NEWS FOR REAL

NOT your father’s GOP

August 18, 2008 – 1:37 pm

So many times in history we’ve promised, “never again.” The Holocaust… “never again.” Yet it happens daily in places like Darfur,  and no one stops it.  Still we believe we mean it when we say “never again.” Even in the face of millions of dead, we stubbornly maintain we really, really mean, it… “never again.”

And when we defeated fascism in Europe 63-years ago, we promised we’d never allow such a political monstrosity to rule another nation. We said we learned the dangers in the methods employed by the fascist state and fascist politicians. The lies, the smears, the strong-arm tactics, the rule of ignorance and prejudice over intelligence, reason and liberal social policies. Our parent’s generation saw fascism for what it was, defeated it and pledged, “never again.”

And we still say, “never again,” even as once again we see it, or at very least, it’s footprints all around us.

Nevertheless, it’s dangerous for any serious commentator to even suggest that fascism has made a comeback — not in Europe, but here in the good ole US of A. A few commentators have taken the risk and been promptly and unceremoniously relegated to the wilderness along with UFO enthusiasts and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. We don’t like seeing ourselves in that light. We like to believe that, unlike the German people of 70-years ago, we are not gullible enough to fall for fascist clap trap and propaganda. So anyone who suggests otherwise is packed off to nut-land and forgotten.

Well, I’m packed and ready for that trip. What pushed me over the edge was a five chapter guide written in 1933 entitled, “Propaganda and National Power: The Organization of Public Opinion and National Politics.”

As I read this remarkably disturbing document I couldn’t help but imagine that Karl Rove must have used it as blue print in 2000 and 2004. And, that the Republican Party has now so internalized these principles they no longer know how to run a campaign the old fashioned way — you know, by highlighting real issues, and comparing and contrasting honest differences of opinion without demonizing, smearing and outright lying about their opponents.

Actually, as you read the excerpts from that book below, you will probably come to the conclusion, as I did, that all this actually did not begin with Karl Rove and George W. Bush, but with Newt Gingrich and his so-called “Contract with America.” Maybe it began earlier with those Willie Horton ads. In any case the GOP seems to be following the 1933 how-to document below to a tee. Swiftboat Veterans for Truth,  surrender Democrats who would rather lose a war to win an election, Obama as a secret Muslim, on and on, down and down into a political milieu Goebbels would have found familiar. Today’s GOP would make Ike sick to his stomach.

Anyway, enough from me. After all, I’m toast now. Take it from the original (fascist) horse’s mouth. Maybe I’m wrong about all this. But there sure is a lot in what follows you will find unsettlingly familiar. Just keep all this in mind as you watch and listen to how the GOP operates during this election. They you decide. Is it still “never again?” Or is just “again.?

(My annotations - few and blessedly short - are in red.)

Propaganda and National Power:
The Organization of Public Opinion for National Politics
by Eugen Hadamovsky: Pub: 1933

Dedication
To the master of political propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels
under whose brilliant leadership the neglected weapon of German politics became a creative art

- Liberalism and its offspring, Marxism, are intellectually and organically finished… If the nation is to live, liberal phrases must also die. Attempts to establish liberalism’s principle of universal freedom have endangered everyone’s life. Its dogmas about “public opinion” produced division and weakness in the national will.. But now the end has come. …The slogan of the freedom of public opinion must be buried without tears.

- Historical and contemporary examples show that the means of public opinion can endanger or destroy national unity if they are improperly used or controlled by the enemy. …Propaganda is the will to power; it is always subsidiary to an idea. If the idea is missing, the whole artificial structure collapses. Idea, propaganda, and power are inseparably connected.

- Propaganda is not instituted at the height of political or military actions. It is, rather, to be used as an extensive and wide-ranging preparation for them.

Misuse of Language

- The word is apparently the original element of human thought, and therefore of human genius. …
Applicability to truth and falsehood is characteristic of the word; man alone decides which use he will make of it…Believe completely in your cause, do not shrink from powerful emotions, unceasingly hammer the same thoughts into the minds of the masses.

- The average man, and more certainly the masses, succumbs almost infallibly to the power of the word, unconcerned with its inherent truth. The inherent truth in words is not enough to combat spoken lies, but rather only a new word (Islamo-fascist, narco-terrorists, war on terror, homeland security,) which can be set against the old. In order for this new word to be believed, the people and masses must hear and understand it. It must come to them and speak their language; its power must be greater than that of the old.

- Creative language will occasionally make wide departures from the natural and aesthetic. That has no harmful effect on the masses, whom we must today consider a political reality, even if it does violence at times to the German language. One generally has to be careful when applying the so-called aesthetic yardstick to politics, as it gives no hint of possible outcomes.

- Freedom, equality, brotherhood, capitalism, socialism, communism, profit, surplus value, output, international economy, Soviet Germany, nationalism, blood, land, race, self sufficiency, (liberals, tax & spend liberals. weak-on-defense Democrats) – each of these is its own slogan, encompassing the inferences and doctrines of worldview. They assault the enemy, hammer at him, raise doubt, fear, resistance, and agreement.

- The number of such words is legion. Each is propaganda by its very existence, each a form of intellectual bondage. Their very names require agreement or opposition, excite storms of the will, determine our actions.

- Creative language in political propaganda uses phrases and slogans to establish control. This is not new. The campaign slogans of a movement are and always have been the best propaganda. Christianity conquered the world with its slogan “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

- The phrase “whims of the prima donna” (elitist) applies not only to capricious women, but to many politicians as well. Examples are Julius Caesar whom the Romans called “regina” in mocking verse, and Napoleon, whose womanly breast drove doctors to distraction. His whims were the despair of those around him.

- The ignorance of intellectuals in politics has shown itself throughout history.   When Napoleon entered an academic competition in Lyon with an essay on human ideals, it did not win the prize that the poor lieutenant had longed for. Instead, it was scornfully judged to be “not worth looking at.” The same thing happens with many intellectually superior soldiers and politicians. (Obama’s positions are too “nuanced.”)

- In the popular criticism of today, no leading politicians fails to appear, in enemy propaganda, to be a perfect idiot, a coward, or a mere terrorist whose intelligence is so low that he must be secretly controlled from elsewhere… Material intended for the masses is not so-called objective writing, but rather such hate-filled pamphlets and caricatures.  Caricature, (elitist) misrepresentation, (Obama is a secret Muslim) and one-sidedness  (Democrats are weak on national defense) belong in propaganda.

- When an intellectual criticizes someone’s propaganda, his first point is not its simple, often vulgar language. .. His greatest complaint concerns the perpetual repetition of certain goals, slogans, and catchwords. He thinks assumed limitations are actual limitations, and says pityingly, “Well, he is after all only a propagandist…”

On Maintaining Power after Attaining Power

- Power built only on propaganda is fleeting, and can disintegrate from one day to the next unless the power of organization is added to propaganda. (Compromising the independence of the Dept. of Justice, internal spying.) The use of such strength of power is reflected at all levels of human life, from the strong bond of the family which brings two people together as a simple matter of personal choice to the powerful bonds of peoples and nations.

- Propaganda and power, however, are never entirely opposed to one another. The use of force can be a part of propaganda. (Renditions, torture)  Between them lie different degrees of effective influence over people and masses. The range extends from the sudden exciting of attention or the friendly persuasion of the individual to incessant mass propaganda, from the loose organizing of proselytes to the creation of state or semi-state institutions, (federally-funded faith-based organizations)  from individual to mass terror, from authorized use of the might of the strong, of position, class, or government, to the military enforcement of obedience and discipline by means of martial law. (Gitmo)

- German public opinion could not be led colorlessly, but rather it required indivisible political will and character. It is indicative of the disintegration of our internal position that a conflict could result (The Iraq war) about whether the War Press Office (Pentagon press operations) was seeking “political influence!” It is really so naive that one must wonder what those engaged in the argument thought of as the tasks of the War Press Office….. Politics, military leadership, and public opinion must be unified to secure success. Those who direct a war must at the same time direct politics and public opinion.

- (Propagandizing) is not only preaching; it is action and organization as well. It must breed the type that compels others to accommodate it, or be strong enough to lead them.

- Public opinion does not spring up by itself, nor does it correspond to true public feeling. Otherwise public opinion would reflect decisions on important political affairs before anyone else, and would thus predict such things as election results. (Electronic voting, Florida 2000, Ohio 2004)

- What we today call “the masses” develops not from just any group of people but from one characterized so strongly by instability, pliability, and explosiveness that the individual is no longer tangible… Propaganda and the use of differing degrees of power must therefore cooperate in exceptionally clever ways. They must use the organizations of the masses (NASCAR, churches, veteran groups)  if they are to achieve definite success. A practical rule for the state is thus: One does not scatter those who are organized, rather one organizes them oneself.

- While governmental propaganda strongly and consistently pursues its clear and vital goals and while the exercise of governmental power makes any active or passive attempt at obstruction impossible, the entire public organizational apparatus will be used to make possible an organized variety of vigorous individual interests alongside the unity of the mass propaganda line. (Support the troops. Off-shore drilling, abortion, gay marriage.)

- All propaganda is preparation for political action. Life is constantly moving, so a properly expanding propaganda that properly understands its task can never stand still, but must always hurry along. It always has to guide preparations for the necessities of the future so as to be able to use all of its means in the psychologically best way.  (9-11 to WMD to Iran’s nuclear programs.)

- It is an essential characteristic of propaganda that the preparatory work in the masses can from time to time be started by a single individual. (Jerome Corsi) The individual can influence schools, newspapers, and the radio; he can use them spiritually, guide them, and prepare.

