We the People Should Just Mind Our Manners!

Essayist and rights advocate Glenn Greenwald today responds to a comical, revolting essay by ESPN something LZ Granderson. Granderson normally writes on sports issue, but he's a reporter at a major news outlet, so he must be an expert on anything for CNN. Now he's an expert on issues of American government secrecy and popular demands of openness, demands once aired but now violently opposed by Barack Obama.

The obvious test — one which the LZ Grandersons and George Wills (and George Packer and Bill Kellers ignore) — is revealed in the double standard. Do citizenry of other nations have obligations to resist nosiness? Iranians? Iraqis? Venezuaelans? Granderson's — sports expert and therefore expert on government — assertions (there is no argument or reason there) is brutally absurd.

The most obvious point is that government is exactly a creature of peoples' creation. Even dictatorships are. Governments are not sports or movie stars victimized by paparazzi pawing through garbage or hovering near bedroom windows. Governments have exactly and only those rights We the People give them.

 To the extent that there might be something remotely substantive in Granderson's confusion it might be that somethings are necessary that are unsavory. At least the revolting Alan Dershowitz gets that those things still need to be public, hence his call for "torture warrants." If the people decided to make public all the top secrets of American nuclear weaponry, for example, it might indeed by unwise, might give guidance to 'enemies' up to no good, but it would not be a problem of "nosiness."

I think Granderson's is another example of class-blame. What he is really endorsing is what some endorse in Citizens United or endless protection of the wealthy against redistributive policy. We the People are getting too uppity. He's expressly rejecting the notion that government can be too nosy in its spying on American citizens (or worse — in its assassination of American citizens). It's we lesser Americans — the 90 or 95 percent — who should just accept our station in life.

Why Tax the Poor More? They "Deserve" It.

James Kwak offers some comments on the determination of conservatives to increase taxes on the poor while reducing those on the rich. My overwhelming impression is that conservatives see the poor and less fortunate as inferior in deep sense. This was betrayed in a Gregory Mankiw blog post that should have gotten far greater attention than it did. That it didn't suggests, I think, the extent to which essentially conservative thinking pervades even many liberal arenas. Mankiw is an economist at Harvard and is now among those advising Mitt Romney.

In a 2009 post, Mankiw offered a social-Darwinist account for children's school performance, including an allusion to reductionist genetic explanations of a kind very popular these days among conservatives and liberals (like, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich). The post is here.

Mankiw clearly thinks that different outcomes are in significant measure a result of fundamental, intrinsic, biological differences between individuals. The rich are more successful because they are just better — better workers, better thinkers, better innovators.

This thinking is very widespread in the anglophone, industrial democracies — Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and of course the US. Moreover, it closely tided to a kind of supremacist thinking (and I do mean supremacist) found among the wealthy. Scan the comments of Michael Bloomberg or the Koch brothers or Bill Gates, and you will see a pervasive contempt for the less fortunate that is coupled with a conviction that these less fortunate are just less well-endowed with the natural talents enjoyed by the better-off. Centuries ago, this was overtly embraced as the divine right of nobility. Today it is far more subtle.

More importantly, it reflects a close intwining of tacit assumptions about social status, native talent, education, culture, heritage — many things. For example, Mike Bloomberg simply has no substantive interaction with those who are markedly less well-off; so, predictably, he views the less-fortunate as "Other." This view is reinforced by the socio-biological, reductionist account that says that behavioral differences are outcomes of genetic differences. It is further reinforced by the need all people share to view their own good fortune as something more than plain good luck. If Bloomberg is just lucky, then what justification is there for his holding the staggering fortune he does. He must "deserve" that wealth because he's better than the rest of us.

Why raise taxes on the poor then? Well, they "deserve it." In the view of the Michael Bloombergs — and, crucially, also in the view of the Arne Duncans and (I suspect) the Barack Obamas — the poor aren't just poor in a socio-economic sense; they are "poor specimens of humanity."

How do we test such contention as mine? Probably not in the neatly numerical way that economists and political scientists today demand. That, in turn, raises yet another issue of how our very methods of inquiry tend to promote some conclusions over others.

The Good Dog Fido

Maybe the story is far more simple than anyone has supposed. Maybe the reason we see supposedly "liberal" thinkers constantly kowtowing to Obama is that the brand of Obama-obedient liberal asks not what "politicians owe us" but what "we owe them." Maybe what conservatives are getting right is that they do indeed ask "what politicians owe us."

Certainly, the balance of sycophantic go-along-to-get-along thinking seems to be found among safe, obedient liberals. They whine when conservatives are in power. Then when Obama-style liberals do exactly the same thing the conservatives did, they scream bloody murder at any progressives' objections to the crimes.

At least conservatives express their dissatisfaction when they feel it. The Obama-obedient liberal brigade seems to think that as long as you're sufficiently obedient, you'll be rewarded — like a good dog.

Transit of Venus

It gives me great comfort to think that no matter how grossly the revolting barbarian war-mongers like Barack Obama or Angela Merkel or Hu Jintao mess things up here on Earth, the planets orbit, stars shine, life thrives (despite all human efforts to annihilate the living planet).

Here, then, is my thrill today, Tuesday, 5 June 2012. The Transit of Venus, taken at about 7:30 pm, Eastern time.

You can see Venus in the upper right quadrant of the sun. Through the clouds and roughly about the middle of the Sun, you can see some sunspots.

This Republican (and Democratic) Economy

Paul Krugman writes this Monday of "This Republican Economy" and Barack Obama's and the media's unwillingness or inability to state the obvious regarding GOP obstructionism. I think Paul Krugman fails to grasp the nettle (to paraphrase the great left political philosopher G. A. Cohen speaking on John Rawls).

The most obvious liberal-progressive response to Mr. Krugman is that Obama and the media have failed to highlight know-nothing Republican obstructionism because they largely agree with it. On healthcare, foreign policy, education, Social Security, domestic security and a raft of other issues, Obama is conservative. The media in the US is likewise conservative. News organizations like the Times have supported war almost without qualification. They have raised only the most tepid challenges to Obama attacks on American civil liberties. They have largely supported talk of privatizing Social Security, even after the crimes of Wall Street. The list goes on.

If Paul Krugman's question for Obama is "Why the weak response," a question for Mr. Krugman is, "Why not take your own reasoning to the conclusion evidence supports?" This country, not just GOP fanatics, is largely conservative and anti-Keynesian. Obama is anti-Keynesian, just not as extreme as the GOP (on economics; he's more extreme on foreign policy and domestic security). When he had the choice, the opportunity, and the swell of opinion with him, Obama nevertheless surrounded himself with substantially anti-Keynesian economic thinkers (the exception being Christina Romer, who was soon forced out). Keynesians like Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz were pointedly excluded.

Media elites (with some like Bill Keller related to industry executives, some like Cokie Roberts related to government elites, or some like Thomas Friedman being actual economic elites) identify with wealth, not with common Americans. Many academic elites do also.

As John Kenneth Galbraith noted decades ago, these people's interests align with wealth. Moreover, the perceptions of self among media and government elite align with wealth. Elite interests and ideas — to borrow a phrase economist Dani Rodrik has recently used — are highly homogeneous. The contempt Mike Bloomberg shows average Americans is widely shared among Democrats, not just Republicans.

The Wealthy, the Powerful — They're Just Better than Us

Again, some thoughts motivated by Glenn Greenwald's observations of the revolting hypocrisy of Barack Obama on whistleblowing, leaks, terrorism, acts of aggression and war.

Let's suppose that all 'leaders' in positions of power are inclined to abuse that power. What is changing? Is it that Obama knows he can get away with it? Does he know that neither the GOP nor any in Congress or in the court system will oppose him?

Or is there a new sense of divine right that overrides prudential considerations? Do Obama and Bush and others now think that they are just so much better than the rest of us that they have the right to do whatever they please? This seems to be the attitude of supremacists like Mike Bloomberg and Lloyd Blankfein. I think it is the attitude that underlies the glaring advocacy of a two-tiered educational system — well-funded and private for the wealthy, and poor and public for the rest of us. So, too, for health care.

This, I think, is the New Feudalism — the attitude of those in power that they are just better than us.

Glenn Greenwald writes today of the impending extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden and the likely rendition to the United States, where he will be persecuted by the Obama organized crime syndicate. I have some thoughts on the motivation of politicians and journalists who evidently feel deeply threatened, and certainly deeply angered, by Assange.

There are two issues, tangential to Glenn Greenwald's points, that deserve attention. Both revolve about the problem of perception and reality.

