides being irresistibly profitable for the executives who run it, that has gamed rank-and-file viewers while providing a comforting and convenient outlet for right wing voices. Doing so created apparent legitimacy to noxious and offensive individuals and ideas as well as an ideological bubble that served to inoculate conservative voters from uncomfortable facts or non-confirmatory narratives. It also induced Republican politicians, not always the most nuanced thinkers to begin with, to deeply overestimate their party's appeal and misjudge how offensive they were perceived by all but the diminishing numbers of true believers.
 

More Lying

I'm not sure which impresses me more: the breath-taking willingness of Paul Ryan to lie, or the fact that at least some in the media have, finally, remembered what their job means and are now willing to call Ryan what he is; a relentless and shameless liar.

Many bloggers and political junkies have been saying from the outset that Ryan was deeply flawed and so ideologically driven that he feels at ease in lying. And I don't mean making partisan speeches, or strident accusations. Nor do I mean stretching the truth, or making questionable interpretations, which all politicians have done. I mean Paul Ryan is making bald-face lies, in the strictest sense of the word. Intentional misrepresentation has become a rhetorical tool.

Ryan went so far over the top in his recent speech at the Republican National Convention that even the mainstream press could no longer play along with the "serious thinker" crap. The Washington Post said it was "Paul Ryan's breathtakingly dishonest speech."  Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic asked if it might just be The Most Dishonest Convention Speech...Ever?  The Huffington Post has a nice compilation from various sources, including ABC and CNN. And it turns out even Fox can't get past the lying, saying "...to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

So what was it that Ryan was lying about this time? By all means, click the links above for more complete discussion. The short answer that most seemed to agree upon would be as follows:

1) Ryan once again claimed that the GM plant in Ryan's district closed on Obama's watch, when it didn't. What makes Ryan especially contemptible to me is that he had been called out on this claim a few days before, and didn't bother to make any correction. The second time around, more of the media caught it.

2) Ryan is still claiming that Obama is "stealing" $700+ billion from medicare.

3) Ryan also took Obama to task on the now nearly forgotten Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission, noting that Obama created it, and then seemed to ignore it. Sure, Ryan, you called it an "urgent report," but you yourself voted against it.

4) Again, Ryan blamed Obama for the gaping federal budget deficit, ignoring the fact that the biggest single reason for it is the Bush tax cuts, which Ryan voted for. And this is coming from a man who wants to cut those taxes even more for the wealthy,including zero taxes on capital gains. This would mean Romney would effectively pay zero in taxes, without the need for offshore accounts.Yeah, Ryan, that will really balance the books.

5) Ryan even tried to blame Obama for the credit rating downgrade a while back when the US appeared to be inching towards default. As Jonathan Cohn notes: "And why did that possibility exist? Because Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling, playing chicken not just with the nations’ credit rating but the whole economy, unless Obama would cave into their budget demands."

Here's Stephen Colbert's take: love how he skewers those who still want to make light of Ryan's lying. I'm looking at you, Erin Burnett.

The Colbert Report
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Feckless

We heard a lot of criticism directed at President Obama when gasoline prices started to climb earlier this year. Republicans, knowing how easily many voters can be manipulated, thought they had a campaign issue: just remind everyone that gas prices are going up, ignore the complex set of factors that explain the rise, especially Wall Street speculators, and just blame the President.

They lined up at the mic to do just that:
      In February, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made the laughably inane claim that “This President will go to any length to drive up gas prices and pave the way for his ideological agenda.”
      In March,  Mitt Romney declared, “He gets full credit or blame for what’s happened in this economy, and what’s happened to gasoline prices under his watch..."
     In April, House Speaker John Boehner said, “The president holds the key to addressing the pain Ohioans are feeling at the gas pump and moving our nation away from its reliance on foreign energy. My question for the president is: what are you waiting for?”

