Abe Lincoln and Karl Marx

The Republican Party started out in 1854 as an anti-slavery coalition of folks living in the Northeast and upper Midwest who were opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The first meeting of the new Republican Party was held in a school house in Ripon, Wisconsin. Because the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed slavery to spread outward from the south, northern activists organized themselves around the slogan, “Free Labor, Free Land, Free men!”

Elaborating on the idea of Free Labor, Abraham Lincoln, who became the first President elected by Republican Party in 1860, gave the following annual address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859:

“
...But another class of reasoners hold the opinion... that there is no such thing as a free man being fatally fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer.... They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior and greatly the superior of capital.”

After Lincoln was reelected to the Presidency in 1864, Karl Marx on behalf of the International Working Men’s Association centered in London, England, wrote Lincoln the following letter:


“Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority...From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class....the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes (in Europe) for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slave holders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic....The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world”

Karl Marx received the following reply via the American Ambassador to Great Britain Charles Francis Adam:

“I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United [States], has been received by him. So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.”

Abraham Lincoln as a leading champion of the rights of the working class? My-oh-my has the Republican Party changed its spots.

The Unanswered "WHY" behind 9/11

On September 11, 1973 my wife and I were in New Delhi, India. While walking over to the American Express Office in Connaught Circus we picked up a copy of the Times of India and read with horror that the military had overthrown the democratically elected government of Chile. The Hindustan Times, another English language newspaper, had on it’s front page a three panel cartoon showing a military plane dropping a bomb on the the bold face word “Chile” in the first panel, an explosion in the second panel, and the word “CIA” in the third panel. The insight of that three panel cartoon in the Hindustan Times that September morning was confirmed years later when the question of “why” was finally answered.

On September 11, 2001 I was stepping out of shower when my wife called out and said a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. My first thought was that this was a repeat of the tragic accident in 1945 when a Mitchell B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building. While watching the World Trade Center tower burning, we were stunned to see another plane crashing into the second tower. Again my first thought was this was pay back for the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile on September 11th all those years before.

Driving to school that morning my wife and I listened intently to National Public Radio as the various announcers and reporters told us “what,” “when,” “how,” “where,” and after repeating that over and over an announcer finally put forward a possible “who.” Despite the fact there was no credible information as to “who” conducted the attacks, NPR was speculating that the attacks were carried out by al Qaeda. On the other hand no one on NPR that morning attempted to speculate on the “why” question.

At school the “why” question was paramount on everyone’s mind. The overwhelming consensus revolved around some vaguely understood connection between the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers and Israel and the Palestinians.

Later at home my wife and I watched the news. CBS played a tape of President George W. Bush’s remarks at Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida immediately following the attacks. President Bush said, “Today, we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country....I have ordered that the full resources of the federal government... conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.” I turned to my wife and said I did not hear the “why” question answered. My wife told me to sit tight because she was certain the “why” question will be answered in due time.

CBS then played another taped message from the President delivered from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana where the President said, “....Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom will be defended.” I again turned to my wife and asked here if she was satisfied with that “why” answer.

Following the Barksdale message CBS News broadcasted an address to the Nation from the Oval Office by President Bush. Bush said in part, “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts....These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat....America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” The President had elaborated on his Barksdale Air Force Base speech but the answer to the “why” question remained vague and shadowy.

On September 20, 2001, President Bush addressed a Joint Session of Congress Following the 9/11 Attacks. The President said, “Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom....On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country....a world where freedom itself is under attack....Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda.... its goal is remaking the world -- and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere....”

Nine days after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush continued his theme that the terrorist attacks were motivated by al-Qaeda’s hatred of American freedoms. But the President added another new layer to the “why” question when he asserted al-Qaeda had a dream of remaking the world in al-Qaeda’s own image. Again I felt let down and more uneasy then ever because the “why” question was being answered too simplistically. There had to be more to these horrendous terrorist attacks than an enigmatic hatred of American freedoms.

I remained bothered by the failure of President Bush and the corporate news media to answer the “why” question in a more profound and penetrating way. Moreover, President Barack Obama’s lack of interest in the “why” question when he became President of the United States was also disconcerting. I finally resolved to dig deeper myself.

Several years ago I came across an interview with Osama Bin Laden conducted by the PBS show titled Frontline. The Frontline interview was conducted in May 1998 nearly three and a half years before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This is what Bin Laden said, “The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. ....They rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists.” According to Bin Laden, his hatred for America is rooted in American foreign policy in the Middle east particularly where 60,000 American troops had been stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia (land of the two Holy Mosques, Mecca and Medina) and the propping up of the Saudi family dictatorship.

Later I discovered a speech given on September 20, 2001 by then former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. Government Reform Committee. Netanyahu said, “A simple rule prevails here: The success of terrorists in one part of the terror network emboldens terrorists throughout the network. This then is the Who. Now for the Why....the main motivation driving the terror network is an anti-Western hostility that seeks to achieve nothing less than a reversal of history....This hatred is the product of a seething resentment that has simmered for centuries in certain parts of the Arab and Islamic world....(the) West (had) penetrated Islamic realms in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.... For them the mission was clear: The West had to be first pushed out of these areas. Pro-western Middle Eastern regimes were toppled in rapid succession, including in Iran....Nothing better illustrates this then Osama bin Laden's call for Jihad against the United States in 1998. He gave as his primary reason not Israel, not the Palestinians, not the 'peace process', but rather the very presence of the United States 'occupying the Land of Islam in the holiest of places' and where is that? 'The Arabian peninsula' says Bin Laden, where America is 'plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, and humiliating its people'. Israel, by the way, comes a distant third....”

Were the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 motivated by al-Qaeda’s deep hatred for American freedoms or was it motivated by American foreign policy in the middle east? Which ever “why” answer one finds compelling, there are, none-the-less, two certainties which have emerged from the terrorist attacks. First, almost 3,000 innocent people died. The United States Government owes the victims and their families a truthful and definitive reason why they died. Second, what ever freedoms we may have enjoyed before September 11, 2001, those freedoms have been abridged by the very same government that claimed it wanted to protect our freedoms. Look no farther then the United States Patriot Act.

Well Done Ya'll

I really have to hand it to the Republican-Tea Party. After decades of opposing the social safety net known as the New Deal and the Great Society and after decades of opposing Keynesian Economic Policy, the right wing is on the verge of realizing it's long held dream. Today right-wingers have locked hands circling clock-wise then circling counter-clock-wise, bobbing up then down, genuflecting outward then inward in a New Age Circle Dance celebrating their pending historic victory over Social Security, Medicare, and deficit spending. After more than 70 years of pursuing one failed strategy after another, the tactics settled on by the Republican-Tea Party that proved to be so successful in overturning post Great Depression Democratic Party social policy was really brilliant in terms of its simplicity. The Republican-Tea Party is using Keynesian Economics to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Keynesian Economics!

During the Great Depression beginning in 1929 the capitalist economy appeared to be on the verge of collapse. Karl Marx had predicted that capitalism was a self-destructive economic system. By 1932 Marx's predictions were coming true. Economic growth was going in reverse, poverty was growing exponentially, every major industry was experiencing labor unrest, and the Communist Party USA had more members then the Communist Party USSR! The old economic theory known as laissez-faire capitalism was incapable of providing a road map leading capitalism out of the crisis capitalism had created for itself.

When all seemed lost a little known British economist named John Maynard Keynes published "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money." Keynes argued that to get capitalism out of its on-going crisis the government must "...stimulate the economy through some combination of two approaches: a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment." Keynes also wrote that government spending on such things as basic research, public health, education, and infrastructure could help long-term growth. But Keynes argued, once the crisis was over the debt incurred to stimulate the economy out of the crisis must be paid down in preparation for the next crisis.