Greenwald notes that the New York Times's Bill Keller is the son of former Chevron CEO George Keller. So Keller is very unlikely to identify at all with poorer or middle class Americans. Increasingly, this is true of elite American journalists generally. They come out of elite universities, often having entered those schools out of elite backgrounds. They identify with the elite. This identification is bolstered by careful management by politicians and business titans. Andrew Ross Sorkin's close ties to Wall Street executives is a perfect example of this. Cokie Roberts, John Burns, Anderson Cooper, and many others, are excellent examples of this. They are very nearly diametrically opposed to a past generation of journalists who came up from nothing — people like Walter Cronkite or Bill Moyers. We see similar patterns in the Supreme Court, now proudly Harvard Law grads (but for one or two members, I think). Congress isn't quite so homogeneous, but it's going that way.

When the revelations of Wikileaks or others challenge the lies of government or industry, these elite journalists themselves feel challenged. What is Keller's whining about an unkempt Julian Assange if not a tacit assertion that Assange is 'beneath' Keller and those with whom Keller associates.

Comments like Glenn Greenwald's or revelations like those of Wikileaks threaten to make bare the reality of a media system that sees itself as part of the power structure, not investigating it. Nevertheless, Keller or Roberts or Burns want to believe their own lies, so they confront cognitive dissonance as they try to find reason to condemn Wikileaks.

There is a comparable, more specific, problem of perception and reality for Obama. He is a servile wannabe, but he wants to see himself as an outsider, a challenger — the challenger that many thought they were voting for in 2008. Why is Obama so determined to destroy whistleblowers? Because, more than most politicians in recent times, his public identity, and possible his personal one, rests on deception. He is not what he represents himself to be. He sees those who challenge that representation as threatening him personally. So he lashes out. Obama takes the Wikileaks revelations and other whistleblowing personally.

Romney, Obama and the Cult of Divine Right of Wealth

Paul Krugman today writes that Romney's defense of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase suggests cluelessness.

Romney isn't clueless — he's malicious. Huge difference. Like all of the advocates of Wall Street, including Timothy Geithner and Barack Obama most of the time, there is a deep, profound, dangerous streak of maliciousness at work. These are people who want to transfer wealth from the average to the rich, from labor to capital. These are people who firmly, devoutly believe in the divine right, the divine of superiority of wealth.

As conservative economist and Romney adviser Gregory Mankiw made clear in his blog a few years ago, conservatives (including most Democrats, like Obama) believe that the wealthy are genetically superior. These statements are made explicitly so there is no point pretending that this is a misinterpretation.

It is commonplace now to hear assertions of the genetic coding of morality, or every aspect of human behavior. The cult of reductionism to genetic, pseudo-Darwinian explanations is fully embedded in the popular discourse. Obama, Geithner, Romney, Mankiw, Dimon, Blankfein, Bloomberg all hold the absolute conviction that the wealthy are genetically superior. This is a profoundly dangerous state of mind. We have seen i it before. We know where it leads.


UPDATE

Krugman also has a blog post commenting on the blind, mindless ignorance of economist Edward Lazear (at Stanford and that right-wing haven of war criminals, the Hoover Institution).


As in his op-ed essay today (May 21), Paul Krugman is very generous to conservatives (and the many Democrats who follow their lead, as Obama does). Mitt Romney, Edward Lazear, Gregory Mankiw, David Brooks, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and others like them are malicious, mean-spirited advocates of the transfer of wealth from labor to capital, from average and poor to rich. Worse, they are convinced of the genetic superiority of the wealth, convinced that the poor are genetically pre-disposed to stay poor.

It cannot be overstated how dangerous their thinking is.

More Lies from Mike Bloomberg and the NYPD

Recent news on racist policy in Mike Bloomberg's NYPD reveals an under-addressed issue of the New American State of Permanent War. Americans, especially academics, pundits, journalists, and politicians, obediently, mindlessly nod in assent to drone attacks abroad, the violation of every kind of right a person might have (as long as that person is Arab or Muslim). What are police here in the US to make of their international brethren? Do American cops itch to do what the US military does in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran . . . ? American abuses abroad incentivize abuses domestically. Bloomberg's NYPD is a case in point.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has caught the NYPD in one of its more glaring lies. And the NYPD has many many lies to its credit — about the 2004 GOP National Convention, Occupy Wall Street, spying on Muslims, spying on all of us. The newly-released NYCLU report betrays the racism behind Ray Kelly and Mike Bloomberg's stop and frisk policy. The cop claim is that stop and frisks deter crime.

The NYCLU shows convincingly that crime rates have been declining (if you believe the NYPD) while police stops have gone up. That much might — on the face of things — seem perfectly plausible. What is really striking is the sheer racial skewing of the search policy. In Bloomberg's first year in office (which came after many years of Giuliani touting his great successes in reducing crime), the NYPD stopped 97,296 people. In 2011, that number was up to 685,724. Did crime decline by that much? Was there a marked increase from Giuliani years when — if you believe the Giulianistas — crime was declining?

Here's the kicker: 87 percent — almost 9 in 10 — of those stopped were black or Latino men. And 90 percent of those stopped were guilty of nothing; they weren't even ticketed. Those stopped most often account for 4.7 percent of the city's population, but account 41.6 percent of stops. "The number of stops of young black men exceeded the entire city population of young black men (168,126 as compared to 158,406)." So some are being stopped repeatedly.

But Bloomberg has more lies to cover up the first round of lies.

First, they claim that the policy is justified because it works to reduce crime. Crime rates are down! But we know they were declining before the policy was begun.

Second, and even better, NYPD mouthpiece Paul Browne claims that the reason the cops are finding so little on their searches is that the baddies are leaving their guns at home! What evidence the NYPD has to support this is anybody's guess. Perhaps their spying extends even further than we've yet found reason to suspect.

So here is Mike Bloomberg's NYPD causal chain:

• Bad guy uses gun against victim.
• Victim describes crime to cops.
• Cops go in search of black or Latino guy with gun (because that's what the victim described).
• Bad guy has gone home to leave gun just in case he gets stopped and frisked. Did he ask momma to hide it in the cookie jar?
• Cops stop and frisk every young black man in the city and find . . .  pretty much nothing.

Does anybody see the glaring inconsistency? But in the National Surveillance State of Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg, what police say must be true.

The Plague of Prizes

This week there has been a tempest in a teapot over the Pulitzer (henceforth PUlitzer) committee's failure to award a prize to a novel this year. The website Mondoweiss has an interesting story about Karl Shapiro's winning for poetry in 1945 though the documentary record shows that the committee thought that W. H. Auden was a better candidate. . . . Auden was deemed a dangerous lefty. Little has changed. Such prizes are still highly politicized. Witness the vile Barack Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize (following in the footsteps of great monsters like Henry Kissinger and Menachem Begin).

With regard to the PUlitzer this year, I have to admit I've never heard of Shapiro, and I don't think I'm poorly read. One thing we can say with confidence: Auden has stood the test of time better, and a PUlitzer in 1945 didn't have any effect one way or another on that.

My own view is that prizes of the PUlitzer sort (or Nobel or MacArthur or take your pick) are really quite damaging. Some become obsessed with winning the prize. I knew a chemistry prof years ago who had been passed over while his colleague won for work they had collaborated on. The man was bitter beyond the telling of it. The joke among physicists was that it was called the "No-Bell" because the actual discoverer of pulsars — Jocelyn Bell — was ignored by the prize committee while her thesis adviser shared the prize (the physicist who had theoretically predicted the existence of pulsars, Thomas Gold, of Cornell, was also passed over).

Others, having won, can't get past it. And then there's the history of terrible recipients, not least the long list of real monsters who've won the Nobel Peace Prize.

A small handful of people have taken a stand against such prizes. The one who comes immediately to mind is N. David Mermin, physicist at Cornell. His public opposition to a Nobel Prize of any kind cost a stellar Cornell physics department at least a couple of Nobel Prizes in physics. Now, how could that be if the committee were saintly, impartial arbiters of genius that they would like us to believe they are? It's well-known that Graham Greene, though nominated more than any other for the Nobel in literature, never won because there was one person on the committee who swore up and down that no Catholic would ever win as long as he had anything to do with it.

It may be difficult to say whether the PUlitzer in poetry or fiction is politically tainted by short-sighted, narrow-minded bigots on a committee, but the prizes for journalism, history, etc., certainly are. An Eric Hobsbawm or Tony Judt or Edward Said is a wildly unlikely recipient (albeit, not impossible) compared with nice, safe candidates. I was astonished that AP reporters won this year for revealing the gross misconduct of the NYPD. (Giuliani would have called for closing Columbia University.)