- A movement or government which has to defend itself against everyone can never rely on the faulty principle of compromise that originated in the days of routine parliamentary politics. Rather, it must always be uncompromising in its propaganda. (Never admit a mistake)

- A propaganda technique is only a means to an end. In this it resembles diplomacy. The content can change to meet the day’s tactical situations. The mission is the nationalization of the masses. The goal, however, cannot be designated with a general slogan or an arbitrary form. It should be concrete. It should not be a rather fixed and fanciful point in a program, but rather it should create a reality. (Drill here. Drill NOW.)

- Our life is politics. Our task today is to create a new political type who, as soldier or politician, will be equal to the tasks of the present and the future, possessing unfailing political instinct. (Gingrich’s “permanent Republican majority.”) If this political type is to preserve the existence of our people and our culture in the future, it is obvious that all other goals of public life must be subordinated to this one goal. Thus, the principle of creating this type becomes the guiding idea not only for the training of politicians, but also for the entire nation.

- Political propaganda preaches faith; it exists for no other reason.  Our people long for the inner meaning of political life. It wants a political creed, and is prepared to adopt one eagerly.  German intellectuals are a part of our people, the leaders of the German mind.  But they are still discussing arguments and counter-arguments, pros and cons, without ever reaching a conclusion. (All those pesky  ‘nuances” again.)  The German intellectual may no longer stand aside.  He must place himself in the service of nationalization and at the head of our people; he must first and foremost serve the faith.  The nation can exist only when there is a unity of intellect and faith.  If the intellect battles the faith, it will not defeat the faith but will itself be defeated.

Leveraging Mass Media

- The real effect of a word or sound carried by radio is much deeper than that, say of a newspaper or other piece of writing that must be interpreted before it is understood. Radio broadcasting (right-wing talk radio) works directly, without that bridge of thought, and has, therefore, greater effectiveness than the printed page. This is common knowledge. Everyone knows that our most important sense, after vision, is hearing.

- Some also believe that crude sensationalism must be avoided. If we would accept that as a guiding principle in radio programming, we would rob the radio of its most important and vigorous element. (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage.) One has only to think of the deep effect of an infectious mass meeting with all its noise, tumult, and excitement, and of what the foregoing principle would set in their place! The identification of the real with the visual is merely theoretical; the denial of real effect from non-visual events is untenable.

- The radio probably has a superficial effect on the masses and it may well satisfy a mass need, but it still stands apart from the masses… The radio itself does not determine the effect, but rather what is transmitted…Those who want individualism can encourage it through the radio. Those who want collectivism. or who think some other task necessary, also have that freedom of the form and means. (FOX News)

- The question is no longer one of where the essential nature of the radio must lead, but rather it can be replaced by asking to what ends it should lead.  The radio, which is supported by all and which is politically and culturally connected with everything, should serve the tasks of the entire nation. It is not an instrument to arouse collective mass psychosis, nor is it to be used for intellectual acrobatics. It should not be a substitute for other means of information to be used by specialists, sectarians, and outcasts. The esoteric (as in politicians who indulge in nuance) thrives in the quiet seclusion of a like-minded circle, and is thus unsuited to radio.

- Radio (and now TV and the Internet) can work like a newspaper, but with more immediacy, versatility, depth, and impressiveness as a result of the aesthetic element inherent in it. Newspapers and radio speak the language of the people. For the first time in history, radio gives us the chance to reach millions of people with daily and hourly influences. The old and young, workers, farmers, soldiers, and officers, men and women, sit before the apparatus, listening.  The loudspeaker resounds over sports fields, squares, streets, and public places in large cities, and in factories and barracks. An entire people listens.

- What statesman would want liberal individualism that endangers the unity of national thought and desire, things more precious than gold? Freedom of choice ends here, not for reasons inherent in radio, but for reasons of responsibility to the nation and community. Their life is more important than the freedom of the individual.

- Radio shall serve this life. Its mission is the formation of national will.  Its mission can only be by the conscious construction of a political type which will personify and safeguard the unity and strength of the nation. (FOX News)

- Problems of style, program format, and effect were talked of and discussed. No one, however, knew how to set a goal. They paid no attention to the instincts of the masses. On the radio, the masses are without the intellectual basis necessary to understand mass movements, unification, and the creation of a type. Types do not spring up from a desk, but rather they grow out of the masses. The masses built up listener organizations, (Ditto Heads)  powerful factors that soon unite men of certain views, of a certain political type. The strongest binding force was that feeling of identity that they wanted to express over the radio or with which they wanted to defend themselves against foreign influences on the radio.(FOX News)

- The central problem seems to be this: the listener instinctively understands that he has no control over the transmissions that come to him through the aether. He does not know their source, their bias, their truth or falsity.

- As long as he is politically, culturally, or artistically informed through a newspaper or through the printed page and picture, he can check the truth in other newspapers. If he learns that his newspaper lies to him, that newspaper loses him and he moves to another paper. It is different with the radio. He has no choice with the German radio, no really satisfying control. That which his radio, newspaper, or magazine tells him either before or after the program lacks the topicality, timeliness, and urgency of the radio program. It comes either too early — for what the listener actually experiences — or too late. (No WMD after all, Judy Miller)

- The intellectual opponents of radio organizations have not generally understood the real significance of these proceedings. They mostly raised questions of taste, or intellectual arguments. The most trivial matters are discussed, the most important shouted to death. It moreover appears that the intellectual circle stays away from such gatherings and that only the shouters supporting the shallowest programs ask to speak. Truth and falsehood are mixed in these views.  The question, however, is not one of taste, but rather something more important –namely the unity of spirit and nation.

- Should the government apply the principle of lazisse faire, lassier aller as it does with the press and allow the strongest instrument of public opinion — radio –to fall into enemy hands, only to add grist to their mill by subsequent prohibitions?

- Press  “impartiality” is a danger for people of weak character because it tempts them to hold it as more important than life… Those who want to be “impartial” or “objective” forget that one can be so only when he serves a great cause. The press is not a cause in itself, only an instrument.

- If one wants to label working correspondents and the press as “objective,” he does so against better advice. (Beware the “liberal media.”) If any large part of the press seriously worries about “objectivity” without serving a living political goal, it will decay into a comedy of objective objectivism that glorifies itself, and leads not to impartiality but to insipidness.

- The opposition (to Fascism) of four thousand German newspapers, having the entire nation as their readership, was indeed a powerful stimulus for the Hitler movement to establish its own press — (Washington Times, FOX News, Robert Novak)  and to take up the battle against general ostricization by means of the press. In the fourteen years of growth, the hundred National Socialist newspapers and magazines that emerged certainly contributed to the success of the movement, but not decisively so. Our success came as a result of living propaganda and organization.

- The printed page is unable to excite or control mass impulses. If one calls the press a great power, as does the liberal slogan has it, one must realize that its star is fading. More correctly, perhaps, one should realize that it does not generally depend on its own power but it is rather a means and tool of a power, namely financial and industrial liberalism, that has secretly controlled public opinion for one hundred and fifty years in this comfortable way. (That “liberal media” again.)

- The kind of journalism these men have developed (they call it free, independent, neutral, nonpartisan, above party, and objective — ever and again objective) must be replaced or Germany will disappear. There is but one objective worthy of the full effort of the press — the nation. And the only justifiable objectivity is that which serves the cause of the nation. (Like FOX News)

- Until the Fascist legislation, absolute freedom of the press prevailed. It began to change the organization of the press with the law of 8 July 1924. In the following years, press legislation was passed that attacked the plague of too many “nonpartisan” newspapers by encouraging consolidation and reduction in numbers. The honor of journalists is well protected, and their number limited and controlled by the state. This is done in such a way that the governmentally approved professional associations themselves exercise the control, and have disciplinary and supervisory powers over their members.

On Leveraging Religion

- When we consider the question of a constructive, creative, and critical intellectualism and the problem of faith, it is necessary to consider that most powerful belief factor, the church.  The church is the organized strength of religious faith, and as such does not reject or replace political faith, but rather deepens it.  When schools churches, and national propaganda build a unity, the greatest possible strength of internal forces and will results. (Prayer in public schools, faith-based this and that.)   Since they are based in faith, knowledge, and intellect, they can only provide further support and foundation for faith, resulting in a total unity of all spiritual forces in the nation. This should be begun earlier so as to reach even the youngest children.

- One might also consider the insistent evangelical radio listening groups… These are widespread.

- The Evangelical Union for Radio [Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Rundfunk] under Hinderer’s leadership, works in this manner… It sees its tasks as the transmission “by radio of our movement and work, and the provision of qualified persons from our circle for the various programs. We are ready to cooperate.

- He who speaks of the relations between church and state or of religion and the nation in Germany runs the risk of being used as a witness by both sides of our religiously divided people.  This is not a discussion of religious problems or ecclesiastical politics, but rather of the unity of all devout German men and women regardless of whether they are Protestant or Catholic.

- German religious groups must have equal rights, and must enjoy the same support from the state.  Whether this will occur in the form of concordants or through national and regional churches is a question of historical development.  It is, however, certain that neither of these large churches stands outside the national interests, and it is just as certain that the overwhelming majority of their members affirm national interests.  This goes to show the vital interest the government has in its leading religious bodies.

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Secure the Evidence — NOW !

August 11, 2008 – 9:18 am

The Bush administration’s days are numbered. That’s both a good and bad news story.

The good news is we are now less than six months away from the end of America’s longest nightmare.

The bad news is we have less than six months for congress and the courts to insure that, when these guys leave Washington on Jan 21, 2009, they leave behind an accurate and complete historical record.

George W. Bush, unpopular now in the extreme, comforts himself with the oft repeated hope that “history will vindicate our policies.”