As it turned out, Boehner didn't have long to wait. Now that gas prices are falling, he and other Republicans have grown silent. Romney said Obama deserved credit, as well as blame, for what has happened. That is simplistic nonsense, of course; the fact that Congressional Republicans have spent three years obstructing the President apparently is not a factor for Romney. Let's be clear on that point: you may agree with Republican tactics and say the Dems must be stopped, etc., but you cannot later ignore the Republicans' role in the Washington logjam and pretend it wasn't a factor.

In any event, Romney is a little slow about giving Obama "full credit" on gas prices. Now one might say that Obama doesn't deserve much credit or blame: The White House inherently has few short-term options on oil prices and cannot be expected to simply step in and ratchet down gas prices. American presidents do not have that kind of power.

But that doesn't mean Obama didn't have some options, or that he didn't use them.

What's that? You didn't hear all about it? And some people still think our corporate-owned media has a liberal bias. To make a bad situation worse, the White House has done a poor job of sharing Obama's message and accomplishments. It's as if he believes the media is an honest broker and is motivated to get the full story out. Peter Cohen, writing for Forbes, captures this frustrating imbalance:

When he was running for President in 2008, Barack Obama struck me as a gifted orator. But now that he’s running for re-election, it feels to me that the messaging power of his political opponents is like Hurricane Katrina blowing against a chipmunk’s squeal. So I am confident that a piece of excellent news for drivers resulting from a little-noticed policy from Mr. Obama will get no attention at all from the media.

In April, I predicted that President Obama’s $52 million plan to increase the margin requirements and otherwise tighten the screws on oil speculators — who borrow huge sums to bet on the direction of oil without taking delivery — would cut oil prices by 10 percent. He’s beaten that prediction, and the lowered price of gasoline has added $78.4 billion to its consumers’ spending power.

Cohen has much more to say on the specific steps Obama has outlined to combat high prices, including:

  --Increase by a factor of six Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) surveillance and enforcement staff “to better deter oil market manipulation,

  --Boost 10-fold, to $10 million, the civil and criminal penalties against “firms that engage in market manipulation,

  --Give the CFTC authority to increase the trader margins — the amount of their own capital that traders must set aside for each bet...

These and other factors, including increased domestic oil production, have driven down oil and gasoline prices. Cohen puts it in human terms:

So just how much has Mr. Obama stimulated the economy through his April crackdown on oil speculators? Well, if my experience is any indication, the answer is quite a bit. After all, I was paying about $4.05 a gallon for mid-grade back then and this week the price had fallen to $3.49.

That 56 cents a gallon decline would amount to me saving about $582 a year — assuming that I fill up my 20 gallon tank once a week. But if the AP is right, that same 56 cent a gallon drop would add $78.4 billion to U.S. GDP.

That’s not much for a $15 trillion economy, but it represents a 1,508 percent return on Mr. Obama’s $52 million investment, in two months.

In the final analysis, I notice a double standard. Republicans attack Obama for not doing something about high gas prices. He, in fact, did something, including increased drilling and permit approval. Not a sound of approval from his critics, and not much coverage in the media. In the spring, Obama also outlines his plan to rein in speculators. By the first day of summer oil prices were off 21% from their April highs.

Republicans blame Obama for not doing something about gas prices even as they insist government should stay out of free markets. He does something, brings down prices, and they call it government meddling. Weren't you the guys blaming him for not doing anything?

Feckless assholes

Impressive

You've got to hand it to Republican Party operatives. After more than 30 years of constant effort, conservatives within the party, media, the judiciary, and in the corporate world, have managed to turn upside down much of what the public thought it knew about government, unions, taxes, and even teachers.

I make a distinction between Republicans and conservatives that some may see as unnecessary; are not Republicans and conservatives synonymous? Pretty much, at least in 2012, but it would be difficult to overstate just how far to the right the Republican Party has lurched; a process that began, to the dismay of millions of moderate and liberal Republicans, with the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The cleansing process picked up rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, with numerous watershed moments, such as the arrival of Newt Gingrich and the politics of destruction. As testimony to Republicans' new approach to governing, many will recall that the Party was able to keep Whitewater in public view, with the help of a stupidly compliant press, for literally years on end, only to have the process finally wind down having demonstrated no presidential malfeasance.