In contrast, the traditional Republican Party advocated a policy of fiscal conservatism. The policy goals of fiscal conservatism involved balanced budgets, reduced government spending, free trade, deregulation, lower taxes, and paying down the national debt. Traditional Republicans believed that if they pursued fiscal conservatism it would be possible to unleash a sustainable economic boom that would make the social safety net unnecessary and Keynesian Economics pointless. The fiscal conservatives constantly accused the Keynesians of being tax and spenders.

Because of the success of Keynesian economics, fiscal conservatism never caught on even when traditional Republicans were in power. By the 1980s radical Republicans who could not or would not let go of their fiscal conservative dreams stumbled on a tactic to finally bring Keynes down.

In 1981 the national debt on the day the Republican Ronald Reagan became president was 900 billion dollars. When Reagan left office the national debt rose to 2.4 trillion dollars. By 1988, the country owed more to foreigners than it was owed, and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. Four years later George H.W. Bush got the national debt up to 4.5 trillion dollars. Eight years later at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, the national debt stood at 5 trillion dollars but Clinton left a 1.2 trillion dollar surplus to his successor, George W. Bush.

During the eight years of George W. Bush's administration, Bush started two wars and paid for them by selling United States Treasury Bonds to the rest of the world. Meanwhile Bush passed the largest tax cut in United States history. Then the Bush administration passed legislation that created Medicare part D and paid for it by, you guessed it, selling U.S. Treasury Bonds. When the economy again returned to crisis mode in September 2008, the Bush Administration created the Troubled Asset Relief Program which used treasury bonds to buy up the debt of private banks. When Bush left office the national debt stood at 13 trillion dollars!

By 2011 the radical Republicans had morphed into the Republican-Tea Party. In violation of the key Keynesian economic principle of paying down debt, the radical Republicans had stumbled on the tactic of borrowing and spending never paying back that which was borrowed. And to add economic insult to economic injury the monies borrowed had to be paid back with interest quietly increasing the sum total of the borrowed monies to foreign governments and foreign banks and private U.S. banks. Because they threw the United States into massive debt the Republican-Tea Party now has the tools to destroy Social Security and Medicare, bring down Keynesians Economics, and lord over the largest transfer of wealth upward in world history. Well down ya'll, well done ya'll!

August 18, 2011

America's March of Folly

Earlier this month my wife and I happened to be in Berlin on German Unity Day (Einheits Tag). The German Capitol City was in a party mood with tchotchke vendors and food booths and temporary beer and soft drink kiosks set up all along the Scheidemann Strasse. The autumn weather was perfect while we listened to the symphony orchestra practicing Beethoven’s Third and Ninth Symphonies. After munching on currywurst and fisch semmels and drinking a couple of half liters of locally brewed pils beer we headed off to explore more of the city. Because my wife and I are such typical American tourists we had to visit Check Point Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate.

That night we found a wonderful Italian restaurant near the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. We happened to notice another American couple sitting several tables behind us. A few minutes after we entered the restaurant a very old German couple sat down next to the other Americans. The German couple eventually finished their pasta and the wife left. The older German man went to pay for their meal and discovered he could not find his wallet. In a panic he looked in his coat pocket, searched under the table, and after a few minutes gave up in utter dejection apologizing profusely to the waiter. The waiter told him it was all right and he could come back and pay later. After the other American couple noticed the old man’s distress, they began in English to loudly ridicule the old man’s motives saying he was just an old con trying to get a free meal. This went on and on even after the old guy left the restaurant.

Over the last few years I have watched the economic crisis known as the Great Recession spread across the globe deepening in intensity. There are mass demonstrations and/or riots in Greece, Italy, Spain, and France. Protest movement are growing in Ireland, Britain, and surprisingly in Sweden. The failure of conservative and liberal economist to predict the crisis is never discussed. Instead there appears to be a growing consensus among the world’s great economic powers that the best approach to mitigating the crisis is to go all out and reduce the deficit by cutting government spending on all social programs. In the United States for the first time since the New Deal of the 1930‘s Democrats are seriously talking about cutting or eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile those far right-wing Republicans who ideologically never made their peace with the New Deal are opportunistically chanting the mantra of cut taxes, cut government spending, protect the big banks, protect the big corporations. By pursuing this perverse logic, thereby compounding the economic devastation in society, these right-wingers finally see their chance to gut all the hated social programs designed to help people enacted over the last 80 years.

But what is motivating these right-wingers? Is it purely greed or is there something deeper, more fundamental behind their thinking? The conservative blogger and radio host Mike Adams provides some clues, “The conservative sees man as born in a broken state. This tragic view of human nature sees man as selfish and hedonistic by design....Given his selfish nature, man must internalize some reason to behave in pro-social ways. That fact that he falls short of these values does not mean he is a hypocrite. The one who does not even believe what he says is the hypocrite. The one who believes what he says and falls short is merely human." Adams goes on to say, "According to the conservative, effective punishment is that which produces fear of transgression. Fear of transgression occurs when the punishment is swift, certain, and severe....In sum, the conservative believes we should first try to love people into conformity. If that does not work, we should scare people into conformity.” So there you have it, people are selfish and hedonistic and broken by nature. Work for low wages or lose your job, then get thrown out of your house, that’s how the “Free Market” produces and enforces conformity. If the “Free Market” cannot force people to conform then that leaves the State. Forget about equality and due process, severe and swift punishment by the police and courts will also produce the conformity right-wingers are so bewitched with.

Back in my Berlin Italian restaurant I called the waiter over to my table and apologized for the other American’s atrocious behavior. I then offered to pay for the old couple’s meal. In German the waiter told me there was no need for me to pay because the old couple lived in the neighborhood and they came to the restaurant all the time. A few minutes later the Matre d’ came over and told my wife and I that our meal was on the house. He then popped open a bottle of wine and served us gratis.

Those Americans sitting near us in that Berlin Italian restaurant made some assumptions about the old German man’s motives. They had no evidence for their beliefs. They simply acted on their own miscreant world view of humanity.

There is an old expression that says, “What goes around comes around.” There is a much older expression, one which is at the core of all the world’s great religions, “Do for others as you would have them do for you.”

Next Tuesday will tell us how deeply buried within our individual and social psyche The Golden Rule seems to have become entombed. However the midterm elections turn out, one thing seems certain, fear and loathing and conformity will continue in America’s march of folly.

The Specter of Big Oil

A specter is haunting the planet. — the specter of big oil. All the powers of the industrialized world have entered into an unholy alliance to osmose this specter: President and dictator, Pope and monarch, Democrat and Republican, French Radicals and English socialist. Oppose big oil and you oppose the power of the State.

Big oil has been behind much of the mayhem inflicting the planet for the last 65 years. President Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul Aziz met aboard the USS Quincy on February 14, 1945. According to Colonel William A. Eddy, Roosevelt's interpreter and an OSS intelligence agent, "In his talks with Roosevelt, Eddy wrote, the king did not even hint at any desire for financial assistance. He traveled to the meeting seeking friends and not funds, and that is what he got, despite the arguments about Palestine and Jewish immigration. The king's view was that if the suffering of the Jews had been caused by the Germans, Germans should pay the price for it; let the Jews build their homeland on the best lands in Germany, not on the territory of Arabs who had nothing to do with what happened to them. The most he could get from Roosevelt was a promise that the president would "do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people. The king taking this as a commitment from the United States and not just from Roosevelt personally, was furious to discover three years later that Harry Truman did not consider himself bound by it.”

It was BP (then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) with the help of British Intelligence and the CIA's man on the ground, Dr. Donald N. Wilber, that overthrew the Iranian democracy in 1953 and replaced it with the brutal dictatorship of the Shah. According to a new volume published by George Washington University Press titled, " Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran," "The '28 Mordad' coup, as it is known by its Persian date, was a watershed for Iran, for the Middle East and for the standing of the United States in the region. The joint U.S.-British operation ended Iran's drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources and helped put an end to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country's nationalist and democratic movements. These consequences resonated with dramatic effect in later years. When the Shah finally fell in 1979, memories of the U.S. intervention in 1953, which made possible the monarch's subsequent, and increasingly unpopular, 25-reign intensified the anti-American character of the revolution in the minds of many Iranians." Look where we are today because of the greed of BP.