Well, history can only vindicate — or condemn — if it has a complete historical record to work from. And as the days tick down to the end of this administration’s reign, it has become increasingly obvious that there’s a lot they have not wanted us to know, have not allowed us to know and are highly unlikely to let us know — unless the evidence is secured before it can be hidden behind the walls of a yet-to-be built Bush Library, spirited away by individual administration officials or — most likely — simply deleted or shredded. (I know because I’ve been here before,)

I’m not going to waste the reader’s time listing all the high crimes and misdemeanors this bunch is now suspected of having committed over it’s eight years in power. (Here’s an excellent list though) Suffice it to say that they have made the Nixon administrations look like choir boys and girls by comparison. But at least in case of the Nixon gang, Congress and the Supreme Court secured the relevant evidence, including the all-revealing Oval Office tapes.

And believe me, the Bushies noticed what happens when the evidence of crimes is left laying around rather than destroyed. Nixon later said his greatest regret was not destroying those tapes when he had the chance.

Who knows … maybe all us finger-pointers and accusers have been wrong all along. Maybe the Bush folk actually didn’t break laws at all. Who knows… anything is possible. And, if that can be proven, I will be the first one to admit I was wrong.

But before I — or history — can reach such a conclusion, we need a complete historical record.

Unfortunately this Democratic-controlled congress is so steeped in political game-playing aimed at November elections, they are not about to engage in anything that even approaches fulfilling their constitutional obligations, vis a vie impeachment or real hearings.

But one thing Congress could and should do, and do immediately, is compile a detailed list of every document the administration has refused to turn over on the grounds of executive privilege. Then issue individual subpoenas for each document as well as blanket subpoenas for all documents “disclosed and undisclosed,” covering specific areas of investigation; the war, the politicization of Dept. of Justice, energy policy meetings, Katrina response, etc.

Of course, if we’ve learned anything over the past couple of years it’s that we cannot depend on the Democrats in Congress to show much backbone. Which is why the courts need to get involved, and fast. Public interest legal groups, on both the right and left, have an obligation to their own principles and to history to turn their full attentions to preserving the complete documentary history of this administration.

Groups usually on the opposite sides of issues, should join forces on this one.  They should get to federal court and make the case that this administration’s public record of either refusing to turn over documents, and refusing to testify under oath and of even destroying electronic documents (such as five million White House emails) establishes a prima facia case in favor of a court injunction against the destruction or removal from government offices of the following records be they physical or virtual:

All:

* - schedules,
* - meetings and meeting notes.
* - official memos,
* - official files,
* - official emails sent and/or received from any domain.
* - logs, including but not limited to, phone logs, visitor logs, Secret Service logs and official aircraft logs.
* - employment records, including interview notes and internal memos on would-be hires.
* - contracts, no bid and otherwise, including, but not limited to, all related notes, memos and emails

This federal court injunction must apply, not only to the White House, but to all and each cabinet-level agencies as well as the CIA, NSA, Office of Special Operations. (And, since it is public knowledge that Vice President, Dick Cheney, maintains his own secure document trove in his office, this injunction should make particular note of that safe as well. )

Sure, I know there are already laws against public officials removing or destroying official documents. But  relying on those laws would be a serious mistake. This administration has shown many times that when an existing law or regulation gets in the way of their agenda, needs or schemes, the President simply issues an executive order that neuters the troublesome rule or law.

In this case all Bush would have do come early January is issue an executive order directing “all Executive Branch offices, agencies and employees to clear your files of any extraneous materials.” Such an order would provide all the legal cover needed for wholesale document destruction.

Federal court injunctions ordering all executive branch employees, including the President and Vice President, to secure all documents, would add a layer of legal risk — obstruction of justice — that George could not simply wipe away with a stroke of the Presidential pen.

Look, I understand none of this legal-beagle activity is as satisfying or as sexy as a juicy public impeachment. But, barring George or Dick being caught red-handed waterboarding Nancy Pelosi on the floor of the House, impeachment is simply not going to happen.

So, unless something else is done to secure the 8-year documentary record of this administration  — or at least what’s left of it — Bush, Cheney and their army of sycophant accomplices will leave office, having wiped their fingerprints clean from the longest list of suspected crimes in office in American history.

From now on when you close your eyes at night, listen and you can almost imagine you hear that sound of hundreds of industrial-strength shredders warming up. It’s up to us to assure they are not used to between now and January to destroy the evidence needed to prove, or disprove, the suspicion that the Bush administration has been the most subversive and lawless in American history.

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Keeping it Simple, Stupid

July 31, 2008 – 10:06 am

I’m a simple man. And as such I have a lot of simple solutions to problems others seem intent on making so complicated they can’t possibly work… and then don’t work.

Right now there’s three things Congress is fiddling over, each of which I figure could be solved on a single sheet of one of those legal yellow notepads:

- Offshore oil drilling
- America’s reoccurring financial crisis’
- The war on terror

Let’s take them in that order.

Offshore Drilling

Republicans want to open more offshore tracts for drilling. Democrats want to move away from our dependence on oil and encourage development of clean, renewable energy sources.

If only Republicans (and their oil company supporters) get their way, the price of oil could fall again thereby making alternatives, like solar and wind, uncompetitive once again, thereby once again killing those babies in their cribs.

(NOTE: I don’t buy GOP claims that opening more offshore areas to drilling could or would actually reduce the price of gas at the pump any time soon. But I also understand that Exxon and the Saudis can lower the price of gas anytime they figure it’s serves their purposes. And under “purposes” read, “competition from alternative energy sources.”)

But here’s how both sides can get what they want. and the nation needs, while also insuring that ten years from now we are not having this same discussion again:

1) Lease the oil companies all the offshore tracts they can stomach — excepting, of course, areas designated as sensitive marine sanctuaries.

2) But, as part of this legislation Congress must set a firm price floor under oil that does not allow the price of gas at the pump to fall below $3.50 a gallon. If the price of oil goes up the price of gas can go up with it. But, if the price of oil goes down resulting in lower market prices for gasoline, gasoline at the pump cannot fall below $3.50 a gallon.

(WHY: Without such a price floor, oil producing countries and big oil companies will, as they have so many times before, temporarily flood the market with cheap oil, thereby smoothering still-fragile clean, renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar. They’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again, unless a floor is set for oil that keeps gasoline at levels that encourage both conservation and forces changes in consumer preferences for transportation.)

3) If, at some point, oil and gas prices fall due to increased production — as Republicans claim they would — the price of gasoline would still not fall below below $3.50. For example, say oil prices decline enough to force the price of gasoline at the pump down to $2.99 a gallon. In that case consumers would continue paying $3.50 gallon at the pump. But the difference, 51 cents/gallon, wouldn’t go to oil companies but rather into a new Federal Alternative Energy Fund. That money would  be used to for clean/renewable R&D and to temporarily subsidize emerging energy alternatives such as solar and wind.

Republicans will diss this price floor as a “tax on consumers,” and Democrats will scream bloody murder about offshore drilling. Both of them need to put a sock in it and realize that there really is no free lunch. First , consumers are already paying that tax, but they are paying it to Exxon, and not getting a thing back in return for it. At least with the Federal Alternative Energy Fund consumers will get some news, clean energy to run their consumer products on down the road.

And as for the additional oil that can be recovered offshore, well, however all this plays out over time, we will conitnue to need oil for the foreseeable future. Some folks don’t seem to realize that oil doesn’t just fuel cars, it goes into all kinds things, including fertilizers for growing food. We can eventually cut our need for the stuff down to a trickle, but we’ll always need that trickle. So developing offshore sources will pay dividends a decade or two downt the road. And by then we won’t have to buy the stuff from the Saudis. America can stop sending $700 billion a years to countries run by people who like to fly commercial airliners into our skyscrapers and treat their women citizens like livestock.

Now, is that so complicated?

Bubbles and Financial Meltdowns

No, you’re not imaging things. We really do seem to have a full-scale financial meltdown about every 8- to 10-years. And every time one of these financial bubbles burst you hear the same noises out of Washington;

“Where were the regulators?” And, “Where were the accountants?”

Well I know where the were — and still are.

Federal regulators have been knee-capped by Congress and whoever was (is) in the White House at the time, at the “request” of their well-helled financial services contributors.  Those contributors don’t like to have to show their books to humorless, picky, green-eye-shaded federal regulators.

Ah, but you ask, even if federal regulators have been politically neutered, companies must still hire “outside” accounting firms to provide federally-required “independent” audits.  Wouldn’t they catch any wrong-doing?

The “quotes” are no accident. because the “outside” accounting firms are hand-selected by, and then paid by the very same companies they are supposed to tattle on if they discoverer wrong doing during an audit.

When it comes the relationship between auditor and auditee it’s a “what a bear does in the woods” relationship., really. I mean what do we expect of a for-profit accounting firm when their own very fat-paycheck client asks that they “look the other way on that particular deal,” or to give them cover by valuing a particularly worthless asset on their books with an interpretation of accounting rules that stretch credulity — and mathematics — beyond all known cosmic dimensions. You know what they do. They do what bears do in the woods.. only they do it on shareholders and taxpayers.

Current accounting rules have failed shareholders and taxpayers so many times I’ve stopped counting. It’s a moral hazard, built atop a mountain of moral hazards. Accounting firms take care of those who feed them first, shareholders next and taxpayers last — if  at all. (Need I mention Freddie and Fannie? They had a small army of outside accountants and their own federal regulator, OFEO.)

So, how do we fix this accident waiting to happen before another one happens? Again, the solution is so simple it boggles the mind why it has not been adopted.

1) Change the rules so that publicly traded companies and federally-insured financial institutions (including Feddie and Fannie) so they are no longer required to hire outside accounting firms.