From the judicial standpoint, it was a waste of time and taxpayers' money. But upholding the law had nothing to do with it. The objective was to vilify a Democratic President, obstruct his agenda and ability to govern, and convince the public that conservatives stood on principles. The never-ending rush to spin the story helped feed the narrative that liberals are not to be trusted. Even today people will refer to Whitewater as a scandal, forgetting that there was no wrongdoing, despite years of investigation. It was only a scandal because the Republican hierarchy kept claiming it was. And many will be surprised when reminded that the 12 years of Reagan and Bush saw a dramatically greater number of actual convictions, not accusations, than in the eight years of Clinton. If the reality goes against what you had heard and "just assumed," it is because Republicans worked hard to make it so, for they have shown a superior ability to get their ideas into the media and into people's heads. They dominate most narratives because they understand how to make their messages simple and emotional. What sounds implausible or even ridiculous at first becomes accepted as truth if repeated enough. All propagandists understand this. This why Republicans have said for decades they, against all evidence, are the party of personal responsibility, fiscal prudence, and limited government. Voters who don't study the facts have come to accept this narrative.

And now we see Republican spin taken to new heights, creating a parallel world of logic and reason. They have managed what should have been impossible in a sane world of evidence, facts, and reason; divert enough of the electorate's, and the media's, attention away from the Wall Street banks and turn the middle class against itself. Significant numbers of Americans now think that public workers earn too much, are lazy and irresponsible, and are a drain on our fragile economy.Too many show an infantile understanding of economics by buying into Republican rhetoric that teachers' salaries are too high, so we must rein in those destructive teachers' unions. "Never mind that stuff you hear about Wall Street. Those guys deserve every penny they got, and besides, look at all the jobs they create."

The truly reprehensible thing about Mitt Romney is that he personally promotes these ideas and never once has acknowledged that the Bush tax cuts, which he wants to deepen, have been a prime contributor to the federal deficit. Everything the man says indicates he will be for the one percent and will penalize the working class, and yet he is running as a viable candidate.

And as we just saw in Wisconsin, there are plenty of voters who are fine with Scott Walker's effort to strip away the hard-fought gains by teachers and other public workers. Many now instinctively believe that there is such a thing in America as "big labor," and that cutting back salaries and benefits of teachers, librarians, firefighters, cops, and others, will somehow drive the economy forward, that and more tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans have apparently convinced more than a few that teachers are now fat cats. The Wall Street bankers that drove the economy into recession have almost entirely avoided legal scrutiny. Forgotten is their unforgivable act of paying mammoth executive compensation with the very tax dollars meant to stabilize the catastrophic mess they created. No accountability, no significant judicial proceedings, and the few penalties levied have been easily paid and treated as nothing more than the cost of doing business.

The banks got away with it while attention has been diverted to where Republicans want it. They, including Mitt Romney himself, have convinced many that pushing back against the oligarchy is class warfare, but endless bitching about teachers and other members of the middle class, with an eye to stripping their rights and reducing their pay, is productive policy. And they have roughly half of that middle class believing it.

That is quite an accomplishment.

Republicans say Republicans are the Problem

Perhaps you heard recently that two prominent Republican strategists have acknowledged that Republicans are the problem with government. Surely you have read by now the whirlwind tour that Messrs. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have been on, where they have been able to discuss in detail their damning indictment against what the Republican Party has become. All the major media outlets have hosted the pair where they have been able to honestly discuss the issues. Shawn Hannity says he has had an epiphany, a veritable mea culpa. Even Rush Limbaugh admits to rethinking his positions.

All right, so that will never happen. Not when their salaries depend upon them not understanding it, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair. But Mann and Ornstein, writing in none other than the Washington Post, did indeed acknowledge how toxic their party has become:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

It is grimly gratifying to hear them admit that

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

The Republican party was not always like this. Geoffrey Kabaservice's history of the party, Rule and Ruin, reminds us Republicans had long stretches of moderation and sensibility. Mann and Ornstein plead this point as well. They acknowledge what progressives have been saying for years; "...the center of gravity of the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right."