Scrooge MittRomney vs. The Gingrinch!

Newt Gingrich is going back to his roots with a cannibalistic attack on the Great and Powerful Capitalism! Not clear to me who did this thirty minute video, but the production values are substantial — a very professional job. But what astonishes me is the lusty assault on the Profit-über-alles article of faith. Time and again I've been impressed by the recent willingness of diehard conservatives to lay into their precious darlings of money-making.

If you watch the video, note the repeated of clip of Romney asserting that corporations are people and his sardonic assertion that the profits go to "people." Once again, average Americans reveal far greater insight and awareness of the truth than the oligarchs — someone in the audience hurls back Romney's insult: "In your pocket . . . your pocket!"

The Romney willingness to be combative with people is very reminiscent of Michael Bloomberg's style. It is the style of someone who is unaccustomed to being challenged — a business boss surround by sycophantic yes-men hopeful that sufficient groveling will win them promotion. It is the style of wealthy oligarchs who do not believe in democratic practice. Yet it is these extraordinarily wealthy oligarchs whom Republicans and Democrats alike repeatedly champion for high political office on the grounds that public organizations "should be run like businesses."

Romney champions his role as a "job-creator" at Bain. And how did Romney run things? How did Bain create those jobs (if indeed it did)? What business style did Bain exemplify? What did it produce? It produced not-particularly innovative or inventive financial techniques for squeezing dollars out of firms until there was nothing left, juggling around dollars to enable extraordinary profiteering for managers at the expense of everyone else.

This is the knowledge economy that so many have been bleating about for twenty-some years now. The knowledge found in education, the knowledge found, for example, in American universities (increasingly funded) is indeed a product the US exports, with many thousands of students coming from around the world to attend US schools. But this is not the knowledge economy trumpeted by conservatives. The knowledge they have in mind is financial, the knowledge of a very elaborate shell game or ponzi scheme, the kind that blew apart in 2008 and was promptly restored by our elected officials entirely at our expense — the greatest transfer of wealth from labor to capital. Ever. That is the knowledge economy of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, except for rhetorical purposes when the game of power is afoot.

The game is power. Power comes first. If the dogmas of capitalism conflict with the lust for power, then the dogmas must go. The attacks on Romney are superficial. Ultimately, there is no real conflict. It is a game of which oligarchs will be best represented after November, 2012.

Transitioning Out of Democracy

I'm trying to remember what Simon Johnson saw as the time to the next financial crisis in a discussion with Bill Moyers two or three years ago (in what might have been one of the last editions of the Bill Moyers Journal before Moyers retired). Certainly, Johnson predicted no more than ten years to the next crisis, but my recollection is that he said something like three to seven years. That's just my recollection, but we can be sure of one thing — Barack Obama, Democrats and Republicans, despite weak public protestations to the contrary, have sent very clear substantive signals. Wall Street and megabank risk-taking, misconduct, and even criminality will be thoroughly underwritten by the United States government and, by extension, a willfully ignorant American populace.

This all fits into what a growing number (including Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini . . . I don't know about Messrs. Johnson and Kwak) have described as a large, perhaps the largest, transfer of wealth from labor to capital ever.

My own few is that the phenomenon is even broader than that, encompassing economic and legal, even constitutional, features. A transfer of wealth and economic and political power from the general population to an increasingly rapacious class of American oligarchs is underway. My view unifies developments across the economic and political spectrum:

• the Supreme Court's creeping grant of the status of personhood to corporations,
• the gross disparities in wealth and income (and all concomitant benefits, like health, education, longevity, etc.),
• Bush and Obama attacks on civil liberties (including Habeus Corpus, Posse Comitatus, whistleblower protections, protections for journalists — the few who actually investigate US government misconduct),
• the Democratic-Republican assault economic protections for elderly Americans.
• the effective criminalization of poverty,
• the cultural glorification of the New American Virtues — wealth, fame, good looks, longevity, fashion, etc.

I do not like the "tipping point" terminology, but the trends that accelerated in the Reagan years (having arguably begun in the Carter years) and that have continued through every president since may now have crossed some threshold, an increasingly formal grant of power to a tiny percentage of elite Americans. Any new bailouts will only be part of larger developments.

This Is What Obama, Republicans, and the Oligarchs WANT

Yves Smith directs us to, among others things, a discussion by Kate Pickett. Pickett's presentation notes that the US has more "bads" than most other wealthy, 'modern' countries — across the board. Greater inequalities in longevity, crime, mobility, happiness, education, and on and on.

It is time to stop pretending that this is an accident of other phenomena in the US. Rather, this is what the American elite want.

Americans equate wealth, longevity, "good looks" (in the form of housing, fashion, personal appearance) with virtue. Americans embrace the notion that the wealthier, longer-lived elite are better, innately better, morally better, intellectually better.

Americans embrace an innateness of status that was rejected by Europeans through the French Revolution and numerous other social upheavals.

Worst, Obama, most Democrats, all Republicans, and most important, the Oligarchs (the top 1% or so), want the rest of us to be worse off — in every sense.

This is an explanation that has all the merits attributed under the scientific method. It is simple. It explains what we observe. It has predictive power. Above all, it explains why Obama and others would pursue the policies they do despite overwhelming factual evidence.

Income/Wealth Inequality and Social Stability

The Princeton political scientist Carles Boix argued at at length that one of the things that makes democracy possible is that the better off perceive their privilege to be protected (in some measure) against egalitarian impulses of the less-well-off. In modern industrial democracies like the US, the wealthy enjoy constitutional protections and can also move their wealth elsewhere.

Fine. But two obvious questions arise.

1. Is there a point where inequality provokes a backlash among the less-well-off? The answer in the US for decades has been no. Americans are remarkably, stunningly indifferent to the gross inequalities of the US, hands down the most unequal of all the industrial democracies. The US has one of the lowest social mobility rates in the world, even compared to non-democracies and less-developed nations. It has fares most poorly among its peers on health, longevity, education, happiness — very nearly every index of comparison. (The only country that does roughly as badly is Britain. What a surprise — the nation that has done most to parrot the American example.)

Despite this, as John Kenneth Galbraith long noted (among many others), Americans didn't seem to care.... American exceptionalism. Speaking on The Charlie Rose Show, economist Kenneth Rogoff's comment echoes something I've heard elsewhere: Americans "expect to win the lottery." Americans are generally happy to see others enjoy billions because a remarkable percentage of Americans are deluded into thinking they too will win any day now — this despite the US having a dismal degree of social mobility.

Will this change? Can it change? Can Americans develop a measure of anger? Can they rally the way the French or Greeks have? The way anybody but Americans do?

This brings us to the second question:

2. How are the US government and oligarchs suppressing American egalitarian impulses or protecting themselves against the same? I suggest that the national security apparatus/state that has been developing for years and has accelerated under Obama will be used to contain any American social upheaval — should any develop, which seems unlikely given the level of Americans' apathy and ignorance. Under Obama, domestic spying has grown. Obama has viciously sought to suppress whistleblowers, as Glenn Greenwald has described repeatedly. Moreover, we have an educational system which borders on systematic indoctrination. From grade school through university (especially university) we have a host of institutions that endlessly trumpet the unalloyed glories of both unlimited greed and the infallibility of the American way of doing things. I am frequently astonished by the extent to which extraordinarily well-educated, intelligent people show absolutely no inclination or ability to challenge American orthodoxy.

The writings of H. L. Mencken, John Kenneth Galbraith, Noam Chomsky, Mark Twain, and many others go into this over the length of American history. Today, we have many new voices — Naomi Klein, Glenn Greenwald among them. Yet Americans remain impervious to even the most obvious truths.

The wealthiest and their willing slaves like Obama and Congress (those members who are not among the 1% already, that is) have obvious incentives for pressing the dogma. But why so many Americans prove so indifferent is a mystery.

Obama — Worse than Bush

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has made clear that he plans to fight any cuts to the Pentagon budget tooth and nail. We have every reason to believe Obama holds similar, even identical, views. As Glenn Greenwald has noted, this sets up a near-guaranteed gutting of American social programs if the so-called "Super Congress" has any teeth. Republicans will oppose any cuts to defense. Obama has pushed for cuts to social programs already. Now he makes clear his commitment to monstrous military extravagance. Panetta has gone so far as to assert that any possible cuts "would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military's ability to protect the nation."