It was big oil (Exxon, known then as Standard Oil, and Royal Dutch Shell) that became worried over the possibility of losing control of Indonesia's immense wealth. Indonesia is estimated to be the fifth richest country in the world in terms of natural resources. Besides being the fifth largest oil producer, it has enormous reserves of tin, bauxite, coal, gold, silver, diamonds, manganese, phosphates, nickel, copper, rubber, coffee, palm oil, tobacco, sugar, coconuts, spices, timber and cinchona (for quinine). President Eisenhower told a state governors' conference that it was imperative for the US to finance the French colonial war in Vietnam as the ‘cheapest way' to keep control of Indonesia. Eisenhower detailed: "Now let us assume that we lose Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malay peninsula, the last little bit of land hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible. The tin and tungsten we so greatly value from that area would cease coming, and all India would be outflanked. Burma would be in no position for defense. All of that position around there is very ominous to the United States, because finally if we lost all that, how would the free world hold the rich empire of Indonesia? So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked and it must be blocked now, and that is what we are trying to do. So when the US votes $400 million to help the war (in Indochina), we are not voting a giveaway program. We are voting for the cheapest way that we can prevent the occurrence of something that would be of a most terrible significance to the United States of America, our security, our power and ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the Indonesian territory and from South East Asia." In 1965 a bloody coup was launched by Indonesian generals which resulted in over a million Indonesian deaths and became the opening act in implementation of the counter Domino Theory. In turn, the counter Domino Theory gave us the Vietnam War.

It was big oil that got us into the first and second Gulf War. Mark Zepezauer writes, “The whole dispute started because Kuwait was slant-drilling. Using equipment bought from National Security Council chief Brent Scowcroft's old company, Kuwait was pumping out some $14-billion worth of oil from underneath Iraqi territory. Even the territory they were drilling from had originally been Iraq's. Slant-drilling is enough to get you shot in Texas, and it's certainly enough to start a war in the Mideast. Even so, this dispute could have been negotiated. But it's hard to avoid a war when what you're actually doing is trying to provoke a war. The most famous example of that is the meeting between Saddam and the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, five days before Iraq invaded Kuwait. As CIA satellite photos showed an Iraqi invasion force massing on the Kuwaiti border, Glaspie told Hussein that "the US takes no position" on Iraq's dispute with Kuwait. A few days later, during last-minute negotiations, Kuwait's foreign minister said: "We are not going to respond to [Iraq]....If they don't like it, let them occupy our territory....We are going to bring in the Americans." The US reportedly encouraged Kuwait's attitude.

In early February 2001, two weeks after Bush-Cheney took control of the US presidency, the National Energy Policy Development Group, a task force created and chaired by Dick Cheney was formed. The mission of the task force was to “develop a supply-side national energy policy designed to help the private sector, and, as necessary and appropriate, State and local governments, promote dependable, affordable, and environmentally sound production and distribution of energy for the future." The group met in secret and never publicly disclosed it’s activities. The Washington Post obtained some documents detailing how executives from major oil corporations, including Exxon-Mobil Corp., Conoco, Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corp., and the American subsidiary of British Petroleum met with Energy Task Force participants while they were developing national energy policy. Vice President Cheney was reported to have met personally with the Chief Executive Officer of BP (formerly British Petroleum) during the time of the Energy Task Force's activities. The task force produced detailed maps of the oil fields in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. (http://www.judicialwatch.org/IraqOilMap.pdf),
(http://www.judicialwatch.org/SAOilMap.pdf), (http://www.judicialwatch.org/UAEOilMap.pdf).

After the destruction of the World Trade Towers by Saudi Arabian terrorist in September 2001, the Bush-Cheney administration, began a propaganda campaign to blame Iraq for the attacks on the Twin Towers. Bush and Cheney manufactured evidence and planted disinformation with reporters in highly visible news outlets, like the New York Times and Fox News, who were willing to parrot the propaganda. The propaganda campaign pushed two lines of “evidence.” First, Bush-Cheney claimed that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) and second the Saudi terrorists were trained in Iraq. Both lines of evidence were proven to be nonsense. So what was the actual reason for invading Iraq? The UK Guardian reported on June 4, 2003, “Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil. The latest comments were made by Mr. Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt. Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

In addition to invading Iraq in order to use American soldiers to grab it’s rich oil reserves for big oil, Bush-Cheney gave us the USA Patriot Act, the largest single roll-back of civil rights legislation in American history. The two events are inextricably connected. Launching wars of aggression with the intent to use state power to grab and control the world's oil resources for private gain and the suppression of dissent at home go hand-in-hand.

Then there is Israel. It was the British and the French that clamored for the creation of Israel after the Second World War. It was the British and French and Israel that invaded the Suez Canal after Egypt nationalized the canal in 1956. Afterward US President Eisenhower threatened to call in the British and French debt thereby forcing the invading forces to withdraw from the Suez. In June 1967 the Israeli military routed Arab forces during the Six Day War using British Chieftain tanks and French Mirage jets. Only after the Six Day War did the United States fully recognize the strategic importance of a pro western Israeli State located within the oil rich middle east. When Israel nearly lost the October 1973 War to Egypt and Syria, US President Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger concluded the loss of Israel for American interest in the Middle East was not acceptable. Thus, it is big oil that provided the rationalization for introducing nuclear weapons into the Middle East via Israel. Otherwise how can the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons and the fact the United State officially does not recognize the existence of Israel's WMDs be explained without the existence of Middle Eastern oil fields?

Big oil's pursuit of profits have killed millions of Vietnamese, Iraqis, Indonesians, and tens of thousands of others from Burma to Bolivia, from Nigeria to Algeria. Big oil has polluted our planet’s land, streams, rivers, gulfs, bays, and oceans. Big oil gave us suburbs with it’s neighbor dividing fences, automobiles and freeways where most people drive alone and the only human contact is with an array of blathering fools on the radio, and strip malls where we run in and run out never knowing or caring who served us. Big oil gave us SUVs and 35,000 traffic deaths every year, and wall to wall concrete roadways and massive air pollution. And it was in defense of big oil that our government took away many of our civil rights. But most of all big oil gave us social alienation. Big oil changed our culture, our psychology, and our republican politics all for the worse. We don’t know or care about each other anymore.

Of course this borders on single factor analysis. But when a trillion dollar industry like big oil, with strong international political ties to all the major industrial/military economies always seems to be the specter in the background when modern wars are unleash and hatred and suspicion fills the air, then how else can the history of the last 65 years be explain?

Cartoon

Corporations Are Parasites

Liberals and Conservatives both agree that modern corporations are a vital and necessary economic force in society. The difference between the two is merely a matter of degree. Conservatives/ Republican Party want to allow corporations free rein to exploit markets without regulatory interference. Liberals/Democratic Party want corporations to be less heavy handed by placing a vaguely defined minimum of regulatory restraints on their exploitative practices.

In the last 100 years corporations have become bigger, richer, more aggressive, and thus more powerful. In the United States, corporations are now the dominant force in civil society. They have become the dominant force because of a Supreme Court decision in 1886 known as Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway where a distinction was made between natural persons (human beings) and legal persons (corporations). The Supreme Court ruled that legal persons had the same rights as natural persons. Then came a succession of Supreme Court rulings expanding the rights of legal persons culminating in a Supreme Court ruling (1976) known as Buckley v. Valeo where the court ruled that money was free speech. Since corporations are the richest private organizations in society, according to Buckley v. Valeo, corporations enjoy the most free speech. The more free speech corporations have the louder corporate voices become drowning out other voices. As a direct result politically, the corporate agenda becomes the agenda because nearly all of the decision makers (Liberals and Conservatives) have become servile lackeys of the corporation.