And you thought all that talk about obstructionist Republicans was just whiny liberals:

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

I remind readers that Mann and Ornstein are fixtures in Washington and in Republican circles, often called upon to do the intellectual heavy lifting on conservative issues. So what makes the media response even more interesting, in an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way, is the systemic refusal of Washington elites, beyond the Wapo, to acknowledge or even bother to dispute, the veracity of Mann and Ornstein's contentions. They are simply being ignored. Bear in mind that these two authors are among the most quoted in politics; they are frequent guests on the media talk shows.

Not this time. Republicans and their media masters can blow off such talk when it comes from Democrats; it is harder to do when your own policy wonks say the same thing. So you do the next best thing. Ignore them and be thankful the news cycle is as short as the American attention span.

Newt's Hilarious Hypocrisy

It's a little early to say how the Republican primaries are going to play out, but it is evident that the two frontrunners, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, are seriously damaged goods. Gingrich has been a known factor for many years. That helps explain why he is reviled by many in his own party. Romney has scored a major victory in Florida and has retained his front-runner status. His biggest advantage is that candidates like Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul are the only alternatives. And they are more than all but the most disaffected Republicans can stomach.

Still, Gingrich speaks in ways that have visceral appeal to many conservatives. He is reactionary rage personified, at least compared to the clueless Romney. And Gingrich knows how to tap that rage. Below is Mark Karlin's take on how Gingrich is operating; what's inside his head as well as the heads of people who actually think he should be president.

The brazen hypocrisy of the GOP on sexual, religious and family matters has been a consistent source of bewilderment for BuzzFlash since the site was founded in May of 2000. In fact, BuzzFlash (now a part of Truthout) began largely in reaction to the dissemination of a disingenuous, Republican, demagogic, political hypocrisy that is inexplicable on any rational level - and we've covered about every psychological theory that tries to explain how people who hold themselves out to be godly can be full of such hate, bitterness, greed and gross double standards. 

In fact, during the last South Carolina debate, Newt Gingrich - who has made the alleged collapse of America's "moral values" one of his trademark "red meat" appeals - deflected questions about his Lothario, adulterer, callous "family values" behavior by attacking the press. Gingrich knows that lacerating the supposed "liberal media" rouses the Tea Party faction of the GOP like splashing a bowl of blood on a vampire. 

Gingrich claimed to be "appalled" by the "destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media." He called a panelist question about charges that he wanted an "open marriage" with his second wife (who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the time), while he was having a multiyear affair with his eventual third wife, as "close to despicable as anything I [Gingrich] can imagine." 

Jon Stewart is feeling BuzzFlash's pain now - one that is particularly acute when watching the GOP presidential debates. In fact, after playing a segment on the "Daily Show" about Gingrich's "indignation" over questions about his egregious, immoral family values, Stewart's brain appeared ready to explode as he listed just some of the audacious hypocrisies in which the former House speaker has engaged. 

Recently, I recall seeing a clip of Newt in high dudgeon denouncing the alleged secular godlessness and lack of morality in Europe - and he vowed that he would not let the US sink into such degeneracy. Gingrich is the ultimate con man, saying whatever needs to be said to arouse the ember of the dark side of fundamentalist faith. He creates a fantasy world of demons who are supposedly set out to destroy "divinely" bestowed "American exceptionalism," when he himself has spent more time playing "Sympathy for the Devil" in his life than following the Ten Commandments. 

And, most significantly, as Jon Stewart has come to learn, Gingrich is filled with such confident cunning - such calculated lying - that he can make those who engage in reason want to jump out the nearest window in dismay. 

He is a master magician of the dark arts. That much you can say for him.

The video to which Karlin refers is below. What Karlin says in words, Jon Stewart brilliantly captures in just a few minutes on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Media and Government are Both Failing Us

Here is Cenk Uygur relating recent discoveries that members of congress provided inside information to hedge fund managers. There hasn't been much media coverage on this. Cenk notes that the story originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which one would think would have been enough to trigger follow-up stories, you know, the ones on the front page of every newspaper saying criminal investigations are under way.