The Orwellian doublethink in Panetta and the Pentagon's assertions is something to behold. Note that the Pentagon is also angling for more money on the grounds that there are new security threats in the form of climate change, among other things. This hopelessly expansive, all-encompassing, "everything is a national security issue" thinking will will swell to include economic issues. Indeed, it already has, as seen in much of the hysterical rhetoric about China.

Paul Krugman noted, again, the other day that the US is looking more and more like a banana republic. One of the features of those failed states is massive numbers of citizens working for the military. Going into the military in many of these countries was the equivalent of going into business in western Europe or North America.

Have Democrats settled on the military as the only social program Republicans will support? Or is Obama just as spinelessly militant as Joseph Lieberman and war-hungry Republicans?

The US patted itself on the back over the success of its strategy of forcing the Soviet Union to spend itself into oblivion on 'defense.' On the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter, "We have given the Soviets their Vietnam."

The US is now doing the same . . . to itself.

Paul Krugman on America's Lost Decade

Another Brick in Neo-Feudalism

The following post from Dean Baker, commenting on the most recent lunacy from The Washington Post's Robert Samuelson:

Robert Samuelson Redefines "Wealthy"

Friday, 29 July 2011 17:27

The Washington Post once ran a front page piece questioning whether people who earned $250,000 a year, President Obama's cutoff for his no tax hike pledge, were really rich. However, it also features Robert Samuelson on its opinion page telling readers that seniors with income of $30,000 a year are wealthy. I'm not kidding. In a piece titled "Why Are We In This Debt Fix? It's the elderly stupid," Samuelson tells readers: "some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more." Let's see, we have retirees who have their Social Security checks, plus a stash of $207,000. If someone at age 62 were to take that $207,000 and buy an annuity this money would get them about $15,000 a year. Add in $14,000 from Social Security and they are living the good life on $29,000 a year. And remember, 75 percent of the elderly have less than this. To be fair, many of the people with $207,000 in savings will be older than 62 so their money will go further, but it is hard to believe that anyone can think of this as a cutoff for being wealthy, or at least anyone other than Robert Samuelson and his colleagues at the Washington Post.

My thoughts:

There is a unifying 'idea' (if it can be called that) behind the idiocy of Robert Samuelson and like-minded conservatives. Recall Orrin Hatch's assertion that the poor and less-well-off need to bear a greater share of the burden.

What unifies this — and the general Republican willingness to redistribute burdens from the wealthy to the rest of us — is a true Orwellian doublethink — a commitment to the Divine Right of Wealth, the more wealthy, the more divine. This is a view endorsed by most Democrats. It finds a clear expression in a blog post by Gregory Mankiw from August, 2009:http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com...f-all.html. Mankiw was convinced that wealth was an indicator of superior intelligence, which in turn is genetically based; therefore, wealth is an indicator of genetic superiority. (Where have we heard this before?) This is a just a specific instance of the widespread conviction that wealth is an indicator of superiority and virtue — indeed, that wealth is itself a virtue.

On this line, there is no inconsistency in viewing subsistence-level elderly as wealthy. They 'must' be to make them plausible candidates for taxation. "America doesn't tax the poor" just as "America doesn't torture." Conversely, the really really wealthy are over-taxed, and their suffering must be alleviated through transfers from those who are under-taxed.

The logic works, if you live in the frame of mind of a 13th Century European baron.

Israel Uses Facebook . . . and What Else?

It turns out, not surprisingly, that Israel made use of Facebook to identify and track pro-Palestinian activists recently. This is probably only a tiny fraction of Israel's overall effort to track critics.

First, most (possibly all, given post 9/11 developments) electronic communications are monitored by the anglophone countries, especially the U.S., U.K., Canada, N.Z., and Australia. This has been the case for many years. The Echelon facility, based in Britain, has been monitoring electronic communications for decades. It is located in Britain precisely to avoid US government violations of American law. Mention something like this in the hearing of a Times editor or reporter (like John Burns or Thomas Friedman) and you will instantly be labeled a "conspiracy theorist," despite the fact that such media figures know this to be the case.

Second, the Obama administration has repeatedly made clear than even unambiguous speech-acts are now being taken to constitute "material support" for whatever organization is in the sights of the U.S. government. The U.S. has dug itself into a nice hole on this one (possibly with some malice aforethought). The Supreme Court has ruled (and Obama, Democrats, and Republicans have endorsed the view) that spending money is a speech act. Of course, money can be essential to material support of an enterprise. Thus, the groundwork is laid for extending restrictions on freedom of speech by likening, say, vocal support for Palestinian rights to "yelling fire in a crowded theater." And this indeed is a rhetorical/political/legal move made by diehard Israel-supporters and their willing slaves in the U.S. government and media as they seek to choke off any and all support for Palestinians.

Finally, we know that the U.S. shares "intelligence" with Israel. Likewise, we know from recent reports that Google shares information on users to varying degrees with various countries. The U.S. leads in demands placed on Google, and Google usually complies. Israel likewise enjoys near-total compliance. We also know that the major telecoms have raised no word of objection whatsoever to U.S. demands for secret access. What Israel has demanded and received we can only guess, but given the hysterical support that Israel enjoys in the U.S., I wouldn't be surprised to find that it sees greater compliance than the U.S. government. Furthermore, there is a small army of extremist, pro-Israel fanatics ready to level any and every charge at any and every critic of Israel. Computing technology has made the collection and sorting of all this information very easy for years.

Thus we have three components that reduce Facebook to what is likely a tiny component of a much larger monitoring (and control) apparatus:

1. Technological means;
2. Vastly expanding conceptions of what constitute (a) threats and (b) legitimate means; and
3. A disparate, dispersed but nevertheless organized body of very willing participants.

The advantages for those who support human rights, whether Palestinians' or anybody's (since I think it is safe to say that every last person on Earth _not_ in the top 5% of the most privileged is under attack) are:

1. Sheer numbers;
2. Growing ease of communication;
3. Commitment to a stable, sustainable, humanitarian solution.

I think the strategy for We the People should be

1. Absolute openness (combat secrecy with openness);
2. Ever-repeated commitment to non-violence;
3. An extended, open hand even to those with whom we disagree.

Of Course Social Security is on Obama's Hit List

Liberal Obama Loyalists (LOLs — call them losers for short) are rushing to endorse Obama assurances that, contrary to press reports, Social Security and other Depression-era social safety net institutions are not in his sights. Do we really need to argue the case against Obama still? Obama is a Clinton Democrat. Social Security was on Clinton's hit list, it's on Obama's. Likewise, it is on the hit lists of Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, Ben Nelson and most Democrats.

When are liberals and progressives going to figure this out? The Democratic strategy for 30 years has been to out-Republican the Republicans. The dividing line, to the extent that there is one, has been on social issues like abortion and gay rights — not on economic issues, not on military issues. Had Clinton not gotten embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, he would have moved aggressively to privatize Social Security, many of his 'liberal' economic advisers (like Robert Rubin) advocated.

Similarly, when Obama was (supposedly) tackling American health insurance issues, he excluded all single-payer advocates and most (perhaps all) organized labor representatives from the discussion. We now know that even when he was publicly supporting the public option during the campaign, we was in fact privately and personally opposed.

If Obama had been on the political stage 40 years ago, people would have marveled agape at a Black Democrat who was (and is) more conservative than Richard Nixon or most Republicans before George W. Bush. Obama is significantly more conservative than Nixon, George H. W. Bush and Reagan on a number of issues.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama hit on a winning strategy of enlisting the support of many disaffected liberals and progressives. Now, his lies are laid bare. He knows he cannot win out support again (except for delusional diehards who forgive or overlook his wrongdoing). Instead, Obama is moving to claim more conservative voters, which is where is natural sympathies lie anyway.

A Prediction

In many parts of the world, large families are the norm. Development experts try to encourage smaller families with an eye to parents investing more in fewer children – better education, health care, conditions overall. It's a tough sell. Parents see a large family as insurance against infant and child mortality and also insurance in old age in societies where there is little or no social safety net.

In the next few decades, we will see large families become common again in the US. Democrats and Republicans alike advocate privatizing — or eliminating altogether — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. The more extreme want to eliminate public education (Dick and Lynne Cheney were among this number). The most extreme want only two public institutions — the military and domestic enforcement, largely to adjudicate contractual disputes.

A future without the social safety net on which Americans have come to depend. Large families will again serve as insurance against the infirmities of old age.