2) Instead such firms would be required to purchase “audit insurance.” Such policies would be priced based on the amount of risk the insurance company determines it is assuming.  The lower a company’s risk profile, the lower their audit insurance premiums. (That’s called “market forces” you Republicans out there.)

3) Audit insurance would insure the company/institution against claims by shareholders or government regulators if they’ve cooked their books or otherwise broke accounting/SEC rules regulating their particular industry’s financial dealings.

4) There would still be plenty of work for accountants under this plan. But rather than companies hiring their own auditors, the insurance companies would hire and pay them. After all, the insurace company  would be on the hook for any legitimate claims, so they would want auditors who had the insurance company’s best interests at heart. As a side benefit of no small import, that self interest on the part of the insurance companies would also serve to protect shareholders and taxpayers as well.

Such a change would not only create an entirely new business opportunity for insurance companies, but would remove the inherent conflicts of interest under current rules which have repeatedly — and expensively — failed shareholders and taxpayers.  (See Accounting Scandals in US History)

Rather than companies and banks hiring accountants to check their books, the insurance company would do so. And, since the accountants would be working for the insurance company that’s on the hook financially for any “mistakes” you can bet your sweet bippy audits would be complete and accurate. Because if insurance companies hate anything it’s paying on claims.

You see, that’s how “free markets” are supposed to work, at least that’s what all those free-market Republicans keep telling us — you know, how free-markets can regulate themselves when risk and incentives are in balance.

So let’s balance those risks and incentives where it really counts — at the audit level. And then next time something goes sideways in the financial markets we won’t have to ask, “where were the accountants,” but rather, “what’s the phone number for the audit insurance claims department?”

The “War on Terror”

This one’s really easy. People who purposely crash cars into other people and/or buildings are arrested and put in jail. Why? Because they’re criminals, and that’s how society reacts to such anti-social behavior. If they violently resist arrest they get shot, and maybe killed.

Something like 40,000 Americans are killed each year in auto accidents, but we don’t have a “War on Automobilies,” do we? No. We try our best to manage the carnage by putting cops on the highway to catch reckless and drunken drivers. Is it a 100% effective? Obviously not. But we still don’t dispatch the National Guard to patrol our highways and streets. We don’t bomb Chrysler or occupy Toyota plants in Japan. All of which tells me we have a certain built in tolerance for selfinflicted carnage. Would that we showed the same restraint after 9/11.

(Oh, and as the RAND folks suggested, drop the “War of Terror” slogan. Because the only thing that’s made it a war is the Yosemite Sams in this administration.)

Just this week, the Pentagon’s favorite right wing think tank, the Rand Corporation, released a study showing that only 7% of the world’s terrorist groups have been defeated militarily. The other 93% who were defeated either negotiated a political settlement or were arrested or killed by the police.

So.

1) As for domestic security turn the job over to the nation’s cops, FBI, and America’s Most Wanted.  Yes I know they failed us on the lead up to 9/11. But interagency cooperation and intelligence-sharing has since been greatly improved. Improve it more. Make sure the channels of communication between local and federal law enforcement are unencumbered by turf nonsense and that local authorities have the information, tools and authority to act independently and quickly. The idea that somehow the Pentagon and NSA can protect folks in San Francisco’s financial district is absurd in the extreme. No one knows their own community, and the people in it, than local cops.

2) But what about Islamic nations that continue  supporting and/or harboring terrorists? We won a much more potentially dangerous war, the Cold War, by containing our would-be enemies. Containment worked then and it can work here again. Remove our troops from the entire region. Let the countries involved that we will have nothing to do with them until they get a handle on things within their own borders. That means no military aid, no humanitarian aid, no food aid, no World Bank loans, nothing, nada.  (Oh, and yes, that includes the Saudis. In fact they would be the first ones on our list of countries to isolate, if we weren’t hooked on their oil. Which brings us back to the first part of this post… put a floor under the price of gas, then choke the Saudis off where it really hurts, the palace pocketbook.)

3) But what if we are attacked by terrorists from one of those countries anyway? That’s what all that expensive, high-tech stand-off weaponry we keep paying to develope is for. Any attack traced to terrorists from a particular country or countries, would be responded to with a punishing round of cruise missiles. But let’s not waste these expensive dodads on terrorist mud huts. Instead target that nation’s expensive infrastructure; bridges, dams, power grids, stuff that cost money and takes time to replace. (As you can tell, I’m not a turn-the-other-cheerker. I’m Sicilian.) I call it my “Just Don’t Do That” defense policy. When a troublesome nation gets tired of replacing all that expensive infrastructure they’ll have to decide if they want to keep replacing it or if maybe it wouldn’t be cheaper to just get rid of of the terrorists. If not, and it happens again, we do it again. After all, it’s no skin off our nose since we won’t have our own troops in harm’s way.

There. Now will someone in Washington just get this stuff done. I pay taxes so I don’t have to get involved in this kind of nitty gritty, day to day operations of government. That’s what we pay you guys and gals up there to do. So for Christ sake do it, will ya?

Oh, and do try to keep it simple — stupid!

Posted in News For Real, Politics, economy | No Comments »

The Excuses Administration

July 29, 2008 – 10:50 am

Amazing, isn’t it? We’ve now lived through seven and half years of goose-stepping arrogance married with utterly breathtaking  incompetence, and have six more months of it yet to play out.

While most Americans have long since realized that this administration will go down in history as America’s worst, administration arrogance remains undiminished.

They are no longer taken seriously by nearly anyone here or abroad. But in their defense, it is terribly difficult to strut one’s stuff amid the smoking rubble of their own making.

When they took office in January 2001 they set about to straighten out a nation they believed liberals had sissified. And they set out to prove to a world that appeared increasingly wanting to go it’s own way, that Uncle Sam still mattered and was still armed and dangerous.

While the evidence that their mission failed, not just a little, but monumentally, they claim history will vindicate them. History, of course, more often than not, does just the opposite when handed the kind of archival evidence this administration will leave in its wake.

Nevertheless, none of what’s gone wrong over the last seven and half years is their fault. None of it. This is an administration quick to accept praise, even if it has to come from within, and slow to accept blame, even when it clings to them like a stain on a blue dress.

Let us count the stains:

1) It began with in secret meetings between VP Dick Cheney and fellow energy company executives. Together they mapped out a plan — a plan that remains secret — for America’s energy future. Not surprisingly those energy executives eschewed, even mocked, conservation or investments in new, renewable energy sources. Instead they advised, and Cheney apparently agreed, we should expand support for more of the kind of stuff their companies already sell — particularly oil and coal. The only changes they apparently counseled involved price.

Fast forward and we have $4 gas and a looming heating oil crisis come this winter.

Their Excuse: Not our fault. It’s all the fault of Democrats for blocking offshore drilling and drilling Alaska.  And never mind all that nonsense about “the environment” and “pollution” and “peak oil.” All liberal lies. Why, you ask? Because liberals hate low energy prices. That’s why.

2) Then, after less than a year in office, their own administration failed to heed warnings left for them by the previous administration that America faced the risk of an “immanent” attack by al Qaida, “involving the use of commercial aircraft.”  The result was the the 9/11 attacks.

Their Excuse: Not our fault. Whose fault was it? Bill Clinton’s fault. He should have fixed this before we got here. So clearly 9/11 was Clinton’s fault, not ours. Sure it happened on our watch, not his. But we weren’t watching. We thought that memo left for us by the Clinton folks was a trick. After all, they did steal all the “W’s” off White House computer keyboards when they left, so those liberals are capable of anything. So we had a good laugh over that memo when we I found it on my desk on day one. I said to Condi, “Nice try guys, but we’re not falling for that old ‘your zipper’s down” trick. Like, ‘made you look, ha ha.’”

3) Then they invaded Afghanistan. Our troops did a fabulous job chasing the Taliban and al Qaida out of most of the country and penning them into the boxed canyons of Tora Bora. Victory was within our grasp. But right then, something shinny caught caught their eye — Iraq. They decided they were on a winning streak so, while we had all those troops in the neighborhood, why not invade Iraq as well — and teach those uppity Arabs a lesson they won’t soon forget.

But rather than finishing off al Qaida and the Taliban, they turned the Pentagon’s attention to Iraq and left the job of finishing off Enemy Number One to Afghanistan’s notoriously undependable tribesmen, who promptly proved themselves to be — well, undependable. Al Qaida and their leader, bin Laden, escaped to fight another day, another month, another year, another decade.

Their Excuse: Not our fault. We had to invade Iraq immediately because Iraq was “suspected” of possessing weapons of mass destruction. Okay, so they didn’t. But that’s not our fault either. The guy running the CIA screwed up by providing us bad intelligence. So we asked him to retire, thanked him for his wonderful service to the country and gave him the highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.

3) The invasion of Iraq went off without a hitch. Once again our troops did what they were asked to do and did with skill and great dispatch. The rubble had hardly stopped vibrating in Iraq when our cocky Commander-in-Chief — himself an “undistinguished” former Air National Guard pilot — shamelessly played dress-up in a navy flight suit to declare “mission accomplished” in Iraq. (It was as if Forrest Gump had had an evil twin and there he was, on the deck of one of our aircraft carriers, dressed to kill.

One big problem — within weeks it was abundantly clear that the mission was far from accomplished. While the administration basked in the warm glow of self-proclaimed victory, their own lack of planning and intelligence had thrust the then decapitated Iraq into chaos.

Who knew that Iraq was a nation made up of three eternally warring tribes? Ah, well, anyone who had even a passing knowledge of the region knew that. But that was one of those nagging “nuances” the know-it-alls of this administration brushed aside with contempt.