Didn't happen. And that is the other story: media complacency. Even though the story has been broken, few have followed up and tried to learn more. How many people really learned of this story? Can there be a more blatant example of the corruption of our government? And has our media reached a point where this no longer seems to be especially newsworthy?



Cenk treats this as a breaking story, and it should be, but in reality it is another incremental move to complete oligarchy. The more it happens, the less people pay attention. Apparently not enough people, regardless of motivation, seem to think the story should be vigorously pursued.

David Sirota has a excellent analysis on why no one is investigating Wall Street, not specifically the insider trading info given to the hedgies, but the widely documented criminal behavior of the big banks.

When it comes to our government’s collective refusal to aggressively investigate — much less prosecute — Wall Street crime, one prevailing line of apologism implies that it’s all about resources. As the general fable goes, Wall Street is so sprawling and so lawyered up that public law enforcement agencies simply don’t have the resources to make sure justice is served, especially at a time of budget deficits. In this story, Wall Street is not simply too big to fail; it’s too big to even police.

Right, David; there are reasons why congress has underfunded watchdog agencies like the SEC, and it isn't because it cares about the budget deficits. And it is worth noting that the media did in fact cover the banker-induced recession reasonably well, at least for those of us who sought out appropriate media sources. Not hard to do, by the way if you have an Internet connection. Sirota's dismay is that Washington knew full well what had happened, in time we all knew, but that there is still almost no government action to hold the criminal class criminally liable.  Instead politicians direct their venom at the poor.

Tracking an individual example of this phenomenon, Matt Taibbi makes clear that it’s really difficult to overstate just how revealing this kind of thing is. Wall Street crooks who stole trillions of dollars are rewarded by the administration with additional trillions in bailouts. Meanwhile, those crooks’ now-impoverished victims — so poor they are on food stamps, mind you — are being targeted by the same administration for criminal investigation for allegedly making a few extra bucks on recycling empty bottles.

Our government is directing prosecutorial resources at food stamp recipients because they may have earned a few extra dollars from recycling bottles. Poor people are sent to jail while the wealthy pay fines and sign documents that allow for no admission of wrong-doing.

We could endlessly debate the extent to which President Obama or Democrats in congress contribute to Wall Street's special privileges. It should be clear to all that Republicans are the party of America's wealthiest. Never in recent history has a party so shamelessly shilled for the 1% while demonizing, ridiculing, and haranguing the poor and powerless. It is Republicans, it must be remembered, who continue to claim that unqualified home borrowers of modest means were to blame for derailing the economy.

Others will argue, incorrectly in my view, that there is no real difference between the two parties. These are cynical conclusions held by the intellectually lazy. Having said that, there is not as much difference between the two parties as I would like, or as much as there used to be. More than a few Democrats have shown a contemptible willingness to do the bidding of the investor class.

How They See Us

On Monday, 12/12 I wrote of at least one Republican who has finally decided to buck the tide and speak out against his party's lurch to the right, one that is both ridiculous, because proponents are twisting themselves into logical and factual contradictions, and dangerous, because they are opening the door to a fascist state.  

The European press has noticed the sum and substance of the Republican presidential candidates, leaving it both dismayed and amused. As Der Spiegel laments:

It's horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They're ruining the reputation of the United States...They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They've shown such stark lack of knowledge -- political, economic, geographic, historical -- that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe.

The December 16 edition of The Week (print version), in an article entitled "The GOP makes a virtue of ignorance," summarizes European views. In addition to Der Spiegel, it references Lorraine Millot, of the Paris Liberation, who observes that the only Republican candidate who is relatively well-versed in diplomacy, John Huntsman, is also completely out of contention. This is not a coincidence. The others "careen to extreme positions that include starting new wars and abandoning old allies." Herman Cain tried to make a virtue of his ignorance of foreign affairs, which apparently sat well with millions of Republican voters. It was charges of adultery, not laughable ignorance of the world, that ended his campaign.