Conservatives/Republican Party talk incessantly about the need for government to stay out of free markets because the invisible hand of the free markets will ultimately create economic efficiencies through price competition thereby making life better for people in general. In bumper sticker fashion. ”Regulation is Bad. Freedom is Good.” The problem with this economic conception is that it is nothing more than a myth. The American economy is dominated by oligopolies that do not compete over price. Instead these oligopolies compete through advertising: “Buy my stuff and you will save money!”

An oligopoly is a market condition in which the production of identical or similar products is concentrated (to the tune of at least 40% of market share) in a few large firms. Examples of oligopolies in the United States include the steel, aluminum, automobile, gypsum, petroleum, tire, banking, energy, and beer industries. The introduction of new products and processes can create new oligopolies, as in the computer or synthetic fiber industries. Microsoft sells more than 80% of the operating systems in the U.S. market. Oligopolies also exist in service industries, such as the airlines industry and the food industry. Oligopolistic practices include the practice of “dumping” in order to destroy the competition. Several years ago a national hamburger chain moved into a medium size central Texas town. The town had been served by several Mom and Pop hamburger stands for years. Circumventing existing unfair competition laws in place in Texas at the time, the hamburger chain advertised locally that they would take coupons, including super market coupons. The hamburger chains pricing scheme meant that every hamburger sold was sold at a loss. Within two months the Mom and Pop stands went out of business because they could not compete at a price point that was not profitable. After the Mom and Pop stands closed, the chain stopped taking coupons. Price competition ended and the national hamburger chain controlled the entire local market. Months later another hamburger chain moved into the local market but there was no price competition between the two. The same kind of hamburger sold at the same price in each hamburger store.

The raison d'être for corporations is to get bigger, richer, and more powerful. The logical future for corporations is to replace their competitors, dominant and eventually control the entire market, and in the long run, either reduce or even eliminate government regulation. Conservatives applaud and encourage this corporate behavior. It is also no exaggeration to conclude, however, that corporations are at their core irrational, politically anarchistic, and economically parasitic. And like all parasites, corporations will kill their host and in the process commit suicide. The problem for all of us is the fact that the corporate host is civil society and the entire physical planet.

Liberals/Democratic Party will argue that the best way to deal with corporate power is to capture the government and use the legal system to control and moderate corporate excesses. They will say that since the corporation was a legally defined entity, it should not be difficult to legally rein it in or put it out of business all together. These people forget that the modern form of government is an invention of the corporation and at the same time, organically, the modern corporation is an invention of the modern form of government. This can be seen symbolically where the business suit, the uniform of the corporation has become the uniform of the government. Over the last 100 years the entire government has been transformed into a creature that primarily serves the interest of the corporation. It has been the Supreme Court in conjunction with the United States Senate that has managed this transformation over the last 100 years because the Supreme Court and the Senate has been staffed disproportionately with Conservative pro corporate lawyers and businessmen.

For example The Supreme Courts ruling in “Citizens United v. Federal Elections Committee (1/21/10) swept away all restrictions on corporate spending thereby allowing corporations to overwhelm the election process. The decision was 5-4 where the five justices (sic) who ruled in favor of corporations are all corporate lawyers or Republican Party operatives. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was a corporate lawyer in his father’s practice in San Francisco and Sacramento. While in Sacramento Kennedy also worked as a lobbyist for Republican Party causes when Edwin Meese, special advisor to Ronald Reagan, advanced his career. Antonin Scalia began his legal career at Jones Day, where he worked from 1961 to 1967. Jones Day is an international law firm specializing in corporate law and is currently the second largest law firm in the United States, with approximately 2,400 lawyers and gross annual revenue in excess of US$1.4 billion. Clarence Thomas was a corporate lawyer in the pesticide and agriculture division of the Monsanto Company. Thomas’ mentor, who also shephered Thomas through the Supreme Court confirmation process, was Senator John Danforth whose grandfather was William H. Danforth the founder of Ralston Purina. Samuel A. Alito also had his career advanced by Attorney General Ed Meese when Meese had Alito appointed Assistant Solicitor General, Deputy Attorney General, and United States Attorney for New Jersey. Chief Justice John Roberts was a corporate lawyer for Hogan & Hartson, the oldest major law firm in Washington D.C. According to Chambers & Partners Global 2008: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business, Hogan & Hartson is recognized globally for its excellence in the following areas: data protection, international trade, real estate investment trusts, life sciences and technology, media and telecommunications.

The key for the future of the planet is to disband the corporation and replace it with an economic system that is not parasitic but sustainable. Just as any attempt to make a pig fly of its own accord, any attempt at reforming the corporation using the modern form of government will certainly never get off the ground.

Whither Haiti

The proto-primates on the political right have been floating their none too subtle racial theories on why Haiti is so backward. On the left liberals and progressives wring their hands and shrug their shoulders offering no explanation why Haiti is such a poor and miserable place. The answer lies in Haiti's long and tortured history.

Overcoming the armies of Spain, Britain, and France, and the divisions between themselves, the slaves, mulattos, and free Blacks came together to fight their common enemy. In 1804, Haiti became an independent nation. Yet Haitians had to continually struggle to maintain their security and their freedom: The hostility of the world's powers formed insurmountable obstacles to the establishment of a healthy nation. The new rulers drawn from the gens de couleur and Black military leaders wanted to establish a profitable economy based on commodity production for export; many tried to reestablish plantations. The majority of former slaves wanted freedom from the humiliation and hardship of plantation labor, and the right to subsistence farming on their own plots of land.

Meanwhile, the world powers, led by the U.S. and the Vatican, would not recognize Haiti's sovereignty. In 1825, France finally agreed to recognize Haiti, but at a price: Haiti was to pay 90 million francs as an indemnity to the French planters who lost their land in the revolution. This saddled Haiti with a debt that crippled its already foundering economy and increased Haitian dependence on France. The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti until 1862 then continued it’s embargo on trade and political relations with this lone Black nation. By the late 1800s, principle and interest on the debt payments made to France amounted to 80% of the Haitian budget.

The new Black nation also faced the constant threat of invasion by the world powers. Haitian writer Michael J. Dash writes of how the U.S. before the Civil War, fearing that the example of a successful slave rising and independence struggle might spread, used its influence in Haiti to promote internally repressive, externally obedient, regimes. In fact the Haitian Revolution did inspired the planned slave revolt in South Carolina of Denmark Vesey in 1822, the slave revolt of Nat Turner in 1831 and militant abolitionists like John Brown and Frederick Douglas. Thus it was no accident that the internal policy of slavery followed by Jim Crow segregation in the United States mirrored U.S. foreign policy regarding Haiti. That foreign policy tended for two centuries to favor any regime which reduced Haiti to an impoverished, peasant community.

In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt began to flex the United States' new found muscle. He "asserted that the Monroe Doctrine carried 'the exercise of an international police power' in the Western Hemisphere." This assertion was quickly recognized as the Roosevelt Corollary and was often cited to exonerate intervention throughout the Caribbean. The Caribbean Basin would become known as "an American lake." If the Caribbean was an American lake, Haiti was to become America's beachfront property.

From 1915 to 1934 the U.S. played a long and devastating role in Haiti, including a brutal nineteen-year military occupation,. Writes Historian Mary Renda: “While in Haiti, marines installed a puppet president, dissolved the legislature at gunpoint, denied freedom of speech, and forced a new constitution on the Caribbean nation, one more favorable to foreign investment. In a series of speeches in his 1920 campaign for Vice President, Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that he, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-1920), wrote the constitution which the U.S. imposed on Haiti in 1915. With the help of the marines, U.S. officials seized customs houses, took control of Haitian finances. U.S. Marines went straight to the Haitian national bank and removed its gold reserves to Citibank in New York City. Meanwhile, marines waged war against insurgents (called cacos) who for several years maintained an armed resistance in the countryside, and imposed a brutal system of forced labor that engendered even more fierce Haitian resistance. By official U.S. estimates, more than 3,000 Haitians were killed during this period; a more thorough accounting reveals that the death toll may have reached 1 1,500.