The Vestigial Human

James Lovelock is the leading advocate of the "Gaia Hypothesis" — the view that the Earth is an organism (if I understand the notion at all) and behaves as one, with systems regulating the body.

Carry the metaphor further (of course, Lovelock does not just mean it as metaphor, but what the hell). . . . The human body has an appendix, a vestigial organ that does nothing; it's positioned too far along the digestive tract to be of any use. In other animals, it is still very important, but in humans it is useless. Still, it can become a site of infection — appendicitis. Infected and burst . . . peritonitis, infection of the abdominal cavity. Death may result.

Humans have become the vestigial organ of Gaia. And we have become infected, inflamed, risking the entire body.

What do we do with an inflamed appendix?

Bush Dirty Tricks

James Risen of The New York Times reports today (Wednesday, 15 June 2011) on a former C.I.A. official's charges that the Bush administration sought to torpedo world-renowned Middle East scholar and blogger Juan Cole, professor at the University of Michigan and author of the blog Informed Comment. The story is notable for several reasons, including at least two the Times entirely omits or severely downplays.

According to Risen, Bush people were unhappy with a prominent academic voicing — and getting a wide hearing for — deep criticism of and opposition to the Iraq war. Former C.I.A. intelligence officer Glenn Carle, "a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole."

This could be a serious violation of American law; the C.I.A. is barred from domestic spying (though lets remember we have seen a lot of attacks on protections against domestic spying in recent years, including by Democrat and champion of 'transparency, Barack Obama). Had Carle leveled his charges while Bush while still in office and if Bush himself had played a role, such actions would arguably have risen to the level of impeachable offenses (among many Bush committed).

I find the story interesting for points Risen effectively ignores. In 2006, Yale University's departments of sociology and history both approved Cole for appointment. Cole's hiring was scuttled by the Yale administration. There is ample reason to believe the Israel Lobby went to bat against Cole. Certainly, right-wingers and Israel-idealogues were railing against him. There were reports of leading, wealthy Israel-idolaters and Yale donors were threatening to pull their funding. Any skeptical about the tactics of Israel extremists should recall wealthy Israel-supporter Michael Lucas's March 2011 threats against Manhattan's LGBT Community Center and the center's cancellation of a fundraiser by critics of Israeli policy . Or the Alan Dershowitz tirade against Norman Finkelstein taking a post at DePaul University. Or the campaign against the play I Am Rachel Corrie in New York. This list could go for pages (attacks on academics, cultural programs, journalists, human rights institutions, etc.)

The Yale connection is also interesting. I believe that the role of a very small number of very elite universities in securing American oligarchy is being downplayed (and the issue of American oligarchy is downplayed to begin with). George W. Bush went to Yale. Leading Israel fanatic Joseph Lieberman did, too. For many years, Yale was a key source for C.I.A. recruits. Dubya's daddy, President George H. W. Bush went to Yale and was head of the C.I.A. from 1976 to 1977. It is my contention (certainly not original) that universities like Yale serve as factories of "received opinion." That is, they provide the intellectual foundations (to the extent that the United States embraces intellect at all) for power. You need an excuse for bombing civilians in Iraq? Line someone up from Harvard. The history of leading schools barring or even ousting great minds that offered threatening views is very long. (To provide a little grist without milling, look for stories of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis and Harvard, Chomsky and M.I.T., Gabriel Kolko, William James and Nathaniel Shaler. Several public universities developed great departments in a variety of disciplines because the faculty could and were safely booted from private schools but not could not be from public ones without Bill of Rights protections.)

Some questions remain unanswered (and unasked by the Times). If the Bush administration sought dope on Juan Cole, was it asking for information already in the C.I.A.'s possession, in which case the C.I.A. was already doing domestic work? Or was it directing the C.I.A. to nose about domestically? How does this fit into a larger pattern of expansion of presidential power (an expansion Obama aggressively pursues, arguably more aggressively than Bush)? Will Glenn Carle be treated as Barack Obama has treated other whistleblowers — maliciously and ruthlessly?

All of this will earn me a charge of "conspiracy theorist." Have a made any such claim? No. I am describing the lines of force in American power relations.

_____________________________

SEE ALSO

Cole, Juan (2011). "Ret'd CIA Official Alleges Bush White House Used Agency to 'Get' Cole," Informed Comment, June 16, 2011. http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/retd-cia-official-alleges-bush-white-house-used-agency-to-get-cole.html

Drum, Kevin (2011). "Bush v. Cole," Mother Jones, Wed. June 15, 2011. http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/bush-v-cole

Elizabeth Warren, Forging Ahead in Calm Seas

There is a beautiful piece of music composed by Felix Mendelssohn — Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, first performed in 1828 and inspired by both a Beethoven cantata of 1815 and poetry by Goethe. The contradiction in the title may be lost on most people today. In the age of sail, a calm sea was potentially disastrous. The Horse Latitudes may have been so named because horses were cast overboard when water supplies fell too low on a becalmed ship.

Elizabeth Warren strikes me as a seafarer making headway in a calm sea. There is plenty of bluster in Washington but little if any progress on much of anything. Warren is a real force opposed by Obama and Republicans alike. Yet she perseveres.

I find Elizabeth Warren a particularly interesting phenomenon. In some respects, she reminds me of Brooksley Born — someone with great insight and catching the entrenched powers unprepared. Warren is a very rare breed at Harvard Law School, someone who did not go to the big five Elite God-Blessed Law Schools. When Elena Kagan was named (pathetically predictably) by Obama to the Supreme Court, there was some comment that only Harvard and Yale would now be represented among the justices. Warren went to Rutgers. Obama has been a hardcore Harvard lackey in many, even most, of his appointments.

This is not a trivial observation about "old school ties." The issue is one of concentration of power. A particular school affiliation is only a symptom. As more and more are noting with greater and greater frequency, a tiny percentage of Americans are benefitting at the expense of the vast majority. This is reflected in the coddling of Wall Street at the expense of the entire country.

In the case of Obama specifically, there is a question of psychology. He shares with the president he most resembles, Bill Clinton, the experience of being abandoned by a parent. In Obama's case, from the sound of it, he was completely abandoned by one parent, his father, and substantially abandoned by the other. He demonstrates a pattern of behavior that psychologists likely understand — a desperate need to please power figures. But this is just armchair psychologizing.

More important is a problem evident in the growing pattern of political decision-making that isn't just indifferent to the welfare of the overwhelming majority, but is directly repugnant to it. A huge percentage of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the United States systematically disregard existing law (as Obama has now in Libya or in his treatment of Bradley Manning, among others, or as the Supreme Court did in Citizens United or in Bush v Gore). This huge percentage also disregards the general welfare — and the longterm wellbeing of the United States — to serve a tiny fraction of Americans, arguably numbering no more than 10,000, and perhaps far fewer than that.

The three branches of the US government, under the Constitution providing checks and balances with respect to one another, are instead a collective agency capture by American Oligarchy. The system of checks and balances exists today only in the petty bickering between two very similar pseudo-parties. Otherwise, it is absent. So what are We the People to do when (1) the entire government is failing to serve our interests and (2) that same government has very effectively ensured its longevity and continued capacity to serve those interests it does prize?

This is not idle rhetoric, nor is it a view isolated to the left (as it was in the past). There is a growing, very respectable literature on the decline or failure of American democracy. It includes scholars like Sheldon Wolin, Larry Bartels, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman. And that's just four.

Elizabeth Warren has sailed on through American doldrums. Why, I don't know.

As With Bailout, So With Social Security

Recall that the first attempt to bailout banks in September 2008 failed in Congress after a deluge of calls from voters in opposition. Then Congress rallied. After all, if 95% of members support policy X, how can you play one off against another?

The same is happening now. The oligarchs have ruled against Social Security. They know they will never need it, but in time there will be no one left to raise taxes on but the rich, so in time, if social programs are to be preserved, the rich will have to pay a share more closely representing the degree to which they disproportionately benefit in out society.

The solution is to kill social programs in their entirety, let the poor and middle classes suffer. Why? Congress and every president since Reagan have demonstrated repeatedly that they place a near-exclusive priority on the interests of the wealthiest (not just to the exclusion of others, but at the expense of others).

The political economist Carles Boix has argued that democracy thrives when the privileged perceive that the masses cannot vote away the wealth of those privileged. So countries with diverse and liquid assets like the U.S. can tolerate democracy. I suggest that the United States is proving Boix's argument incomplete. The rich are saying, again and again, "No!" to democracy.