Max Hastings, of the London Daily Mail, notes that throughout much of red state America, you are viewed suspiciously as an elitist if you show interest in science or the world beyond America. "Say what you want about British politics, no MP of any party would dare to offer themselves as town dogcatcher while knowing as little about the world as the Republican presidential candidates...The American political system has seldom, if ever, looked so inadequate."

Finally, Matthew Norman of the London Independent predicts that Mitt Romney will eventually win the nomination even if he is "the slimiest, phoniest opportunist to run for president since...well, ever." And that is because Newt Gingrich is so widely despised.

We'll see about whether Romney does in fact prevail. But it is too early to count out Gingrich, though even he seems to be peaking, pretty much on the same timeline as the rest of them. Republican primary voters are the reddest of the red, but even they seem discomfited by this crowd.

Some Republicans Have Had Enough

Below is a video of former Bush speechwriter David Frum in an interview with Howard Kurtz of CNN. Frum is one of a small number of Republican operatives who are speaking out against their party's nuttiness and increasingly harsh and nonsensical policy prescriptions.

I welcome Frum's lonely effort to steer his party back to (relative) sanity and away from its asinine dance on the ideological precipice. Thoughtful Republicans have every right to be sickened by the buffoons getting all the attention in the presidential debates.

In the video, other media sources are labeled as "liberal." Frum says that Fox provided a welcome counterweight to that. This is an ironic statement coming from someone who worked at the Wall Street Journal, the official rag of the 1%. And does this mean that Fox is indeed a counterpoint to a media Fox mouthpieces laughably call left-wing? I thought it was "fair and balanced."

Fox CEO Roger Ailes himself has said the network has recently made a course correction away from the far right. This was, he says, a tactical decision in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting early in the year when Ailes told his anchors and pundits to "tone it down".  Is this not the same criticism that progressives have been making about Fox for years? That it is not a real news organization, but a fear monger for low-info voters and a Republican cheerleader? Thanks for making our point, Roger.

The other networks are not truly liberal, not just because they have Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz at MSNBC. You do not get to claim a network is liberal just because it is less right-wing than Fox. The others, including MSNBC, are deeply mainstream and conventional.

I do not believe many viewers in America ever really see what the international community would consider leftist news commentary.

Corruption Unabated

Here's a reminder of the fallout from Bush's decision to invade Iraq. In addition to massive loss of life and a country with its infrastructure destroyed, Americans (with help from Iraqis) are now plundering funds that were meant for rebuilding Iraq. As the video below explains, there is widespread waste and systemic fraud with almost no accountability.

And not much coverage by our mainstream media.

Not that there wasn't a publicized effort to uncover the problems. The Commission on Wartime Contracting had issued several reports that recognize the multitude of issues. Among other things, the commission reported $30 to $60 billion lost through waste and fraud.

It closed down earlier this year because congress defunded it. And while its website does offer some downloadable data to the public, Congress has decided that some key findings should be hidden from public purview until 2031.



As author Michael O'Brien says in the video, congress is protecting the perps. Representatives and senators alike know that too many fat cats, in and around congress, will be implicated. So they cannot let the public know what really has been happening in Iraq and who benefited. They do what governments always do when they feel threatened: keep evidence from view and lie.

Twenty years on ice should take care of any statute of limitations.

The video is from RT America, and I highly recommend its Youtube channel.

Tax Loafers? Maybe Not

Conservative media continues to repeat the infantile and laughably incomplete argument that roughly half of Americans don't pay taxes, the implication of which is that rich guys are bearing the burden and that millions of Americans are loafing off the hard work of others.

There is a lot to this Republican morality play, except maybe for facts. I will set aside the political psychology of conservative morality for the moment, except to say that it drives all conservative attitudes; not facts, not empiricism, not logic.