And so six years later the mission in Iraq remains unaccomplished.

Their Excuse: Not our fault. Everything was going swimmingly until al Qaida decided to make Iraq the “central front in the war on terror.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know there was only one member of al Qaida in Iraq before we destabilized the place. And yeah, yeah, yeah, we know that the al Qaida fighters who showed up in Iraq later were only there because we’d let them get away in Afghanistan. But that’s looking backward. We want to look ahead. So shut up about Tora Bora. Just get over it, okay?  (Why do you liberals hate our brave troops?)

4) Meanwhile, back in Washington, the administration had been busy making the country safe for businesses and the people who run them. The first order of business was the slash taxes on folks who make a lot of money.

That mission was accomplished. Tax cuts amounting to nearly $2 trillion were proposed and approved by a Republican congress — with more than a little help from intimidated — spineless — Democrats.  GOP bully boys had the Dems cowering in their cloakroom, terrified they’d be slapped around with worn, but time-tested, brick bats like, “tax and spend liberals,” So, when the bully boys said “jump” the Democrats gathered up their skirts and jumped.  (And, even after all this, Democrats in congress are still jumping when ordered to do so. Remember the FISA vote earlier this month? Yikes. What more can I say than yikes?)

Six years later the Bush tax cuts have resulted in a yawning national deficit. Together with war spending the next president will inherit a half trillion dollar “shortfall.”

Their Excuse: Not our fault. It all would have worked as planned had we not been attacked on 9/11. So, the US deficit is al Qaida’s fault. Those tax cuts would have “trickled down” to average Americans if we had not had to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those wars are costing us $12 billion a month, man. So give us break on that. —  What? What do you mean we didn’t have to go to war in Iraq? And if we hadn’t we’d be about a trillion bucks ahead of the game by now. That’s not true!  And anyone who says otherwise is not supporting the troops. How dare you diss the brave soldiers we’ve put into harm’s way! Shame on you!  Why do liberals hate America?

5) If there’s anything these guys hate more than liberals it’s federal regulators. They saw them as a bunch of nagging liberal nannies whose only job appeared to be hobbling business with a lot of expensive Sadie-Safety rules and regulations. If businesses were simply allowed to get on with what they do everything would be so much cheaper, like it is in China. Those so-called clean air rules, clean water rules and rules holding back Wall Street and banking were just a bunch of job-killing nonsense.  So, they knee-capped regulators and gutted the regulatory apparatus of government.

Mission accomplished here too. The cat was caged and the mice — and rats — played. Which brings us to the so-called “sub-prime” and “credit-crunch” crisis. The economy is not just in the tank today, but that tank seems to have no bottom this time — or at very least, we can’t see it yet.

Their Excuse: Not our fault! It may have happened on our watch, but it’s still not our fault. It’s the fault of high energy prices. And no, you still can’t see the minutes of Dick Cheney’s 2001 meetings with the heads of the world’s largest energy producers. Why? Because, they are none of your business, that’s why. And don’t ask again, damn it!  How do you expect us to govern if we have to tell you what we’re up to all the time? Anyway, all this “accountability” stuff is highly over-rated.

6) When they took office seven and half years ago,  reorganizing the Department of Justice was high on their list.  Over the decades they believed liberals had too often used the DOJ to push “the liberal agenda,” aided and abetted by liberal “activist” judges. This was serious business. Over the past few decades the DOJ had been used to investigate and — God forbid — even prosecute corporate interests, such as big tobacco and big oil and big manufacturing. Time and again “activist judges” had ruled against companies and in favor of unproductive interests such as “the environment,” and “consumers.”

So they proceeded to stack the DOJ from top to bottom with conservative/fundamentalist Christian sycophants, dim witted, but malleable and obedient as only true-believes can be.

Another mission accomplished. With the DOJ on board the administration’s most arrogant thugs got a legal green light for just about anything they wanted to do, at home or abroad. Because after all, it’s not torture when we do it for the reasons we say we need to do it.  They says so because their hand-picked lawyers at the DOJ assured them so.

Their Excuse: Sure we fired people who we thought were not “loyal Bushies.” But in this town all appointments are “political.” So what’s the big deal? We may not like liberal “activists” so we replaced them with fundamentalist conservative activists.  What’s the problem? It was our turn, right?

Besides, once we had those folks in place they confirmed our belief we could do stuff those activist liberal appointees wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot vaccinated crow bar. You know, like invading another country that had not directly threatened the US, and water boarding people we figured knew useful stuff, and secret prisons, domestic spying and Gitmo. Those good Christian, Pat Robertson-trained lawyers gave us a clean bill of health on all that stuff.

So, if we can’t rely on our own lawyer’s legal advice, what can we rely on?  The Constitution? That old thing? Quaint, but, like, so out of date — so 18th-19th-century.

7) While all this was going on the worst hurricane in decades just about wiped out the city of New Orleans. But the bully boys were busy enjoying a well-earned rest at the time and the people of New Orleans were left to fend for themselves. Instead of marshaling the enormous resources at their disposal, instead they sent FEMA, headed by a former show-horse association official, Michael Brown, and the rest is history — along with most the 9th Ward.

Their Excuse: We had no idea those levies would break. Besides, hurricanes are “an act of God.” Even insurance companies are let off the hook for acts of God, so get off our back about that whole Katrina business. Besides, as my Mom said, those black folk who were relocated to Houston “never had it so good,” — though she is annoyed that many of them haven’t returned to New Orleans.

Barbara Bush: “What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.” (Source)

And so, my friends (as Sen. John McSame likes to say) you can see, none of what’s vexing the world and the nation today is the fault of the people who have been in charge for the last seven and half years.

- After six years of war, the future of Iraq remains up for grabs among it’s three waring tribes and neighboring Iran.

- Afghanistan has descended back into chaos and the Taliban now control more than half the country again.

- While the Taliban try to reinstate themselves in Afghanistan, al Qaida (et al) are busily destablizing Pakistan, which now has dozens of training camps, ala pre-invastion Afghanistan and is rapidly heading in the same fundamentalist direction - only with nuclear weapons.

- America’s fiscal condition has never in its history been worse, deficits never larger, the national debt has exploded from $4.5 trillion to nearly $10 trillion on their watch.

- The knock-on effect of America’s financial meltdown is precipitating an international financial crisis of proportions not seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

- America will now be listed in history as a nation that once employed and sanctioned torture, violated human rights, eschewed the rule of law in favor of the rule of expediency and remained, to it’s final days in office, unrepentant.

None of it is the fault of the people who’ve been in charge of nearly everything for the past seven and a half years. Just ask them.

Which is why we MUST pursue them once they leave office and can no longer destroy evidence, stonewall inquiries or manipulated the levers of justice.

That was supposed be the job of Congress. But they failed us as well. Shame. Shame.

So, it’s up to us from here. Do they get away with these high-crimes and misdeamenors, or not?

Posted in News For Real, Politics, economy | No Comments »

Whiners & Diners

July 11, 2008 – 9:57 am

What else would one expect from a campaign run by a couple who’s average monthly credit card balance is $50,000. Or from a wanna-be First Lady who buys $3000 designer pantsuits, three or four at a crack.

“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his wife reported more than $100,000 of credit card liabilities, according to financial disclosure documents released Friday. The presidential candidate and his wife Cindy reported piling up debt on a charge card between $10,000 and $15,000. His wife’s solo charge card has between $100,000 and $250,000 in debt to American Express. Another charge card with American Express, this one for a “dependent child,” is carrying debt in the range of $15,000 and $50,000.”

John and Cindy McCain would — if they dared to be honest — agree with their similarly well-heeled   friend and financial advisor, former Sen. Phil Gramm, that all this talk of recession is nothing but some kind of working class mass hysteria that has turned America into “a nation of whiners.”

Gramm was in line to be McCain’s Treasury Secretary if he wins the White House. How about a Treasury Secretary who views those he is supposed to serve as a pack of annoying “whiners.” I don’t know, maybe that kind of honesty would be refreshing. Instead of telling us to eat cake, Gramm just  wants us to shut the f…k up about it.

Old gag comes to mind:
Sire!, sire! The peasants are revolting.
King: Yes, they certainly are.

Of course I understand where Gramm and the McCains are coming from. After all, America’s super-rich have not had it this good since the late 1920s.  Simply put; it’s good to be on the winning end of a class war — very good.

For example, last night I was flipping through my 500-odd Comcast channels of dreck and settled on a show about super yachts. Did you know that the sale of super yachts — big ass boats that sell for upwards of $40 million each — has skyrocketed over the past five years?

It’s smooth sailing for super-yacht builders
July 11, 2008: (AP) — Fuel prices are soaring and credit markets tightening, but the super-rich are still lining up to pay tens of millions of dollars for mega yachts. The well-heeled buyers of the floating mansions are increasingly coming from emerging economies — in the Middle East, Russia and South America. The source of their wealth runs the gamut — technology, venture capitalism, new industries. And, yes, oil.

“There are a lot of people with new wealth looking for relaxation and enjoyment,” said John Dane III, president of privately owned Trinity Yachts, the largest U.S. builder.

Ah yes, “new wealth.” That’s the key term here. New, as in $1.6 trillion in tax cuts for the rich. You and I got to share $145 billion with 300 million fellow whiners… an average of six hundred bucks each.

The richest 1 percent — fewer than 3 million — got 52 percent of all the Bush tax cuts. The effect of eliminating just the dividend tax provided those making less than $10,000 a “most generous” $6, while those making more than $1 million pocketed an average $45,098.