It may be no more complicated than this: In a society where a huge majority show no interest in current events, politics, economics, justice, truth, government, why should power-brokers deal with democracy when they can just as easily — or more easily, given the population's passivity — deal without?

Question: What Is the Biggest Problem with American Democracy?

This has been answered very nicely by Paul Krugman, Michael Kinsley, James K. Galbraith and many others on the liberal and progressive end of the spectrum. The US is already a de facto oligarchy. Clinton, Bush and now Obama have worked diligently to formalize American Oligarchy, with the unalloyed support of Wall Street and a huge percentage of corporate boards, Democrats, Republicans and American super-rich.

I emphasize that this issue has been expressly raised by many who are far less left-leaning than I am.

It's a possibly-encouraging feature of American democracy that some who could easily ride the wave among fellow oligarchs are vocally opposed to the decline (among them, George Soros).

By contrast, a deeply discouraging feature is the absolute failure of the vast majority of American journalists to do anything even remotely resembling the work they assert they do. Here is London Times editor Robert Lowe in 1851:

The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation... The Press lives by disclosures... For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences – to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgment of the world.

Similar thoughts have been voiced by H. L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Studs Terkel, and others. But today, we hear prominent members of the American news establishment explicitly reject this journalistic duty. The torrent of condemnation of and vile misreporting on Julian Assange is a perfect example of this (by, among others, the New York Times, including 'star reporter' John Burns).

Equally discouraging is the deeply delusional state of the American people. Economist Ken Rogoff was recently on Charlie Rose (Rose usually dismally middle-of-the-road to conservative). In response to a question on why Americans support the Republican campaign to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, Rogoff — absolutely on-target — said something to the effect, "Because everyone expects to be rich." I've heard this on the street myself — people with no prospects of any kind asserting with total confidence that they are going to win the lottery. I heard this twenty years ago in Massachusetts when it was reported, during widespread opposition to a modest tax increase proposal, that many lottery ticket buyers spent more on the lottery each year than they paid in their state taxes. (Dollar for dollar, which do you think returned more value to them? Hint: Expected gain on a one dollar lottery ticket is less than a penny.)

The US may very well have the most ill-informed, poorly-educated, deluded population of any country on Earth. (But China seems determined to best us on that count.)

This American Dream

James Kwak and Simon Johnson have parallel essays commenting on Ariana Huffington's new book, Third World America.

The title alone reminds me of what used to be said of the United Kingdom — that it was the world's wealthiest Third World country. (I remember this from the 1980s, but I don't know when it began or whether people still speak of the UK so.) Paul Krugman, speaking with Eliot Spitzer and Bill Maher on HBO in September, 2009, effectively said the US is going the way of a Third World country:

Sometimes I wake up and think I'm in a Third World country.... The American Dream is not totally dead, but it's dying pretty fast."

In his essay, James Kwak notes a couple of nice quotations Huffington pulls from Tocqueville's Democracy in America, including what struck him as "the general equality of condition among the people."

Of course, Tocqueville was missing one group — the slaves. Hardly a minor oversight. Neither was he particularly concerned with the denial to women of the vote or the right to own property. But these can be "controlled for" in a comparison of American ages.

It would be interesting to gauge at what time in American history wealth was most unequally (and at what time most equally) distributed.

If you just confine yourselves to people who were allowed to own property and allowed to vote (that is, people treated substantially equally in law), then at what time were people most unequal.

The disparities in distribution today, if not the greatest ever, must be pretty close — and getting closer. I think the following position can reasonably (and forcefully) be made:

For thirty years, since the Reagan administration, formal and substantive democracy have been under attack in the United States. Protections for the individual, especially the less advantaged "commoner" (for want of better expression) have been deliberately worn down. The government, especially the executive branch, has steadily and successfully sought more power. Obama has not departed from the pattern from Reagan through to Bush in the slightest. Indeed, government intrusions into the lives of Americans have accelerated under Obama. Far from having a tax and social policy aimed at promoting greater equality, we have seen seen the US government repeatedly act to redistribute wealth from the middle class up to the wealthiest Americans. We have an increasingly wealthy Congress. Those members who do not start among the wealthiest do whatever they can to join — witness Charlie Rangel's crimes.

Above all, the culture of separation is being institutionalized. Wealthy versus The Rest of Us. And government and corporate leaders show almost no concern about this at all. Indeed, they appear, in large measure, to be endorsing the two-state America.

The question may now be: Just how un-democratic will the US become?

Coddling Conservatives

Dean Baker speculates about the obviously different treatment of op-ed essayists at The New York Times, namely the welcome for the often-wrong David Brooks versus Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert. Baker's points can be generalized to the mainstream media and politics.

The obvious question is: When do 'mistakes' rise to something more serious? On a host of issues, Brooks has been corrected again and again, by people like me and by people with infinitely more public presence. Yet he has frequently gone on to repeat [i]exactly[/i] that on which he was corrected. So is he just lying for propaganda purposes?

Brooks does this on international issues, economics, politics — you name it. Unlike a Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, Brooks is more decorous in his misrepresentations (lies) — as is the New York Times generally.

Dean Baker is quite right, but he poses his case rhetorically, neither raising nor answering another obvious question: Given that liberals would indeed be treated as he describes and given that conservatives get just the opposite treatment, why is this the case? (There's a perfectly good reason for Baker to write so — we all know the answers!)

There is a parallel case with Barack Obama. Obama has coddled conservatives like Alan Simpson. He has packed his team with the likes of Geithner, Bernanke, Summers. He has systematically excluded liberals from discussions on labor, financial reform, education and health care. Currently, he is hunting for an excuse to [i]not[/i] nominate Elizabeth Warren.

The most simple — and plausible — explanation is both cases is that the executives [i]agree[/i] with their conservatives. Times editors agree with Brooks or Douthat (the far dimmer Brooks clone). Obama agrees with Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, Rubin — despite his vague and infrequent gestures in the direction of liberals and progressives.

What concrete evidence we do have confirms this. The Times has pretty clearly joined the Clinton-style 'moderates' against social security. It has been dragged into a tiny handful of stories revealing Israeli crimes, but largely continues to ignore them. It has repeatedly misrepresented issues of housing, banking, etc. Former reporters like Chris Hedges, John Hess, Sydney Schanberg have provided first-hand accounts.

And a handful of inside-reports on Obama — from people who have been in touch recently (e.g., Rashid Khalidi) and in the past (e.g., Penn professor Adolf Reed, Jr.) — confirm the same with the administration of President Zero.

The process of critics of the Times or Obama can be treated as a scientific one. We have a set of observations of consistent behavior. What explains it? What explains the near-total absence of Palestinians from the op-ed pages of the Times or the Post but the regular and frequent appearance of Israelis and their supporters? What explains the total absence of single-payer advocates from Obama discussions on health care reform? What explains the continued employment of Timothy Geithner or Alan Simpson but the quick abandonment of Charles Freeman? One or two isolated cases would allow endless speculation. The uninterrupted pattern of the Obama administration or The New York Times leaves far less room for interpretation.

Democracy's End

Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss has some comments on a current Ethan Bronner story in The New York Times. Weiss notes Bronner's effective recognition of the death of the Two State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If I read Weiss correctly, he thinks it may portend the end of the Jewish State. I think it may mark an alternative, depending on how wedded Israelis and their American champions are to Democracy. Israelis and Americans are facing, largely independently, a parallel choice between preserving two increasingly incompatible Articles of National Faith. In Israel's case, they are the notions of Democracy and Jewish Statehood (which were arguably incompatible from the start, emphasis on arguably — not necessarily in my view). In the case of the US, the two are Democracy and (unlimited acquisition of) Wealth (termed free enterprise, private property — it has several names).

If the US and Israel are not already at a Moment of Truth (drumroll), they soon will be. The Jewish State may be finished, or — if Americans and Israelis choose to junk some other cherished notion — it may continue in radically altered form.

The obvious alternative to be junked is democracy. My view is that it will be the democracy that is dumped — not explicitly, but in substance and with a widespread, unstated recognition that this is what is happening.

There are calls in the Knesset for a more systematic denial of rights to Palestinians, but this has been true for some time. Likewise, there is a systematic denial of equal rights to non-Jews in Israel. The vast majority of non-Jews are Palestinian, so that systematic denial does the work, not just of latent racism, but of preserving the "Jewish character" of the Jewish state.

A further emphasis on protecting "Jewish character" to resolve the tension between a Two State Solution and Jewish Statehood will also bring denials of democracy to Jews in Israel. This, too, is happening with the grossly disproportionate power of the religious right. Israel is also seeing some evidence of liberal-intellectual flight.

