Did Russia make Trump win?

The news is filled with calls for a congressional investigation into the part Russia played in Trump’s win. The investigation itself is a brave idea because of the possible discoveries. Some possible discoveries would be explosive-

1) That  Russia did indeed break into RNC and DNC networks, meaning they never were safe. That means other foreign powers could too (if Russia, then why not Nigerian or Iran hackers). But Russia did not manage to tilt the election. Or –

2) That Russia hacked, and tilted the election suggesting  that in general, national elections can be controlled from afar. Or –

3) that Russia controlled our voting technology from afar. Next possibility-

3) That there was something toxic contained in the hacked information that was bad enough to prevent Hillary winning. Of course we would want to discover what that part was. Or-

4) We discover that there was control from afar, but it was from Wikileaks, so please stop shouting at Russia.

OR

5) We discover that Russia didn’t do it. This possibility is equally explosive because of the magnitude and width of the media noise on Hillary’s side. This possibility would suggest Hillary’s people en masse are deluded.  Hillary and any sympathetic Congress members would get buried in international scorn, cementing Trump’s win.

BUT-

Another possibility is that the investigation itself is a temporary political strategy involving the CIA. We’re talking national cybersecurity, but would we be doing such an investigation if Hillary won? The Democrats are looking for electoral college defectors. This might sway enough electors. But the involvement of the CIA puts that agency at odds with Trump, if he starts presiding, and that would be another problem for national security.

The Russian interference investigation must proceed rapidly, dispassionately and completely, and in no way partially, because that would give Trump ammunition for noisy charges of Hillary’s crookedness.

The risks of this investigation to Hillary are also large.

Trump: is he planning a dictatorship?

Trump is filling his new administration with some astonishing characters.  Three  of them are generals, and Bannon an officer – his top Administration is beginning to look like a home for retired military.

Trump is a businessman, corporations are the stars in his sky.  He will steer the good ship America that way. Perhaps less President than CEO of America.

But – all the generals.  Army officers do not work in democratic settings. The military is a command hierarchy. And all of those appointees have extreme personalities.  Stocking the top with men who are trained to expect automatic obedience is putting sharks in the carp pond.

Will they soften? Well, a dog that bites is a dog that bites.

Thing is, the world’s dictatorships often have this particular partnership of the military and plutocratic businessmen. The overall aim is efficiency. Yes, Trump may have risen to power as a populist emancipator, promising to eliminate civilian corruption. But in the name of getting this country back in the right direction, he is going to employ people who like war.

Securing the borders, a strong military defense, the promotion of science and technology – expect all of that. Many of history’s biggest and ruthless dictatorships are based on a cult of personality, and Trump has cultivated that first.

His TIME picture as Person-of-the-Year shows him sitting in a big armchair which faces the other way, he stretching around backward to see us – a picture filled with subtext. That is the way rich pricks notice average people.

Never take your eyes off the 1%.

Hillary Clinton – does she like you?

Polls show that a lot less than half of American voters like Hillary. The sentiment seems to be mutual – she doesn’t like a lot of Americans either, especially Trump’s ‘deplorables’, those rowdy rednecks who will vote Republican.  Worse for Hillary, many of her voters don’t like her either. They are voting for her simply to prevent Trump winning.

She’s alienated Trump’s people. She’s alienated  Bernie Sanders’ people. She’s alienated lots of people who don’t have her her upper class values. So if she wins, she will be leading millions upon millions of people who she’s alienated, and that’s going to be a rough ride.

Every week, Wikileaks shows how saturated in dirty tricks her campaign has been.  If she gets elected, that information doesn’t go away. 

And it’s never been clear why Hillary wants to be President. It’s not the golf games. It maybe a sense of entitlement – it’s her turn. But she doesn’t talk much about leading, or showing the world how to do it right. Also, who in the outer world would listen if they know that a majority of her own citizens don’t agree with her?