The attitude of the U.S. government toward the Haitians can best be summed up by the following observations made by successive American Secretaries of State. William Jennings Bryan (1913-1915) infamously said of the Haitian elite "Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French." Secretary of State Robert Lansing (1915-1920) believed that "the experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government.

The U.S. withdrew it’s troops in 1934. Before leaving, however, the U.S. government made a deal with Stenio Vincent, the new Haitian leader. Known as the Executive Accord of August 1933, in exchange for withdrawal of troops and a loan, the U.S. government would maintain supervision of Haitian finances until all outstanding American bonds expired in 1952.

From 1957 until 1986 Haiti was brutalized by the U.S. supported and incredibly corrupt Papa Doc/Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorship. In 1985-86 a powerful uprising swept Haiti again, forcing the U.S. to rescue Baby Doc and fly him to the French Riviera, in order to preserve their basic control of the country through the Haitian Army. A series of military governments followed, known to Haitians as “Duvalierism without Duvalier.”Under the Duvalier dictatorship, between 1973 and 1980, Haiti's debt increased from $53 million to $366 million, while the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty increased from 48 percent in 1976 to 81 percent 1985. Loans were contingent on an economic orientation on agricultural exports and the assembly industry-"The American Plan" which explicitly aimed to cut the ground out from under peasant agriculture by large-scale imports of cheaper U.S. goods, driving hundreds of thousands of peasants into the cities and shantytowns, desperate for work in U.S.-owned assembly plants being set up by the likes of Disney and Kmart, which paid workers 11 cents an hour to make pajamas and t-shirts. The American Plan proved an economic disaster. Official unemployment increased from 22 to 30 percent between 1980 and 1986, and in the same period economic growth showed an annual 2.5 percent decline.

Since the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship the United States continues to interfere in the internal affairs of Haiti. The popularly elected Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by the American client Emmanuel “Toto” Constant nine month after his election in 1990. For the next three years a wave of terror was unleashed on the people of Haiti. Duvaliers death squads known as the Tontons Macoutes came out of hiding and began to rip up the networks of mass organization, especially in slums like Cite Soleil, that were Aristide’s base of support. Thousands of his supporters were killed, up to 300,000 went into hiding, and another 60,000 fled the island in makeshift boats many to Florida.The United States again invaded Haiti in 1994 with 20,000 troops. Aristide was brought back to power but only after President Bill Clinton forced Aristide to privatized electricity and phones among other state own businesses.This "deal" was known as the Governors Island Accords.

Another coup overthrew Aristide on February 29, 2004 instigated by France, Canada, and the United States after Aristide tried to undo the Governors Island Accords and simultaneous demanded France pay back, in 2004 value, the 90 million francs Haiti had to pay France in 1825. Again the United States President George W. Bush sent in 1,000 marines to occupy the country. The U.S. military literally kidnapped Aristide and his family and put him on a plane to the Central African Republic, where he was kept as a new regime in Port-au-Prince was consolidated. By March 1, hundreds of U.S. Marines again controlled the capital, and new waves of attacks, often by U.S. soldiers, were unleashed on the people. In June they were replaced by a force of 7,000 UN troops (mainly Brazilian) who have been cited by Human Rights groups as widely practicing “Summary Executions.”

When the former Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz said a century ago: “Poor Mexico! So far from God, and so close to the United States”, he did not know that he would speak for Haiti. Despite the countless natural resources of Haiti, the combined effects of American Imperialism and a predatory Haitian ruling class have conspired to reduce the vast majority of Haitians to unimaginable poverty.

While liberals blind themselves to Haiti's "Danse Macabre" with the United States and Conservatives quote history from John Wayne movies, the people of Haiti, in utter contempt for their tormentors, will continue to fight on. “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la mort!”

January 2010

Is Obama Really a Democrat or Why Healthcare Reform is a Sham

It had been ten years since the United Kingdom held a general election. Winston Churchill had steered the nation through the most difficult war in Britain’s history. Churchill himself was popular with the electorate so it was widely believed the Conservative Party would sweep to a big victory in the election held on July 5, 1945. To everyone’s surprise the Tories were nearly wiped out losing 190 seats in the House of Commons while the Labour Party gained 239 seats. The Conservative loss was due in part, according to Joe Conason writing in Salon, “...because British voters didn’t trust the Tories to implement the Beveridge report” (which called for a National Health Service).

Later that same year Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill filed for divorce from Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill. Some people speculated that the marriage broke up because Randolph had lost his parliamentary seat that year. Others said while Randolph was doing military service in Cairo during the war, Pamela had an affair with United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, W. Averell Harriman. W. Averell was nearly 30 years older than Pamela. W. Averell returned to the United States in early 1946 after breaking off his relationship with Pamela. Later he would be honored with the title of Mr. Democrat because of his huge influence (read largesse) on the Democratic Party.

In 1909 Harriman inherited a fortune from his father, E.H. Harriman, who owned the Union Pacific Railroad, Wells Fargo, and a slew of other valuable properties. In 1922 W. Averell established the W.A. Harriman & Company bank. Later the bank’s name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company and later still the bank changed it’s name again to Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co. George Herbert Walker, the great grandfather of President George Bush was president of Harriman & Co. Prescott Bush, President George Bush’s other great grandfather, was a senior partner at Harriman & Co.

Pamela Churchill, after divorcing Randolph (remember him?) went on to have numerous affairs with men of prominence and wealth. In 1971, a day after Pamela’s second husband died, she began a second affair with W. Averell. Six months later W. Averell and Pamela were married. From their marriage forward Pamela, like her wealthy Wall Street husband, became immersed in Democratic Party politics. In 1986 William Averell Harriman died at the ripe old age of 95 years and Pamela inherited 75 million dollars.

Meanwhile, during the 1980’s, the Democratic Party was getting clobbered at the hands of the Republican Party in national election after national election. According to Godfrey Hodgson in his book titled More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century, “By the 1980’s influential leaders in the Democratic Party...especially in the South were coming to accept...the Democrats could never hope to recapture power nationally unless they changed their spots. “ These Democratic Party leaders advocated taking the party to the right. By adopting right-wing positions on policy issues, particularly pro-corporate neoliberal economic policies, these southern and midwestern Democrats believed they could attract more corporate money. “The key group in selling this idea was the (newly formed) Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).”

Aside from a stable of upstart and conservative establishment southern and midwestern Democrats “...the DLC had another valuable asset: the substantial fortune of Pamela Harriman....Mrs. Harriman raised a reported $12 million (during the 1980’s). The considerable influence that (fund raising) brought her, in a party strapped for cash, was thrown toward the DLC. She liked Bill Clinton and helped him to emerge as the leading candidate for 1992.” After Clinton’s victory in the 1992 national election, Pamela Churchill Harriman was appointed United States Ambassador to France. She died in 1997 after suffering a stroke while swimming at the Paris Ritz Hotel.

Dialing forward to the present: The impasse over health care reform within the Senate Democratic Caucus is a direct reflection of the split between the “progressives” who are mainly loyal members of the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, and the pro-corporate DLC. In 2005 Howard Dean was elected Chairman of the DNC. Dean once described the DLC as the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party. DLC leaders were outraged at Dean’s characterization. In 2003 then Senator Barack Obama opposed the DLC stating his support for universal healthcare were at odds with the DLC, "...That is why I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC." After becoming President and appointing more than 50% of his cabinet from the DLC, in May of 2009, President Obama declared to the House New Democrat Coalition (DLC Caucus), "I am a New Democrat." In 2009 (at the direction of President Obama) Howard Dean was succeeded as chairman of the DNC by Tim Kaine, the current Governor of Virginia and leading member of the DLC. Obama also pointedly refused to appoint Dean to any position in his government.