How is the de-democratization of Israel to be managed in The World's Greatest Democracy? A good deal of Orwellian linguistic construction aided by the non-quite-coincidental de-democratization of the United States. Economists, first on the left and now increasingly among liberals, are noting this. And progressives generally have been warning of this since the Reagan years, when the "Danger of Too Much Democracy" was first attacked with malice aforethought.

In an interview with Bill Maher, Paul Krugman said, "The American Dream isn't dead, but it's dying pretty fast." Dean Baker has an essay on the service Congress renders to Wall Street and corporate America — not to us. Essential to Democracy are social mobility and some ideal of socio-economic equality serving as a goal. Both are near-dead in the US. Our politicians are becoming a political class. They become wealthier, use their elected positions to ensure or promote their own wealth and, if they leave office, go to work for precisely the companies they regulated (or didn't) through legislation. Their children take office after they leave. If we haven't already, when will we see a third-generation Kennedy take office — or a Murkowsi, Paul, Cuomo, Bush . . . ?

Elections are becoming near-irrelevant in the US. The great beacon of Change and Hope — Obama — has proved to be anything but, indeed almost the opposite. Who could imagine that Obama would not just fail to address Bush crimes, but actually further some of Bush's worst?

The decline of democracy in the US — coupled crucially with Orwellian language to perpetuate the Myth of Democracy — will make it easier for Israel-idealogues in the US to maintain the pretense that Israel is a democracy.

The irony in Israel's case is that a profound change in Judaism itself may be a consequence. If Judaism is identified with the Jewish State (as it is, above all by conservatives), then as Israel becomes more right-wing, less democratic and more discriminatory, Judaism will, sadly and possibly tragically, be also so identified. Liberal Jews will seek religious solace elsewhere, some abandoning Judaism, others seeking to create a true, liberal Jewish faith. Judaism will evolve in a way exactly counter to, and as a consequence of, what conservatives intend.

What will happen in the US is anybody's guess. Legal institution of oligarchy? Perhaps that is already happening with the formal protections granted Wall Street and corporate profiteering.

Violent Fence-Sitters and Villainsin the Field of American Racism

Salon has a nice, but not quite complete, essay by Alex Pareene on the Heroes and Villains of the ill-named (but very deliberately named, with malice aforethought) "Ground Zero Mosque" furore.

I have my own take on the villains especially. Pareene rightly names as heroes Jerrold Nadler, Michael Bloomberg, Al Franken, Russ Feingold, Sherrod Brown, Joe Sestak, Ted Olson, Grover Norquist. At least three people there with whom I almost never agree, but on this, they are great. People of Principle.

Barack Obama leads the pack of violent fence-sitters — prominent individuals with neither the decency nor courage to do what justice and morality demand. Also in this pack are Kirsten Gillibrand, David Paterson, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and on and on. They are the silent or near-silent go-along-to-get-along types who in some ways do more damage than the unalloyed bigots like Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Pamela Geller and Abe Foxman. The violent fence-sitters are the ones who enable huge numbers to also sit on the sidelines or, worse, to edge toward a bigoted stance that in some part they know is wrong.

As for Anthony Weiner and Charles Schumer, they are long-standing, pseudo-respectable crypto-racists. Their violent support for Israel has forced their intellectual machinery into a hatred of Arabs and Muslims they would otherwise reject wholeheartedly.

They are examples of the peculiar elasticity of the Web of Belief (as philosopher Willard van Orman Quine called it). That is, if a person is sufficiently devoted to one point, he or she is quite capable of adjusting whatever else needs adjusting to accommodate that point.

Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Pamela Geller, Joseph Lieberman — They are true racists to the core. Gingrich, Palin and Giuliani believe in the innate supremacy of white Christians; Geller and Lieberman believe the same of Jews. Their mental machinery is the same in form as that of the Nazis circa 1937. (And I mean that quite seriously, with all that it implies. They are people who would commit genocide if they thought the world would tolerate it today.)

By contrast, Schumer and Wiener are Adjusted Bigots. Their bigotry is the illogical, irrational consequence of a desperate need to maintain the Sanctity of Israel over all other things. Unlike the Gingriches or Gellers, they do not begin with a racist premise; they arrive at racist conclusion.

The web of belief need not be so elastic. Jerrold Nadler is an ardent supporter of Israel. Unlike Schumer or Wiener, he is also a defender of the Rights of American Muslims. Likewise, Michael Bloomberg, whom I usually loathe. He has been outstanding on this.

All that said, Salon should add to the list of Heroes both Charlie Rangel, who may be trying to recover some moral high ground, and Al Franken, who has repeatedly surprised me as one of the most intelligent people in Congress in recent decades.

My Letter to Ross Douthat

Sent Wednesday, 18 August, after I suffered through the idiocy of Ross Douthat on PBS's NewsHour, hosted by the even more racist Jim Lehrer:

Mr. Douthat:

You're a master of the New York Times art of sounding reasonable while advocating bigotry.

Where is your condemnation of Pamela Geller, who profits by the most unambiguously racist diatribes? Where is your condemnation of the Israeli desecration of a Muslim cemetery (Mamilla) in Jerusalem, ostensibly for purposes of building a "Museum of Tolerance"?

You need to confront some realities about yourself. You're a racist.

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

Ross Douthat — Just Another New York Times Racist

Ross Douthat, like Thomas Friedman or David Brooks, is a New York Times artist — a master of dressing viciousness, bigotry and just raw stupidity in 'delicate' language. The test of a Douthat (or Brooks or Friedman) essay is to replace the targeted ethnic group with the name of another. As yourself then how you react to his "reasonable" blanket assertions.

Today, Douthat weighs in — with pathetic predictability — on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. How a person names the proposed development is the first indicator of where he or she falls in the spectrum of American bigotry. Douthat is marginally less awful than the loudest bigots on the Islamic cultural center. He's roughly in the Abe Foxman/ADL camp. Also predictable for Douthat, who spends a good deal of time trying such up to perceived power.

We could call this Harvard-Times Bigotry. It is the kind of bigotry that will lead a Harvard president (Larry Summers) to condemn as anti-Semitic calls for divestment from Israel but remain silent (Drew Gilpin Faust) on a Israeli professor's (Martin Kramer's) explicit call for genocide against the Palestinians. It is what allows the Times to equivocate on an Islamic cultural center while supporting Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Harvard-Times Bigotry takes a specific form. It begins with a token 'recognition' of the weaknesses of the privileged oppressor. So Israeli suffers from an "excessive" (but "understandable") obsession with self-defense. Americans enjoy the "wonderful tradition" of democracy and tolerance mixed with the "social norms" of Anglo-Saxons.

Douthat can't even get his history right — cultural or even simple, basic factual.

"... where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims." Really?! I thought the Constitution expressly stipulates a birth requirement for the American presidency.

That's just one example of the shallow apologies Ross Douthat offers for American racism and bigotry. By doing so, he betrays himself as one of those bigots.

Douthat is the second person I've seen refer to American "nativism". (See also Robert Schlesinger in US News & World Report." We can translate "nativism" to what it really means in 2010 America — racism. Racism. And Ross Douthat is unambiguously (though he tries to mask it) defending — indeed, advocating, racism.

Douthat differs from Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich only by toning down sweeping, unfounded assertions about Islam and Muslims.

We know — conclusively — how the Times would respond of such sweeping claims were made about Jews and Judaism. Such claims are made with regard to Israel's war crimes in Occupied Palestine, something Douthat has never and will never critique or criticize, when some condemn all Jews for the crimes of one state.

Likewise, the Times would condemn – probably bar — blanket condemnation of Christians and Christianity, a condemnation many might find quite reasonable given the past 1000 years of intolerance and war in most Christian nations.

So why is Douthat allowed to commit exactly the vile wrongs that would rightly be damned if committed against any group other than Muslims and Islam?

Young Friedmanstein

Glenn Greenwald has a piece in Salon and Jonathan Schwarz in A Tiny Revolution on Jeffrey Goldberg's newest entry in the bid for More War — War with Iran.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a young Thomas Friedman, with shades of Judy Miller (shades shared by Friedman 30 years ago, when he was coming up).

Simmering out of sight is plenty of plausibility-evidence to undermine Goldberg's claims (not that any such evidence will make any difference to the mainstream). For one thing, Iran is not suicidal. They know how an attack on Israel would go — massive Israeli (and almost certainly American) retaliation, truly massive, as in Dresden-Hiroshima massive.