Those people voting for Hillary only to stop Trump had better not get complacent as Trump’s polls fall. Hillary’s victory depends on that group.  

Brutal Debate

The October 9th debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was vicious. Donald Trump threatened to jail Hillary if he became president. Hillary tried to abolish Trump’s campaign because of some scandalous things he said about women ten years ago.

The debate was uncorked insolence. It was more like a Jerry Springer show than an official event.

And we, the public, are being played by the press. All the top news outlets are giving us interpretations that are more like propaganda than news, which is fearful in itself, as the public’s trust in the media, a component of democracy, evaporates. 

The debate was a punch fest. Social media has mothers who are afraid to let their children watch the debate because these next presidents are acting in ways parents prohibit around the house.

Shows like this have huge audiences because they are both magnetic and repellent. A lot of disinterested people finally take interest in the candidates.

These debates will change the trajectory of national politics.

Big Wikileaks Surpise?

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange promotes transparency, so he is a hunted man.

 His organization is dedicated to lifting secrecy from government and individual operations releases classified material when it sees wrongdoing. Wikileaks is where whistle blowers go public. He is a power broker in this presidential election.

A lot of people and some governments wish Assange would use the exit door from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he lives. He inhabits a small space where he is protected. He knows too much.

From his hideaway Assange has been timing his information releases over the course of this presidential campaign – the timing brings an almost theatrical element – but what isn’t theatrical about this campaign?

He is rumored to be physically ill and in chronic pain. But if he leaves the embassy to go to a London hospital, he’ll be arrested.

We’ve been hearing promises about an October Surprise, a release that could break Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president. But his releases haven’t broken anyone yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton – poseur among the poor

Poseur — One who adopts an affected attitude or pose to influence others.

 

If she looks like exceptional wealth, if she talks like exceptional wealth, there’s something five coats of paint will never cover: she’s exceptionally wealthy. She’s part of the nation’s oligarchy of elite rulers, and she has nothing in common with the poor and immigrant  minorities whose vote she’s trying to get.

 

In America the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – it’s called wealth inequality – and she’s part of that.

 

 She makes $200,000 for a speech. She has nothing in common with factory or street. She has nothing in common with the 1 American in 6 who faces hunger. 

 

After Bernie Sanders departed the race, Hillary has a wide stage to strut. But her lefty lines are never inspiring. Because she’s not inspiring. She’s fake.  

 

 

 

 

 

1% of the population now owns over 42% of the wealth. What happened to democracy?

Imagine if you were on an airplane where 1% of the passengers had 42% of the seats. That’s approximately the wealth pattern in America. Statistics.

The two prime values of democracy are freedom and equality. Those are the legs on which it walks. But with this degree of inequality, the second one is broken. More…

There’s an approaching second economy meltdown, starting with a failing Deutsche Bank with the attached broken European bank system, and an American bank system rotten with fraud. Question: How do you spell: m-o-r-t-g-a-g-e b-a-c-k-e-d s-e-c-u-r-i-t-i-e-s? And what have we learned from the first time?

Senator Warren vs. hoodlum banks. What’s going to change this time?

Senator Warren is up against Hillary Clinton over Wall St.   Who will prevail?   What’s going to change?     

Militarization of the police

        If the police are this militarized, how can America be one nation? CNN version here.

Would you put the police on Angie’s List?

Police work is generally regarded as blue collar.  Consumer’s rights: Our taxes pay for the police, so we’re consumers of a paid-for service.

How would you rate the job they’re doing? 

American Pyschological Association survey reports money is the biggest stressor in Americans’ lives

Differences in the experience of stress between the richest and poorest are increasing, just like differences in wealth.

Money stress has far reaching consequences. The  APA report says about 1 in 5 people say that they have either avoided going to the doctor or have not gone because of money worries. Money also affects  relationships: 31 percentof Americans report that money is a major source of conflict.