So the rich got a lot richer during the Bush/Cheney years, and did so without having to become an ounce more productive. The extra dough just came in the mail from the US Treasury — which is now not only empty but full of IOUs to China and Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Which explains why, while millions of Americans are either losing their homes or afraid they’re about to, the latest discretionary bling among the super rich is a gaudy140-foot, 5-bedroom super yacht bobbing at their backyard deep-water dock.

No wonder Phil Gramm and friends view economic conditions through an entirely different lens than the majority of Americans… 85% of whom say the nation and economy are “on the wrong track.”

Over the past seven and half years a class war has been underway, and Phil and friends won that war. Now all they ask is a little respect. All they want now is to be left alone to enjoy the fruits of victory without a lot of whining from the losers.

McCain supporters will be quick to admonish me if I fail to admit that the senator firmly disavowed Gramm’s assessment. Well yeah.  Of course he did. What else could he say?

Here’s the deal. McCain can’t win the White House simply with votes from the winners of the Bush/Cheney class war. Those folks have rounded up the lion’s share of the national wealth, but they still only get one vote. The super-rich represent less than 3 million out of over 100 million likely voters. Which is why McCain must  convince tens of millions of Gramm’s “whiners’  to vote for him rather than for Obama.

You laugh — but it’s worked before. Working folk have been snookered time and time again into voting against their own interests. They did it the 1980s when the “Reagan Democrats” jumped on his “Trickle Down Express — only to get tossed from the train after the election.  They did it again when they replaced Reagan with Texas oil man,  George H. Bush. Twelve years later they put his I.Q.-challenged kid in the White House… not once, but twice.

So there is precedent for this self-defeating behavior by members of America’s whiner demographic. It’s a puzzling phenomena, sort of like watching Col. Sanders convince chickens to vote for him rather than the candidate supported by PETA.

Here’s how it seems to work: Ordinary Americans feel economic pain. But it’s unfocused, a kind of  free-floating anxiety. Then campaign season rolls around and some guy in a suit jumps out of their TV sets assuring them that he not only feels their pain, but knows who to blame for it — those damn liberals and their flawed social and economic policies.

The most amazing thing about this trick is that it works even when liberals have been out of power for years. The trick works even after years of conservative  control of all three branches of government. These guys drive the American ship of state right onto a reef, call a press conference and declare the mess not their fault. They angrily claim that the people to blame, as usual, are those bleeding heart liberals who insisted on laws protecting coral reefs — which have now become a danger to the smooth flow of commerce.

And, they get away with it.  Yes, they do. They get away with it every time — so far. It’s all pulled off with an extraordinary chutzpah once confined to cautionary works of fiction, such as Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984.

That brings us to the current campaign. The economic and social pain is wide and deep, and it getting wider and deeper by the day. We are all on Maggies Farm again… all of us that is, except for the McCain’s, Gramm’s and the other one-percenters who’ve never had it so good. Some Americans, it turns out, really are more equal than others. And if you don’t like it, you’re a whiner.

So, if you like the way the farm has been run by the current occupants, go ahead, send John and Cindy McCain to the White House. Pantsuits will become all the rage and resentment of the super-rich will be roundly condemned as unseemly “class warfare”  by the same people who brought the original class war. They don’t want to hear any more about it.

Because the war is over.  They won.

How Bush Widened The Wealth Gap
Not since the ’20s has income inequality been this great

Businessweek: During the last half-century the distribution of income and wealth in America has become more and more unequal. Even during the 1990s, a period of sustained expansion, most of the growth in income and wealth was concentrated among the top 10% of households. By 2000 this group accounted for 44% of total household income, compared with 33% in 1980.

John McCain and his side kick, Phil (Enron loophole) Gramm, are the latest Republicans forced to explain away the fiscal mess created by their own party. Here’s a campaign speech given by Herbert Hoover during the 1932 campaign:

October 22, 1932, Herbert Hoover campaign speech entitled,“The Success of Recovery,”

My fellow citizens, the most important issue before the American people right now is to overcome this crisis. What our people need is the restoration of their normal jobs, the recovery of agricultural prices and of business. They need help in the meantime to tide them over until these things can be accomplished and that they may not go hungry nor lose their farms and their homes.

Now I wish to present to you the evidence that the measures and the policies of the Republican administration are winning this major battle for recovery, and we are taking care of distress in the meantime. It can be demonstrated that the tide has turned and that the gigantic forces of depression are today in retreat. Our measures and policies have demonstrated their effectiveness. They have preserved the American people from certain chaos. They have preserved a final fortress of stability in the world.

Recovery would have been faster but for four months of paralysis during the spring months while we were defeating proposals of the Democratic House of Representatives. (Emphasis mine)

Much has been accomplished despite the opposition of selfish groups and sections of our country and the unwillingness of a Democratic House of Representatives to cooperate, and much more must be done. The Democratic candidate says we have been extravagant, and in his various statements implies that we should make a defense of our actions. There will be no defense because none is needed.

Phil Gramm couldn’t have said it better.

P.S. Bet you didn’t know until now that the Great Depression was the Democrat’s fault.

Posted in News For Real | 1 Comment »

Stupid Day

July 10, 2008 – 2:26 pm

Yesterday must have been declared “Democratic Party Stupid Day,” and someone forgot to tell me. I mean, after nearly eight years of being soaked in GOP Stupid, I would have at least appreciated a warning so I could have prepared for a 180 degree change in stupid. A citizen could get whiplash.

We’ve been so focused on all the stupid things Republicans have pulled we non-Republicans had almost forgotten how we ended up with GOP rule in the first place; we were simply Dem-Stupided out by years of Democratic Party foibles.

But the Dems sure gave us a refresher course yesterday. Hopefully this was NOT a preview of coming attractions once the Dems are back at the controls next January. Because, frankly, the nation and the world simply cannot absorb another ounce of stupid.

Three things happened yesterday that were so stupid they almost defy belief. In no particular order — because stupid is simply as stupid does — here’s what the our alleged saviors, the Dems, were up to in just one 24-hour period yesterday:

1) Just as the price of oil and gasoline had reached levels that would finally make alternative sources, like wind, solar and (here’s a dirty word) conservation, attractive, what does the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi suggest? Forcing the price of oil back down, thereby smothering infant alternatives in their cribs.

Pelosi: Tap emergency oil reserve to lower prices

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on President Bush to release oil from the government’s emergency reserve to knock down gasoline prices she says “are helping push the economy toward recession.” … Pelosi, D-Calif., in a letter to Bush noted that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been used three times before and each time the action has served to stabilize oil markets and lower gas prices. … Action is needed “to assist consumers and strengthen the economy,” Pelosi said. (Full Story)

Of course this had nothing to do with “helping the economy,” because what ails the economy is far and beyond simply the price of oil. What Pelosi was doing with this stupid proposal was offering her party a way to tell voters in an election year, “Democrats have a plan too.” Never mind that it’s a stupid plan, a plan that won’t lower gas prices enough to keep you from, say, losing your friggin house in foreclosure. All she was doing was throwing up some election-year BS dust.

Memo to Nancy Pelosi: Nancy, we don’t need “more” oil, any more than a crack addict needs more crack. We need to be weaned off the damn stuff, and the sooner the better. Since we’ve repeatedly showed we are not about to take the cure voluntarily, an intervention is needed. The current oil price shock is just the tonic we need to kick the oil habit. And, just as we have the patient at the treatment center door, kicking and screaming, you want to provide more oil and lower oil prices. Brilliant!

Look, we all want change. But no one is looking to simply exchange GOP Stupid for Dem Stupid.

(Or, as voters in Louisiana put it when they change party rule; “It was Just time to turn the fat hogs out and let the lean hogs in.”)

2) Then we got a second reminder of just how stupid Democrats can be with this blast from the past — “Rev.” Jesse Jackson.

Jesse managed to pull off three stupid acts in one sitting. First he decided that, since no one else would provide him with his media fix for the day, to sit down with FOX News. Then, sitting right there in that neo-fascist media outpost, he proceeded to run his mouth — his one true talent.

Next, assuming he was off-camera and — even though he was wired up and cameras were pointing right at him — Jesse assumed that his kind hosts at FOX would never do anything as underhanded as secretly taping his comments and then running them live later. So he proceed to badmouth Obama. Obama is “talking down to black people,” he whispered furtively to the FOX host next to him. And, Jackson added, he was was going to “cut Obama’s nuts off about it.”

What Jackson was grousing about was Obama’s statements that black men needed to get their family acts together, raise their kids, help them with their homework, be there for them. Jackson saw that as “talking down to black people.”

Well, Jackson should know, because he’s been talking down to black people for decades. Jackson has made both a career and a personal fortune assuring black folk that anything that goes wrong in their lives, families and communities is entirely the fault of white folk. Personal responsibility, in Jackson’s creed, applies only to white folk, and that responsibility includes everything wrong in the black community.

Which is precisely the reason why he resents Barack Obama, while paying lip service to his candidacy. Because Obama represents nothing less than a living, breathing, talking repudiation of Jackson’s creed of victimology. Obama, who is not only black, but white and, while from a poor background, highly successful.

Jesse Jackson has become, as someone once got in big trouble for saying, a “poverty pimp.” And Obama is poaching his territory.

“As someone who grew up without a father in the home, Senator Obama has spoken and written for many years about the issue of parental responsibility, including the importance of fathers participating in their children’s lives,” said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman.

In fact Jesse Jackson has more in common today with Bill Clinton than he does with Barack Obama — or anyone else in the black community — excepting Al Sharpton. Both Bill and Jesse resent the hell out of this young, black Chicago street organizer now that he’s pushed them aside and claimed Top Dog status in “their party.”

Memo to Jesse Jackson: Shut the hell up.

3) Three Strikes and your stupid! Then came the vote of FISA. Holy turncoats Bat Man! What profiles in cowardice.  I’m at a loss for superlatives I can hurl at the 21 Democrats who voted to gut the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.