Leading members of the DLC in the Senate, who can now be referred to as “Clintonites,” are Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Max Baucus all major players who are responsible for killing Single Payer, The Public Option, and Medicare Buy-in. All these corporate Democrats support the continued corporate monopoly over health care.

So where’s the surprise? Howard Dean had warned the Democrats. When progressive Democrats drag a hollowed out Tory Horse inside their gates, they shouldn’t expect a pleasant party that night.

December 2009

Free Speech is a Myth in America

Dear Wendy

I appreciate your faith in the constitutionally protected principle of “Free Speech.” But I have a different view. Free speech is a myth, an opiate, in America. Free speech in and of itself is meaningless without an audience. Until the internet came along access to that audience was restricted by the owners of the access (newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, movies, etc.). In principle we all have free speech but we do not have the means to distribute that free speech. Thus free speech has been reduced to a commodity to be controlled by a few property owners who own the distribution rights.

When free speech is placed into the domain of property owners, these property owners decide, based upon their own privately held property interest and based upon their particular social class interest (which they call a community interest), what should be distributed for consideration by the masses of people. Rarely will these property owners allow a point of view disseminated that will fly in the face of their own narrowly defined interest. And when they do on those rare occasions, it is because a power struggle has broken out between rival groups within the elite which requires mobilizing the masses temporally in order to prevail in resolving the immediate issue.

When Bush was beating the drums for making war on Iraq, a public discussion in all the national newspapers about American imperialism emerged . As soon as the issue was resolved (in favor of Bush and the neocons) the talk about imperialism disappeared. Another more recent example revolves around the financial melt down. Paul Krugman writing in the New York Times (9/6/09) narrowly defined the failure to predict the banking collapse within the profession of economics as due to the ascendancy of the "Freshwater School of Economics" centered around the University of Chicago. But Krugman also pointed out that the "Saltwater Schools" located within east and west coast elite universities also failed to predict the coming disaster. He concluded that “...economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly.” The problem with Krugman’s analysis is his failure to spotlight schools of economics that had predicted the meltdown (e.g. Stagnation Theory centered around Monthly Review Magazine).

The overall long term effect of a small elite controlling the free speech distribution rights is to narrow the public debate. Issues are framed according to what is responsible debate and what lies outside the mainstream. Once an issue has been narrowly framed and widely distributed seeping down to every level in society, anyone attempting to open up and widen the debate within social institutions and at any institutional level are automatically, in a knee jerk fashion, looked upon with suspicion and quickly marginalized. Thus when you wanted to write an anti-Vietnam war piece for the Neff High School newspaper, the pro war/anti war debate had already been resolved in favor of war and the new debate concerned itself with what strategies should be implemented in order to win the war. By 1967 your antiwar views were considered irresponsible.

With the rise of the internet, an avalanche of free speech outlets circumventing the distribution privileges of private owners has emerged. People are able to speak to each other and do it in a wide variety of venues thereby opening up and widening the debate over the issues of the day. Since I don't know enough about how internet information is accessed and distributed I don't know how important the internet really is. Should the internet become a major player in debating important issues uncontrolled by the distribution elites then that would be a victory for real free speech. How long this will be allowed to continue? I suspect, should it become a threat to those elites, controls will be put in place and free speech will again become a controlled commodity, a myth in America.


November 2009

The DLC Again

Hi from Munich

Yes, I have to agree, we had a very interesting evening discussing American politics with you folks. Looking back, however, I realized that I talked too much and I never got to hear about Dutch politics. Most Americans, myself included, know very little about Holland except that one can buy drugs in Amsterdam at places named "Coffee House!" Now I know why I know so little about Holland!!

To underline some of the things I said that evening, The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC: http://www.dlc.org/) represents the right wing of the Democratic Party (Democratic National Committee DNC: http://www.democrats.org/). The DLC was founded in the 1980's in order to deliver the Democratic Party into the arms of the biggest corporations in the United States. The list of Chairmen of the DLC reads like a Who's Who of right-wing Democrats:

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri (1985 - 1986)
Gov. Chuck Robb of Virginia (1986 - 1988)
Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia (1988 - 1990)
Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas (1990 - 1991)
Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana (1991 - 1993)
Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma (1993 - 1995)
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (1995 - 2001)
Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana (2001 - 2005)
Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa (2005 - 2007)
Former Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee (2007 - present)

(Note: Joe Lieberman who ran as Al Gore's Vice President nominee in 2004 was a former DLC chairman. Lieberman is going to leave the Democratic Party and will become a Republican).

The present struggle over health care in the U.S. centers on whether there should be government health insurance offered as an alternative to private health insurance (the so-called public option). Private health insurance in the United States is a very, very profitable economic oligopoly. The following list of Senators are DLC members who mostly oppose the public option:

Mark Pryor: Arkansas
Diane Feinstein: California
Thomas Carper: Delaware
Bill Nelson: Florida
Evan Bayh: Indiana
Mary Landrieu: Louisiana
Barbara Mikulski: Maryland
Max Baucus: Montana
Ben Nelson: Nebraska
Kent Conrad: North Dakota
Tim Johnson: South Dakota
John Rockefeller: West Virginia
Herbert Kohl: Wisconsin
Joseph Lieberman: Connecticut

(Note: The following is a story from the Huffington Post demonstrating the convergence of Republicans and DLC members on the issue of narrowing political rights known as FISA: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/875-of-family-dlc-affilia_b_112878.html).

Here is what then Illinois State Senator Obama told the Bruce Dixon, editor of "Black Commentator," about the DLC back in 2003: "I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC,” said Obama. “It does appear that, without my knowledge, the DLC…listed me in their ‘New Democrat’ directory,” Obama continued. “Because I agree that such a directory implies membership, I will be calling the DLC to have my name removed, and appreciate your having brought this fact to my attention.” (http://www.blackcommentator.com/48/48_cover.html).

In addition to the DLC Senators listed above, The House of Representatives also has right-wing Democrats. The House right-wingers are known collectively as the "Blue Dog" Democrats (http://ndc.crowley.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=54) and the DLC Caucus (http://ndc.crowley.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=54). If you cross check the list you will find many Blue Dogs are also DLCers.

Finally, there are reports that 50% of Obama's government appointments are DLC members including Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff in the White House, and Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior. (Obama also has Republicans in his government including the Defense Secretary and the Transportation Secretary). There are some people who will argue that Obama needs to keep his coalition together therefore DLC appointments are necessary. But what most people outside of the U.S. do not know is that the Democratic Party is not a unified political party but consists of factions (progressive and corporate) and thus a coalition of these factions control and carry on intrigues against each other within the government of the United States.

All-in-all when you add the Republic Party which is openly a political party representing corporate interest, plus the DLC, which also represents corporate interest, you can easily see that a tiny minority of very wealthy people overwhelmingly control the United States government. As for the remaining 95% of the American people, well, we are side-lined forced to be spectators watching the power struggles between powerful people as they argue the best way to get more wealthy and more powerful at the expense of the 95% who have no say whats-so-ever. As for Obama, I think the rest of the world should lower their expectations. Obama is not the "savior" most of the world believes him to be. Obama is no different then any other American president. He will pursue the best interest of Corporate America anywhere and everywhere in the world.

What Republicans Want

I’ve been trying to figure out what Republicans want. Inspired by a local businessman I decided to make friends with a Republican. So I jumped on the bus and went down to the Chamber of Commerce but they wouldn’t talk to me because I just got off the bus and I wasn’t wearing a gray pinstriped suit. Then I decided to go to the City Hall. No one would talk to me at City Hall because I wasn’t a contractor bearing gifts. Disappointed, I decided to take one last shot at making friends with a Republican so I hot-footed down to the local bar.