Second, if American and Israeli government and mainstream claims are to be believed (a very big "if"), then Iran is doing perfectly well needling Israel via Hamas and Hezbollah. Why go overt when you can stay covert and maintain 'plausible deniability'?

Ultimately, the question regarding Goldbergs (and Netanyahus, Cheneys, etc.) is, Why? Do they really think Iran is a threat? My guess is that they do. They are so bigoted, such thoroughly violent true believers, that they really do believe that even purely verbal criticism constitutes a physical attack on Israel.

That raises the question: After Iran, then what? Do Goldberg and Company believe that, with the Iranians gone, the Palestinians will just disappear? Or that Israel will then be able to annex southern Lebanon with all its water resources? Or take the east bank of the Jordan River? Or retake the Sinai?

Israel and its 'allies' seem to proceed with on the premise that any and every war is just a natural prelude to the next war. (Obama shows no sign of thinking all that differently.)

So after Iraq, ramp up Afghanistan. Then Iran. Then . . . ? Is the monster unstoppable?

American Workers — Screwed.

I posted the following comments on the website of NPR's Takeaway:

If I remember correctly, Lachman Achuthan now believes that the US is now bound to see a double-dip recession. There's no way around it.

The temp workforce has steadily grown for at least 20 years. Temps enjoy _no_ safety net. When they lose their jobs, they go straight for welfare, food pantries, etc. They do not qualify for unemployment compensation.

I'm not strictly a temp — I'm a freelancer, and I've been one for twenty years. Freelancers are effectively specialized temps. Both temps and freelancers fall under the general category of contractual workerse. Editors in a variety of media, designers, creatives of many kinds, are often temps. Their industries are seasonal; work is project-based and thus highly variable. Moreover, many companies have laid off people and then just brought those very people back as freelancers or temps.

Wages in the freelance industries have been going down for ten years. They peaked in the late 90s and 2000. In New York after 9/11, things just fell apart and have never fully recovered.

Now with the prolonged, severe downturn, I'm seeing pay decline to where it was 20 years ago. I know _extremely_ experienced people — award-winning editors, designers, animators — take jobs at levels they haven't accepted since they were in the 20s. (These are people in the 40s.)

So, consider any measure of the quality and quantity of work in the 'standard' on-staff work environments, and you can be confident things are _worse_ for freelance and temp workers.

Legal protections for temps and freelancers are often non-existent. Discrimination (especially on the basis of age) is rampant.

A growing problem centers on the unpaid or very low paid "internship." Companies seeking to cut costs turn a paid position into an unpaid internship. The federal and a few state governments (including New York's) are beginning to pay attention to this, but again, there is remarkably little protection for contractual workers.

If/when jobs pick up for temps, it will still be in the context of a prolonged decline in conditions for American workers that began in the Reagan years. Americans worker longer and for fewer benefits than any others in the G8 (with the likely exception of Russia — hardly an encouraging benchmark). Social mobility in the US is the lowest of any leading industrial economy — much much lower than in the countries of Western Europe. There is growing talk in the Obama administration and in Congress of raising the retirement age to 70. (It was already raised to 67. By contrast, France recently angered citizens by raising its retirement age . . . from 60 to 62.)

In the 1950s, economists were concerned about a future workforce facing too much time on its hands, once retirement was lowered to 55, or less, and work weeks were shorter. Exactly the opposite has occurred. Americans are more productive, more hardworking, and we are rewarded ever less.

New York Times Reports on Anti-Muslim BigotryWith NO Mention of Bigotry

Laurie Goodstein reports in today's New York Times (Sunday, 8 August 2010) of opposition to mosques anywhere and everywhere across the US. The story is amazing for the total absence of keywords like "bigotry," "discrimination," "intolerance," "racism," etc.

As the character of Cromwell says in A Man for All Seasons, "This silence speaks." Why does the Times studiously avoid use of certain words with regard to Muslims — words it would absolutely use in any other comparable instance involving any other ethnic group?

My email to Laurie Goodstein this morning:

Dear Ms. Goodstein:

How is it that a story on what certainly seems to be widespread American bigotry and intolerance includes not one use of any of the words that would normally be used: bigotry, intolerance, racism, discrimination, etc.

The closest your story comes is "anti-immigrant". But is transparently obvious that the hostility to mosques _anywhere_ is not about immigrants. The lower Manhattan center is being advocated by Americans, not immigrants.

Do you think a story on hostility or outright (often violent) opposition to a synagogue _could_ be written without raising the issue of anti-Semitism?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

And my letter to Arthur Brisbane, the new Times "Public Editor."

Dear Mr. Brisbane:

I wonder what goes on in the heads of Times editors, especially on hot-button topics where the Times engages in linguistic contortionism to do ... something. The use of the word "torture" to describe American war crimes (note my use of words) is a good example.

Today's Times provides another example — one for textbooks — Laurie Goodstein's report on opposition to mosques across the US.

In New York City, there have been threats of violence, including _bombing_, against mosque projects — not just the project near the World Trade Center, but at ones on Staten Island (killed by opponents) and another in Brooklyn (see NYT, June 10: "Heated Opposition to Proposed Mosque" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/nyregion/11mosque.html )

Remarkably, Laurie Goodstein makes no mention at all of threats of physical violence — ones that would be called terrorism were they al Qaeda threats against Americans (or Arab threats of any kinds against any Westerner).

Equally remarkably, Laurie Goodstein makes no mention whatsoever of bigotry, discrimination, racism, intolerance....

Can you imagine a story on repeated, often threatening opposition to synagogues that would _not_ raise the issue of anti-Semitism?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

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College Degrees Evaporate in the US

Bob Herbert writes to lament the decline of the US on the world stage of higher education. The decline is just a part of a larger anti-intellectualism in the US.

If there is no good example of learning and inquiry in the halls of power and prestige (on Wall Street, in Washington, in the idolized entertainment fields), is it any surprise that the US is in freefall on higher education?

The US has a government and a news-media system that actively opposes open-mindedness, healthy criticism and skepticism, inquiry — all while publicly endorsing all of these, especially while annihilating whole countries "for their own good." Look at the widespread condemnation of Wikileaks, which found a niche precisely because the US news media has not been doing what it claims.

Obama — supposed champion of change — appoints only Harvard and Yale grads, hardly institutions worthy of admiration after twenty years of deplorable economic analysis, criminal graduates fomenting wars, etc. Obama is more conservative than Bush on whistleblowers. He was dragged kicking and screaming into releasing documents that he had previously promised to make public.

Where is the diversity of intellectual analysis, inquiry, challenge? It is utterly utterly absent from the American public arena. Progressives are systematically excluded from the mainstream media with only a tiny and fairly tame representation at MSNBC and a couple of others. PBS killed NOW and has offered no replacement for Bill Moyers, who was absolutely the most incisive of regular analysts of current events and any major media outlet.

A college degree is valuable in the US only for purposes of getting a job. On any other count, Americans — beginning at the *top* — oppose the values higher education is supposed to foster.

What "On" the Media Really Means

New York's WNYC runs a news analysis program, On the Media, at the obscure hour of 7 in the morning . . . on Saturday — bound to get a lot of listeners then.

This morning, August 7th, On the Media had Shane Harris of The Washingtonian to prate about Wikileaks, whistleblowing and Obama's Bushian hostility to openness, transparency, democracy, rights, etc. — all the things that he endorsed during his 2008 campaign.

Below, my criticism, directly delivered to On the Media.

Pretty sad excuse for analysis on Obama and leaks, On the Media.

You utterly fail to raise key points:

1. Wikileaks says, with evidence, that it DID approach the Obama administration and Obama dismissed them.

2. No mention that there has been a steady attack on FOIA for 20 years and that Obama has joined Bush in attacking FOIA.

3. You failed to mention that by both liberal and libertarian thinking (i.e., excepting only so-called moderates and conservatives), the prevailing view is that information held by OUR government is OUR information. Pure right.

4. You clearly, but tacitly, buy into the mainstream media is right dogma. There would have been no _market_ for Wikileaks if not for the glaring, repeated, and gross failures of the New York Times, NPR, CNN and others. The Times, for example, has repeatedly buried stories until it was too late for them to have any relevant and _preventive_ effect. NPR is _worse_ -- by a long margin. And CNN -- under the 'exalted' Walter Isaacson _allowed_ the Pentagon to place what in effect were propagandists in its newsroom.

Outrageous that On the Media had not the courage or even the decency to dig any further than the shallow pandering Shane Harris.

Pathetic.