It was a day and a vote which shall live in Democratic Party infamy. It will be a vote citizens must hang around the neck of their member of congress forever, never forgotten, never forgiven. And the minute a Democratic opponent of more solid character and courage comes along to challenge them, defeat the bastards who voted  yes on this measure, and then let them know it was that vote that spelled their return to the dreaded private sector.

Most crushing was Obama’s “yea” vote. How ironic that he should win the nomination of his party almost entirely because his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, had prostituted herself years earlier when she made exactly the same political calculation. Hillary calculated that voting for war with Iraq would make her a more appealing Presidential candidate. That calculation turned out to be Hillary’s undoing.

Yesterday Obama made precisely the same political calculation. Fearing that conservatives would paint him as “weak on terror” if he voted against giving the administration the right to eavesdrop on us, and to grant law-breaking telecom companies protection against lawsuits for aiding and abetting.

Obama was, of course, entirely correct about that. The right would have pummeled him with all kinds of sleaze, painted him as a pantywaist, limp-wristed liberal, etc, etc. etc. We all know the drill by now.

And then Obama would have to spend time explaining his vote. It would mean he’d have to spend some time  explaining the US Constitution to voters who haven’t seen one since high school civics.

God forbid he would have to “waste” valuable campaign time defending the US Constitution.

Memo to Barack: We shall not forget this — ever. And now, instead of having to explain the constitution  we will demand that you fix this mess if you are elected. We need this undone, immediately, and if you fail to do so we will find someone with balls, like Russ Feingold, to replace you in 2012.

Ironically the phone rang last night and it was a very nice young man raising money for the Obama campaign. I explained that my wife and I have taken turns sending Obama a donation each month. He thanked me. But then I added quickly he will not be seeing anything from us for a while. “His vote for the FISA bill was outrageous,” I told him, “So, we’re cutting him off for now.”

The young man did not protest. “I understand, completely.” He said, and we parted ways. The line from the now vintage movie, The Candidate, rang in my head — and, from his tone, maybe that young man’s head as well:

“By the time a candidate wins his party’s nomination for President, he no longer deserves it.”

Very discouraging. So here’s a tally of the votes yesterday. Pin it to your frig. And never let them forget. Never let them give a speech in their districts an not be challenged on this vote. Because it’s nothing less than the congressional branch’s Dred Scott.

Here’s a list Democrats who voted for the FISA bill:

Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

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Women (Scorned) Gone Wild

July 8, 2008 – 8:56 am

I never thought I could dislike anyone as much as I’ve come to detest George W. Bush. But a small group is vying for that same “honor.”

I am speaking of Hillary Clinton’s deep-pocketed contributors, the “Hillraisers.” This group of women is still fuming over what they saw as “sexist” treatment of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Never mind that the Clinton campaign flung all kinds of racial code at Obama, led by none other than Bill Clinton himself. That was different. Obama, you see, may be black, but he’s a black man.

Get it? Well, neither do I.

Clinton diehards throw support behind McCain

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Tuesday, 8 July 2008

Many of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent supporters, including a number of her famous “Hillraisers,” are either defecting to the Republican John McCain or withholding their support from the Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Chief among them is the founder of the Esprit clothing store chain Susie Tompkins Buell who is bitter at what she claims was the sexist treatment of Mrs Clinton by the media during the campaign. “What really hurt women the most was to look back and see all this gender bias,” she declared.

Many disaffected Clinton supporters and fundraisers believe Mr Obama did not do enough during the primary contest to end what they believe was a sneering campaign in the media. They are still angry at the way pundits referred to Mrs Clinton’s laugh as a “cackle.” There is also anger at the way the mainstream media picked up on the comedian Chris Rock’s comparison of Mrs Clinton to the knife- wielding madwoman in the movie Fatal Attraction.

Some of Mrs Clinton’s fundraisers are pressuring the Democratic nominee to give her a prominent role in the general election campaign and in a future Obama administration.

The disaffection is causing glee in the McCain campaign. Carly Fiorina, his most prominent female backer and former chief executive of the computer giant Hewlett Packard, announced yesterday that she was holding further talks with 20 of Mrs Clinton’sfinancial backers.

Details of campaign contributions reveal that in May, when Mr Obama clinched the nomination, 115 of Mrs Clinton’s big contributors had switched to the Obama campaign with equal numbers donating to Mr McCain. (End)

Really? Are these women for real? They are treating the primary like some kind of failed engagement during which that lout of a man cheated on the innocent bride-to-be. And they are fiercely reinforcing the stereotype of the fabled “woman scorned.” They are insisting that Obama give Hillary all kinds of concessions before they call off their mega-twit. It’s almost like the primary result were some form of community property that needs to be negotiated.

The story above is what got me going this morning. But then I found this one, and my day’s post was decided:

Howard Wolfson joins Fox News Channel

by Katie Fretland

Howard Wolfson, the former spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign for president, has joined Fox News Channel as a contributor, Fox announced today.

Wolfson is scheduled to go on air tomorrow.

“Howard was part of the inner working circle of Senator Clinton’s campaign and has a unique perspective on just how unconventional this election year already is,” said John Moody, executive vice president of news editorial for Fox. “He has proven himself on key campaigns throughout the last decade and is recognized as one of the top communications and political thinkers in the Democratic Party.”

Wolfson has a lengthy resume in politics. He was Clinton’s senior advisor during her 2000 campaign for Senate and the senior communications strategist for the Democratic National Committee in 2004. He worked on other campaigns, including Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson and U.S. Representatives Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Michael Arcuri (D-NY).

Moody said the network is looking forward to benefiting from his insight during and after the campaign season. (End)

Yo, Hillraisers, how do you feel about that? First your candidate voted for the war in Iraq, then she allowed her ex-president-hubby plant racist notions in voters heads once his wife started to slip in the polls.  (i.e. Jesse Jackson, the right’s favorite black boogieman, into the campaign equation.)

And now Hillary’s No. 1 mouthpiece — the repellant Howard Wolfson,  jumps straight onto the payroll of mainstream media’s No. 1 rightwinger, Murdoch’s Fox News.  (BTW, Murdoch through his support behind Hillary Clinton early in the campaign when she was considered a shoe in for the nomination.) How does it feel, Hillraisers, to be on the same side as Rupert and his his neo-fascist propaganda organ, FOX News?

Hillary didn’t lose because Obama or the media portrayed her as a woman. Like, we knew that already. She lost because she is a shallow, calculating, triangulating, disingenuous pol. That’s what shined through, not her gender.

Still, even with all that baggage, she came within a hair’s breath of actually winning the primary. How does that jive with all this female victimology nonsense the Hillraisers claim sabotaged their candidate?

Ya know ladies, (can I call you ladies without getting in trouble?) I think you better take a chill pill and take it fast. Because if I were Barack Obama I’d give you exactly one more week to get the hell over it and get on board. Otherwise I’d tell you can take your contributions and deposit them where the sun never shines.

Oh and, after the election, don’t bother calling the White House with your wish lists. Call Senator McCain. Oh, and do let me know how that works out for you.

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Scorned, Ignored, and Right

July 7, 2008 – 10:32 am

Have you forgotten what real leadership and real straight talk look and sound like? No wonder.

Well here’s a refreshing refresher course. Back in 1977 the much maligned, President Jimmy Carter, showed genuine leadership and political courage, two traits almost entirely missing from today’s “leaders.” Following the Arab oil boycott of 1973, Carter took a cold, hard look at world oil supplies and declared them a national security threat just waiting to happen. He laid out a vision of what must be done, and done quickly to avoid just such a threat to America’s robust, but excessive, lifestyle. Carter, as was his wonkish wont, laid out both his vision and his solutions in painstaking detail in a prime-time television address.

It was filled with hard truths and bitter pills, neither of which pampered Americans had (and still have) no use for and conservatives scorn as “defeatism” and “surrender.” On a ship of fools it’s always “full speed ahead — and stop with the iceberg business!  Yahooooooo.”

When I came across this speech yesterday I intended to only quote from it.  That was until I began reading it. I simply could not stop. It could have been written yesterday.

Carter was prophetic in nearly every detail. And, like most prophets, his warnings were ignored — ignored by the American people because it called on them to trim their consumption. And it was ignored by members of Congress because it required them to do something that, while the rigth thing to do, would have been unpopular. Genuine profiles in cowardice.

If you’re one of those “damn the facts, full speed ahead” conservatives who still thinks Carter was wrong then and anyone making similar noises is wrong today, read this and tell me why it’s so. But, before you start ragging on me about how all this could have been averted if only we’d drilled more in Alaska and offshore, click the link at the end of Carter’s speech and read the pdf file linked on that page. I know conservatives like to live in fact-free, care-free, ignorance-is-bliss environment, but that reports contains facts you cannot ignore and still be right.

(If you’re already a fellow-traveler who understands Carter was right, then send this along to any smug conservatives on your list. You know, the ones who still like to use Carter as the quintessential liberal boogieman.. the guy who “gave away the Panama Canal…. hardy. har, har har.” (And we all know now who that  led to the international disaster conservatives predicted — ah, like not. Why the hell does anyone continue listening to people so consistently wrong?)

Anyway at the end of this 31-year old speech I include a link to a brand new study on this precise subject. As you will see Carter nailed it in every regard. And now we are paying the price for, once again, listening to the reassurances of all those “just drill more holes in the earth” simpletons who dismissed Carter’s warnings as typical wishy-washy liberal hand-wringing — you know, like that whole global warming business Gore keeps harping about.

(President Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.)

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.

The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war” — except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act.

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation’s independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. (Today it’s 87 million barrels a day) This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy.