Just as I arrived a big burly guy riding a Harley hog pulled up. On his right shoulder was a tattoo of the American flag with a white cross in place of the stars. He was wearing a world war two style German helmet. I walked over to the guy and asked him if he lived in a mansion or a trailer park. He asked me why and I told him I was looking for a Republican to make friends with. He replied that he was a red- state-red-meat Republican through and through.

I offered to buy him a domestic beer if he would tell me what Republicans want. He agreed to my request and said: For the Republicans a smaller government consist of the Pentagon with a trillion dollar budget, the Department of Homeland Security with a trillion dollar budget, and a trillion dollar yearly payment on the interest only portion of the national debt. Voila! A smaller government that sucks up the entire yearly national budget. Everything is deregulated and privatized for profit because the interest on the national debt crowds out all social spending. The rest of the world wont go along? A trillion dollar Pentagon will solve that problem. Pitch forks, torches, and barricades in the streets because there are no social services? Switch on the Patriot Act and send in Homeland Security!

I thanked my new Republican friend for his insights. Before I left I asked my new friend if he knew Sarah Palin. He said he never heard of her.

March 2009

Is Barack Obama Nuts?

The writer Rita Mae Brown once wrote, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting different results.” In 1963 the laissez-faire economist Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz publish a hugely influential book titled, “Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960.” The ideas presented by Friedman and Schwartz came to be known as “monetarism” because they argued that the supply of money circulating through the economy had a direct effect on the amount of spending (demand). Print more money, people will buy more stuff. Slow down the printing presses and people will buy less stuff.

In the late 1970’s a crisis known as stagflation was gripping the economy. The economy was not growing, more and more people were losing their jobs, but the price of stuff kept rising. Spooked by this contradiction, President Jimmy Carter appointed the “monetarist” and Friedman disciple Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve Bank. Volcker slowed the printing of money, threw the economy into a severe recession, and stopped the weird increases in the price of stuff thereby ending stagflation. Monetarist became the darlings of Washington. When Volcker’s term ended, President Ronald Reagan appointed uber- monetarist and Ayn Rand fan Alan Greenspan to head the Fed. Greenspan was reappointed by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Presently monetarist Ben Bernanke chairs the Fed.

So what happened to the economy under the direction of the monetarist over the last 30 years? The recession of the early 1980’s has already been mentioned. The national debt increased by 1000%. There was the Garn-St. Germain Act that deregulated and busted the savings and loan industry. That cost the tax payers 900 billion dollars. The stock market crashed in 1987. Next came the recession of 1990-92. In 2000 the “dot-com” boom turned into another bust. Meanwhile monetarist Senator Phil Gramm (his wife sat on the board of ENRON) and Representative James Leach with the help of Clinton’s monetarist Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999. That, in-turn, retarded banking industry regulation causing another boom-bust cycle costing so far more than a trillion dollars.

President Barack Obama has surrounded himself with monetarist Volcker, Bernanke, Christina Romer, Summers, Rubin, and Timothy Geithner among others. Therefore I have a question for Progressives and Liberals: Is Barack Obama nuts?

February 2009

Thinking Out of the Box Republican Party Style

Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 through 1932 put forward this solution to the Great Depression “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” That’s the spirit Andy! Make everyone pay dearly for the greedy excesses of the “investor class.” Republican Party analysis, such as it is, can be loosely characterized as classical economic thinking. Republicans want to lay off large numbers of government workers and make private sector workers take a 10% pay cut. They tells us that the down turn in local business activity is due to overbearing local regulations. What’s their solution? Why lets all start “thinking out of the box” and deregulate business.

Like the 1930’s the present economic crisis cannot be solved by outdated and simplistic economic strategies. In this era of Reaganomics the financial system has grown exponentially in comparison to the real economy. As a result the financial meltdown is now overwhelming the real economy because the financial system took on too much debt. For example Goldman Sachs leveraged $40 billion of equity to $1.1 trillion. Merrill Lynch leveraged $30 billion into $1 trillion. What the investor class did was to create a mass amount of fictitious capital that could no longer be “valued” after the meltdown.

The looming fear today is that the economy may be sliding into a deflationary-spiral. According to the economist Irving Fisher writing in 1932, “deflation caused by the debt reacts on the debt. Each dollar of debt still unpaid becomes a bigger dollar, and if the over-indebtedness with which we started was great enough, the liquidation of debt cannot keep up with the fall of prices which it caused....prices fall as debtors sell assets to pay their debts, and as prices fall the remaining debts must be repaid in dollars more valuable than the ones borrowed, causing more default, leading to yet lower prices and thus a deflationary-spiral” ....aka Depression!

Stick it to labor and give free rein to management; i.e. unleashing class warfare as original thinking. Boy-oh-boy old Andy Mellon must be cheering from his gold plated casket!

January 2009

Sisyphus

The flow of history has cut a new and unexpected channel and a new historical course has been carved out.

For month and months and months I have been telling all my friends that the election for President of the United States is rigged and John McCain will be elected the next President. For me the ruling class was content to continue looting the country ad infinitum and John McCain was going to keep their party going.

Predicting human events is fraught with surprises and this election year is beyond exception. The inability of the Bush administration to contain the continued collapses of the financial markets coupled with the the growing recognition that John McCain has no answers makes it clear to any one with half a brain that we are at a monumental crossroads in American history.

This is what we are facing: deflation of commodity value which means general world wide depression or hyper-inflation which translates into the collapse of the the value of the dollar. Will we have lots of cash but nothing to buy or will we have lots of cash which can’t buy anything? In either case, we the people are in deep kimchee.

A young Afro-American with one cultural foot in Africa and another in America will be the next President of the United States. I no longer have any doubt about the truth of that sentence. The issue now is will Barack Obama succeed ala Franklin Roosevelt and save capitalism from it’s greedy excesses or will he be another clueless free market ideologue like Herbert Hoover and John McCain forever trapped in a business cycle like Sisyphus fatally pushing a rock up hill only to have the rock roll down hill forever and ever. Will America, realizing its historical democratic and republican self, evolve from a dog-eat-dog capitalist economy into a social democracy or will the ungodly rich continue to rob the people in an endless but unstated and officially unrecognized class war.

Better yet could America evolve farther into a full blown Socialist society where justice prevails over profit and all are free to decide their futures; where no one is at the mercy of the economically rich and politically powerful? Or will sociialism come by Revolution? By 2012 we will know.

October 2008

McCain the Maverick?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary a maverick is a lone dissenter, a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates. On October 18, 2001 McCain was on the David Letterman Show where he joined the Bush-Cheney invade Iraq chorus:

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we’re doing fine .... I think we’ll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication...some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.”

A maverick is a nonconformist, independent, loner. One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter. On October 28, 2001 McCain was interviewed on CNN where he said,“... Shed a tear and then get on with the business of killing our enemies as quickly as we can and as ruthlessly as we must.....I'm proud of the president and the job that he and his team have done and are doing....I have great confidence in the leadership of this country....the important factor here is that Saddam Hussein continues to acquire weapons of mass destruction. There are credible reports of involvement between Iraqi administration officials, Iraqi officials, and the terrorists. There's very little doubt about what Saddam Hussein is trying to do.”
A maverick is independent in thought and action or exhibiting such independence: maverick politicians; a maverick decision. On December 6, 2001 when asked if the United States might need 100,000 or more troops to invade Iraq, McCain told MSNBC, that a larger invasion force was not necessary agreeing with the positions taken by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and directly contradicting Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki policy of “Great Efficiency, Great Force.”.

The word maverick is thought to be an in allusion to Samuel A. Maverick (1803-70), Texas cattle owner who was negligent in branding his calves. The word evolved from "...calf or yearling found without an owner's brand," to a sense of an "individualist, an unconventional person, masterless."