Conclusion? Money is wreaking grievous damage across America. When the average person spends hours a day worrying about money, (3.3 hours a day according to a USA Today report), that is time taken out of  the nation’s good functioning. It’s a drag on productivity.

Second this report is official because it’s the APA, the voice of psychology in America. It cements the connection between money problems and health as a political problem because it involves another institution. Institutions – from banks to hospitals to the APA to marriage itself – institutions are are power concentrations. Balances of power are what politics is all about.

Enough stress will break a person’s spirit, of course, whether the stress be huge sudden, or milder but unending. So more depression, and more anesthetics like alcohol and drugs, and more addiction. Doesn’t sound like the stress is making us stronger, does it? A take-away is that money is breaking the American spirit.

This report is not a quirky finding. It’s not something you read and get a little angry on the inside. It’s that the whole system that allows this public damage is decayed. 

Differences between how rich and the poor are suffering is always a big political problem.

If the collective damage – to health and wellbeing – visited on this counry by financial stress was something caused by a foreign country, it would be an act of war. That’s a political thing too. Does the direction the damage is coming from – outside or inside – make the damage less? No.

It’s our system. Our ideology. We’re looking at an inside job.

Big angry on the inside. Why doesn’t the American Psychological Association bite the bullet and write in its book of psychological symptoms (DSM5) about mental health and greed?

The APA report is here .

Sen. Elizabeth Warren hits corporations-courts alliance

Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls for new judges to replace the present ones who have grown up slanted towards money interests and who are accustomed to business being their business, here.  Big businesses always trying to influence courts, she says. So do we have any courts that are fair?

Gotta love this senator.  She’s the only one with the strength to do what Obama should be doing.

Nearly half US families use up all their salary each month and have little in savings

Average American families are deep in trouble. According to new Pew Research, almost half of them are walking on tissue-thin ice. They cannot afford any big financial expense. This month’s wage is all they’ve got between them and the deep blue sea. Read more here and here.

Consumer buying is a huge part of the economy. These consumers have nothing but plastic cards to shield them against a seige of wrathful debt collectors, landlords and banks. They snap their wallets shut when the red line hovers, and that explains why the nation’s big malls are failing – too few customers – here.

We’ve heard about this, of course. You can read about this until your teeth fall out. But will anything change?

Banks, of course, are doing well.

Elizabeth Warren – Senate rebel

Known for her persistent attacks on the rich, and her barefoot run-ins with banks and corporate titans, Elizabeth Warren is known for providing some much needed honesty and strength of character in Congress.  She’s willing to fling paint at those moneyed inhabitants of Congress who are deaf to the social issue of inequality. She’s been warned to tone down – but she toned it up. A grenade thrower against the moneyed establishment.

Americans 40% poorer now the recession is over – new Pew report

Report from nonprofit Pew Research shows that although jobs are being added as  we leave the Great Recession behind, the average American family is now about 40% poorer.

Race is a factor too. Though all races have much less since 2007, white family wealth on average is now x13 black family wealth.

See the graphs in this report.

Whatever happened to the Occupy movement?

As The Daily Need noted in 2011, police actions around Occupy events got civil liberties scholars upset, article.   Arresting witnesses for filming police at Occupy demonstrations, for instance, is not what you expect in a free society, but its what some police announced they would do, and tens of reporters were in fact arrested for just doing that. 

Why did the Occupy movement disappear so quickly?  It didn’t lose steam. It didn’t get lost. And it didn’t dissolve for lack of leadership. It got squashed.  In a New York Review article 2012, Michael Greenberg documents some of the squashing.

The Occupy movement got a lot of attention and had a lot of public sympathy. Its disappearance leaves a political vacuum.

Ayn Rand, atheist

Ayn Rand refused to let religion into her Objectivism.  At one point she bluntly said “Objectivism is in incompatible with any form of mysticism or religion.” (1)

Get that?