The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood — which had provided about 90 percent of all fuel — to coal, which was more efficient. This change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution.

The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up during this age and we have never known anything different.

Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history.

World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.

I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope. In a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to two years’ increase in our nation’s energy demand.

Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can’t go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.

But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden.

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years.

Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person — the driver — while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste.

We can continue using scarce oil and natural to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today.

We can’t substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion — nearly ten times as much — and this year we may spend over $45 billion.

Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 — more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions.

Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil — from any country, at any acceptable price.

If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source.

We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller, more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public transportation.

We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country.

If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.

But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can decide to act while there is time.

That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles.

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems — wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can’t continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:

1. –Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.
2. –Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.
3. –Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16    million barrels to six million barrels a day.
4. –Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months’ supply.
5. –Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.
6. –Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.
7. –Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future.

Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an don every highway and every farm.

I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people.

We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example.

And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we’ve had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don’t act.

I’ve given you some of the principles of the plan.

I am sure each of you will find something you don’t like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful — but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone.

But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.

We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing.

There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.

Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom.

Jimmy Carter, “The President’s Proposed Energy Policy.” 18 April 1977. Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 14, May 1, 1977, pp. 418-420.

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Freedom: Nothing Left to Lose

July 1, 2008 – 8:55 am

Freedom: Nothing Left to Lose

Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows I’m a real Chicken Little when it comes to the economy. Beginning with George Bush’s 2002 reckless and excessive tax cuts I’ve worried out-loud — and getting louder by the month — that this trickle-down Pied Piper was leading us and the world off a fiscal cliff.

Well, the cliff is now before us and, frankly, it’s too late to do a damn thing about it but sit back and watch the ugly show that’s about to play itself out. (Memo to Dick Cheney: Hey, Dick, seems deficits DO matter after all — you numskull.)

It’s been a lonely six year vigil for us naysayers out here. But suddenly our little group of worry-beaders is getting crowded.

Fortis Bank predicts US Financial market meltdown within weeks
(Fortis is a large bank and insurer in the Netherlands and Belgium.)

28th of June, 9:10
BRUSSELS/AMSTERDAM - Fortis expects a complete collapse of the US financial markets within a few days to weeks. That explains, according to Fortis, the series of interventions of last Thursday to retrieve € 8 billion.

“We have been saved just in time. The situation in the US is much worse than we thought”, says Fortis chairman Maurice Lippens. Fortis expects bankruptcies amongst 6000 American banks which have a small coverage currently. But also Citigroup, General Motors, there is starting a complete meltdown in the US”

And,

Royal Bank of Scotland Warns of Global Crash
Financial Times of London

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.

“A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared,” said Bob Janjuah, the bank’s credit strategist.

A report by the bank’s research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as “all the chickens come home to roost” from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.

“The Fed is in panic mode. The massive credibility chasms down which the Fed and maybe even the ECB will plummet when they fail to hike rates in the face of higher inflation will combine to give us a big sell-off in risky assets,” he said.”

And,

Barclays: “US central bank accused of unleashing an inflation shock that will rock financial markets.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Business Editor, Financial Times

“Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall “below zero”.

“We’re in a nasty environment,” said Tim Bond, the bank’s chief equity strategist. “There is an inflation shock underway. This is going to be very negative for financial assets. We are going into tortoise mood and are retreating into our shell. Investors will do well if they can preserve their wealth.”

“This is the first test for central banks in 30 years and they have fluffed it. They have zero credibility, and the Fed is negative if that’s possible. It has lost all credibility,” said Mr Bond.

The bank said the full damage from the global banking crisis would take another year to unfold.

Meanwhile those who decided it was a good idea to run everything that runs on oil, continue to believe that the answer to our current problems is to simply drill for more oil. And, as they have been every inch of the ways — they are wrong about that.. dead wrong:

Simmons says market forces driving crude to $600

Press/Journal/ UK. 1 July 2008: The chairman of energy investment-banking firm Simmons and Company International has predicted that oil prices could double or more within a few years.

Matt Simmons said that in his view oil was “dirt cheap at $140 a barrel”, and with supplies having peaked and demand growing prices were bound to go higher.

He said: “It is not beyond the pale of imagination to see oil at $300, $400, $500 or even $600 a barrel within a relatively short time, much less than 20 years. It is not speculators who are driving oil prices. It’s simply about supply and demand.”

So, what’s it all mean to you and I? I have no idea. This is uncharted territory. Over the next five years we may see what happened to communism in 90s happen to capitalism. If so it will be the fault of those who allowed the gap between rich and working poor expand into a yawning chasm. On one side live the once upwardly mobile middle class, now mired in debt and crushed by inflation.

On the far side live a smaller group — the super-wealthy — who benefited from the shift in taxation and other preferential fiscal and policy changes. These folks, in living in their McMansions, don’t care about the housing crisis plaguing the millions on the other side.

Nor do they give a fig about deteriorating commercial air travel, as they have their, separate and unequal, jet fleets.

This rich minority also has the best medical care their money can buy, while those on the other side are left to meager graces of charitable medical organizations — if they’re lucky.

What we are witnessing develop is one of those historic social divides we used to read about in history classes. You know, the kind of “let-em eat cake” thinking that lead to the French Revolution and a couple of centuries later, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

And what about the collapse of Communism nearly 20-years ago? Why would the collapse of a non-capitalist system have any relevance to what we are seeing unraveling here today? Because both systems, begun as egalitarian breakthroughs, devolved into two classes, separated by wealth and privilege.

Right wingers like to give Ronald Reagan credit for destroying Soviet communism. But that fat was in the fire already. By the time Reagan came to office those living on the Soviet side of that wall increasingly chaffed at their declining conditions as the elite lived well. As hard-working Soviet citizens stood daily in long lines for food, the elite had their own well-stocked grocery stores. As citizens used run-down public transport, the elite whizzed by in limousines. As two generations of families crowded into cramped apartments, the elite spent their holidays at their country dachas.

The worse things got for the Russian people, the better they got for the well-connected party elite and those they did business with.  But most of all ordinary Russians were deeply offended and outraged by a clearly bifurcated legal system that allowed the well-connected to skirt — or entirely avoid — the law, while the same legal system fell like a sledgehammer on ordinary Russians.

By the late 1980s the Russian people, and those occupied by Russia, had had it right up the here with the system. So much had been taken from them and given to the communist elites that they no longer had anything left to lose. So, Reagan or no Reagan, the Soviet Union’s days were numbered. The truth is that the Soviet Union’s undoing was its own doing. All Reagan did was grease those skids and hasten the inevitable.

Ironically historians will record that it was another Republican who greased the skids under capitalism as we’ve known it. Like Moscow elites before him, George W. Bush and the neo-con ideologues he installed in high office, pursued policies that enriched themselves and the already rich who supported them. They lavished upon them over-generous tax cuts, government contracts and by gutting the regulatory machinery that had at least tried to keep the destructive appetites of these hyper-capitalists in check.

And unchecked those capitalists did what such bears do in the woods –and they did it all over working Americans. Home ownership has become a nightmare for millions. Easy consumer credit became indentured servitude. Automakers were allowed by Washington to sell cars and trucks with embarrassingly bad gas millage because they were more profitable. Those cars and trucks are now just another lodestone around the necks of struggling ordinary Americans. (Were they dumb to buy them in the first place? Yes. But dumb is why laws regulating self-destructive human behavior are necessary. After all, if everyone obeyed the speed limit there would be no need for highway cops.)

The neo-cons saw regulation by government as an evil. So they let private for-profit health care companies decide which American citizens can get medical insurance and which cannot. Predictably those who need health coverage the most have become the ones who can’t get it –some 50 million, and counting. (Gee, who would-a thunk it?)

The neo-cons saw recognition of global warming, not as a threat to the human species, but a threat to corporate bottom lines. So they let companies use the air as a cheap garbage disposal system for gaseous industrial waste. Of course you will never find one of these polluting power plants or factories anywhere near upper-class communities. Instead poor communities get to host them instead.

So far they’ve gotten away with it. But all that’s kept most Americans on board with all this nonsense has been the promise that, if they worked hard and obeyed the rules they too could achieve a significant piece of the action. But that promise became transparently hollow as, over the past decade, middle class jobs moved offshore in search of cheaper people.

Today, like the Soviet people two decades ago, Americans are becoming increasingly fed up. With each passing month now average Americans take stock and notice they have less and less to lose. Most have not yet reached the point where they have nothing to lose. But, if what we see developing comes to pass that could change and change fast. As average Americans come to realize they have less to lose and little hope for a reverse of fortune, it will become increasingly perilous for those living comfortably on the far side of the wealth chasm. After all, they have plenty  to lose.

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We “Deserve” What?

June 25, 2008 – 8:47 am

Hey, did you hear? We Americans “deserve” something. Apparently we “deserve relief from high gas and oil prices.

At least that’s what a person would figure if they read, listen or watch the news. The papers and airwaves are filled with politicians, in both parties, huffing and puffing and promising Americans they are going to find out who’s behind high gas prices and make them stop doing whatever it is they are doing.

Just who those perps might be depends on the politician who is organizing the posse. Right wingers blame environmentalists for blocking drilling in Alaska and offshore. Left wingers blame the oil companies. And both sides flail at OPEC and shadowy “speculators” on Wall Street.

And we buy it — or at least we buy whichever straw-men that fit our own political bias and get us, personally, off the hook.

Talk about a case of national denial! Poor babies. All those evil people picking on us innocent Americans. Jeeze, all we’ve been doing is what Americans have been doing since the end of World War II — living it up bingeing on finite world resources we figured we had first dibs on anyway.

What a pack of whiners we are. (And