An unbranded range animal is traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it. If John McCain and Sara Palin were mavericks, it now appears they have been rounded up by the far right of the Republican Party and both have had the Celtic Cross burnt onto their rumps.

September 2008

The DNC and the DLC

In an article by Steven Thomma titled “Liberal Positions Gaining Popularity” pub- lished Friday 22 August 2008 in the McClatchy Newspapers, Thomma says (Demo- crats) are, in short, more liberal than at any time in a generation and eager to end the Reagan era, which dominated not just the other party, but also their own, for nearly three decades (italics added). Thomma last phrase is the key to understanding why Ba- rack Obama choose Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate and why Hillary Clinton was passed over.

Earlier I had argued that two distinct political parties were vying for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States; the more liberal Democratic National Committee (DNC) was represented by Obama while the the Reagan-isk Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) championed Hillary Clinton. At the end of my June letter I wrote, “If Barack Obama becomes the DNCʼs Presidential nominee, will he chose another DNCʼer for Vice President or will he pick a DLC type? The answer to that question will tell us how unified the Democrats really are.”

When I wrote those words I assumed that since the DLC had won two presidential elections (1992 and 1996) and had put forth two more well funded presidential campaigns (DLCers Gore and Lieberman 2000 and DLCer Kerry and Edwards 2004), the DLC was still a mighty force in national politics. Despite the national news mediaʼs obsession with identity politics and itʼs focus on empty distinctions, Obamaʼs choice of Joe Biden, who is not a DLC member, tells us that should the DNC take the presidency in November, the DLC and perhaps after nearly thirty years, reactionary Reaganism, will be quietly declared over and done with.

Thomma concludes his article by writing, “Republican George W. Bush turned into one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history. Just as American revulsion at Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 helped usher in the Reagan era, rejection of the Bush era could help swing the pendulum the other way.” I might add the election of Obama-Biden will also usher out the Clintons once and for all.


August 2008

“Finance is a gun and politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.”

In the movie Godfather Part III Michael Corleone is trying to leave his mafia connections behind by moving his looted wealth into legitimate businesses. In a moment of candor Michael angrily tells his sister Connie, “The higher I go in society, the more crooked it becomes!”

With oil at $135.00 per barrel and gasoline approaching $5.00 per gallon, there has been a lot of Sturm und Drang among politicians over what is causing these prices. One thing is clear, explaining the entire mess as being due to supply and demand is simply insulting. The actual cause for high oil prices are many and involve a confluence of events that begin with that secret conference Vice President Cheney had with the energy industry during the spring of 2001. During those meetings Cheney agreed to rein in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC is the federal agency that regulates oil trading. The CFTC in 2001 began exempting financial firms from rules that limit speculative buying. The CFTC has also waived regulations on U.S. investors who trade commodities on overseas markets, allowing them to accumulate large quantities of the future oil supply by making purchases on lightly regulated foreign exchanges. Oil futures are then bundled into securities and sold off to investors, mostly big banks and hedge funds.

After deregulating the oil futures market, Bush and Cheney conned the American people into the Iraq war and financed the war on borrowed money thereby weakening the dollar. Since oil is purchased on the international market in dollars, a weaken dollar drove the price of oil up. On top of all these high finance shenanigans, the Federal Reserve continued following it’s policy of low interest rates. Other central banks then drove up their interest rates in order to attract more investment in their currencies which further weaken the dollar. Then Saudi Arabia took a several hundred billion dollar drubbing in the United States sub-prime real estate market.
Finally, the Bush government is pumping millions of barrels of oil into the Strategic Oil Reserve (SOR). If Bush instead pumped out a million barrels per day over the entire summer, the SOR would by depleted by a mere 15% and oil prices would come way down.

Near the climax of the Godfather Part III, Don Lucchesi, interlocker of the Italian political establishment and the mafia, tells Michael Corleone’s bastard nephew Vincent Mancini, “Finance is a gun and politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.” In our America today George Bush and the political establishment are pulling the trigger but only a bang flag pops out.


June 2008

Hillary and Joe Lieberman

Traditionally only two political parties have dominated the competition for power in the United States . What most Americans don’t realize is that since 1985 a third political party has been vying for power and has actually won the Presidency of the United States. The American corporate media ignores this third party pretending that is is nothing more than a wing of one of the other parties. On the far right the Republican National Committee (RNC) dominates. In the center, because there are no viable left-wing social democratic political parties in the United States, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rules the roost. In between, employing the strategy of “Triangulation” the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has staked out its piece of the political landscape.

The present Chairman of the DLC is Harold Ford. Mr. Ford last year lost his bid to represent Tennessee in the United States Senate. Past DLC chairs reads like a whose-who of conservative democrats: Sam Nunn, Bill Clinton, John Breaux, Joseph Lieberman, Evan Bayh, and Tom Vilsack. Prominent national DLC members today include Max Baucus, Hillary Clinton, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Terry McAuliffe, John Edwards, Rahm Emanuel, Al Gore, and John Kerry. California DLC members are Juanita Millender-McDonald, Loretta Sanchez, Adam Schiff, Susan Davis, Cal Dooley, Ellen Tauscher, Gavin Newsom, Jane Harmon, Lois Copps, and Dianne Feinstein.

Paul Wellstone, criticizing the DLC said,"I'm from the democratic wing of the Democrat Party." According to Howard Dean, the present chair of the DNC, DLC operatives actively worked to sabotage his candidacy for the US Presidency in 2004. Senator Barack Obama opposes the DLC. In 2003, he discussed why his positions against NAFTA, the War in Iraq, and in support of universal healthcare were at odds with the DLC, saying that "...these positions make me an unlikely candidate for membership in the DLC. That is why I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC."

It was reported in the New York press last summer that Hillary Clinton quietly funneled money into fellow DLC’er Joe Lieberman’s successful campaign to become an Independent Democratic representing Connecticut in the U.S. Senate.
If Barack Obama becomes the DNC’s Presidential nominee, will he chose another DNC’er for Vice President or will he pick a DLC type? The answer to that question will tell us how unified the Democrats really are.

June 2008

P.S. Obama picked the DNC Joe Biden for his Vice President. After winning the election in November 2008, Obama stacked his cabinet and under secretariats with DLCer.

"an ass-kissing little chicken shit"

Robert Burns writing for the Associated Press in an articlepublish on January 5, 2007 confirmed “President Bush is putting the finishing touches on his new Iraq plan, reshuffling his military leadership in the war-torn country.” The President’s new Iraq plan known as the “Surge” would include an additional “...9,000 troops to be deployed to the Baghdad capital alone.” Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Gen. George Casey, the chief general in Iraq would be replaced by Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific and Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who headed the effort to train Iraqi security forces.

Writing in The Nation, Michael Klare reported on January 8, 2007 Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey were being replaced because they, “...had opposed an increase in US troops in Iraq and argued for shifting greater responsibility for the fighting to Iraq forces, thereby permitting a gradual American withdrawal....If engagement with Iran and Syria was even remotely on the agenda, Abizaid is exactly the man you'd want on the job at Centcom....if you're thinking instead of using force against Iran and/or Syria, then Admiral Fallon is exactly the man you'd want at Centcom.”

Nine months later Gareth Porter writing for Inter Press Service in an article titled “ Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge,” (9/12/2007) Porter writes Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March. Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chicken shit" and added, "I hate people like that", Fallon further demonstrated his independence from the White House when he refused in February to go along with a proposal to send a third naval carrier task force to the Persian Gulf. Fallon also privately vowed that there would be no war against Iran on his watch, implying that he would quit rather than accept such a policy.
On March 11, 2008 The New York Times reported, “Adm. William J. Fallon, the top American commander in the Middle East is retiring early.”

On March 13, 2008 The U.S. Navy announced the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) gets underway for a scheduled seven-month deployment to the 5th Fleet area of Operations.

May 2008