The federal income tax burden may be low for many of us, but payroll taxes disproportionately hit the working poor and the middle class. The tax-free argument really falls apart when we include all taxes. Republicans either don't notice, or hope you don't notice, these numerous other taxes; they are much more regressive, and they hit lower income people much harder. These include sales taxes, especially those on food and other basic needs, and indirect or semi-hidden taxes, such as those on phone bills, or those with a tax already built into the price, such as gasoline.

Here is David Leonhart of the New York Times, explaining why the conservative spin is so misleading:

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

Focusing on the statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of households, as ranked by income — underlines this point. Households in this group made $35,400 to $52,100 in 2006, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has released data. That would describe a household with one full-time worker earning about $17 to $25 an hour. Such hourly pay is typical for firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent. A good number of people, in fact, paid no net income taxes. They are among the alleged free riders.

But the picture starts to change when you look not just at income taxes but at all taxes. This average household would have paid 0.8 percent of its income in corporate taxes (through the stocks it owned), 0.9 percent in gas and other federal excise taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. Add these up, and the family’s total federal tax rate was 14.2 percent.

If anything, the government numbers I’m using here exaggerate how much of the tax burden falls on the wealthy. These numbers fail to account for the income that is hidden from tax collectors — a practice, research shows, that is more common among affluent families. “Because higher-income people are understating their income,” Joel Slemrod, a tax scholar at the University of Michigan, says, “We’ve been overstating their average tax rates.”

State and local taxes, meanwhile, may actually be regressive. That is, middle-class and poor families may face higher tax rates than the wealthy. As Kim Rueben of the Tax Policy Center notes, state and local income taxes and property taxes are less progressive than federal taxes, while sales taxes end up being regressive. The typical family pays a lot of state and local taxes, too — almost half as much as in federal taxes.

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

I have slightly edited the original due to length. Go here to read the whole article.

Occupy Wall Street's Message

Leave town for a week and look what happens. Our corporatist media is finally paying some attention to Occupy Wall Street. Not that it is offering many insights. The prevailing characteristics seem to be that protesters are malevolent malcontents, dirty fucking hippies, and anarchists, all in a stew of disorganized resentment. In particular, the claim is that the OWS protesters do not have a coherent message.

No coherent message? Really? Anyone who cannot immediately grasp the significance of the protest is likely to be uninformed teabaggers, fearful of all that they don't understand, or class warriors, like the Republican presidential candidates, Romney and Cain in particular.

How obtuse, or ideologically rigid, do you have to be to not see that America's wealthy corporatist media is determined to delegitimize citizens who have decided to fight back against Wall Street's recklessness?

Here is Alan Grayson taking the small amount of time needed to explain to dickhead PJ O'Rourke what the Occupy Wall Street protests are all about.

The privileged class is letting its fear show. Nice to see we got their attention.

Republican Platform

So how many of these early warning signs do you recognize? Twenty-first century America sounds a lot like 1920s Italy. And if its similarity to Republican talking points doesn't unnerve you, you may be part of the problem. Read more on pre-fascist America
from Naomi Wolf, here, here, or watch her video here.

Our illiberal Media

Have you been following the action on Wall Street? You know, the protests by a couple of thousand of people near the stock exchange, complete with handcuffing, mace, and arrests? What? You haven't heard of Occupy Wall Street?

You aren't alone, and that is the way our corporate media wants it. The video below will give you an idea of how corporate domination of American media plays out. The point here is not whether you agree with the protesters, or think Wall Street is, or isn't, at the heart of America's economic pain. The point is that almost no mainstream media outlet is willing to cover, even critically, the mini-occupation, the arrests, the shouting. The foreign press is covering it, as are alternative news sites on the Internet. Our major networks will get to it, but they will be slow and shallow; the more revealing the story, the slower and shallower the coverage will be.

How can you not cover protests in the streets, Wall Street? And as Keith Olberman notes, if this were a crowd of teabaggers bitchin' about taxes or Obama's birth certificate, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall. This is what media do in banana republics, or the old Soviet Union.

You see what they want you to see.




Speaking of Wall Street, if you get a chance, get a copy of Inside Job.