According to Rand you can’t be both a follower of her capitalistic ideology and a Methodist, Catholic, New Age spiritual believer, 12-Stepper, Evangelical, Southern Baptist, Mormon, Unitarian, Presbyterian or Orthodox Jew, unless you can walk on both sides of a fence.

Which poses a problem for millions of Rand-adoring capitalists because most of them believe in God.

She refuses that.

At another point in her letters she says she sometimes called herself an atheist as a kind of shorthand:

” I do not call myself an ‘Atheist’ as an identification of my metaphysical position…But I do use the term ‘Atheist’ in the appropriate context such as, for instance, in answer to the queries of religionists or of those who spread verbal confusion by claiming that ‘a belief in natural law is a belief in God’, etc.” (2)

If you’re a believer and you claim to be on Ayn Rand’s side,  you should first know that capitalism and Christianity are opposed. Rand’s Capitalism is selfish. On the other hand Christianity is prosocial and altruistic.

Jesus acted like an anti-capitalist, kicking money changers out of the temple. His freely distributing fishes and loaves among a horde was an act of socialism.

Any Rand went on to develop a sociopathic politics, here.

(1) Letters of Ayn Rand, M.S. Berliner (Ed). New York: Plume Books. 1995. p. 621

(2) Letters of Ayn Rand, M.S. Berliner (Ed). New York: Plume Books. 1995. p. 577

 

So you think the best antipoverty program is a strong economy?

Still listening to that ‘rising tide lifts all boats‘?

After all we’re going through. After the reports, the statistics, the debates. Next time you hear somebody talk that ‘rising tide lifts all boats,’  just do a U-turn. Flip the channel.  

It’s a wrenchingly insulting metaphor from a group of nasty people.

 

After the catastrophic events of the past years, they continue to natter the little sayism.  ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’

 

But this image never fits what you see, looking out the window, as you drive through the city.

 

It is a competitive society. They are proud of that. Now, the outcome of any competition is inevitably a winner and a loser. That’s an inequality. Obviously both people are not lifted; only the winner’s boat.

 

So they musts concede that in a competition (between people or between groups) one side increases, the other side decreases. The sum of the two is zero. That’s why it’s called a “zero-sum”.

 

So the truth we need to be telling each other is another picture. Scrap the boats. The accurate picture is:  The higher the tree, the deeper the roots.

 

The economy is an organic whole. The top and bottom parts are not disconnected from each other. Not detached like boats, and that aspect is obvious. Everything is connected in society.  The tree’s branches reach high into the glittering sun because the roots reach low into the clotted dark.

 

So in the business world. Stratospheric bonuses for CEOs are possible because the wages of the workers have not increased from mud-low.

 

So why do they keep drawing for us this picture ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ on us?

 

Because generations of greed are so rationalized.

 

But why do they say so, when it is clear it is not so? Over and over, like preachers who shout from the pulpit for two thousand years that the rapture is coming, and for two thousand years the congregation then turns out of the church door in rapture. But on the way home, the congregation doesn’t see any rapture. Just the city. On the way home, they notice that every year, the limousines get longer and every year there are more homeless people.

 

We think: it can’t be. Some people are raised, yes.  But not the poor. Not all are raised.

 

Educators: this is a teachable moment. That boats metaphor is insulting because it’s not rational. In any competition (on which business is based) one party wins because the other party loses. It is not possible that both the winner and the loser of a competition win.

 

The depth of this is that, after this is explained, that they will use their sayism again. But repetition is not the same as truth.

 

If we try to explain to them about the tree roots, they start to object, not on the basis of evidence, but with scorn that we do not understand.

 

That scorn is no substitute for reality. It is the way they nail their points. And it does not make the boats image true.  

 

Politicians know the effectiveness  of images and metaphor to convey complex processes because it’s hard to disprove an image. And in our culture of sound bytes, the shorter the communication, the better — few people stop to ingest an economic treatises. But a competing image, catching the imagination, has the power to move, because it combines concept and feeling. It has a sticking quality. Communicated, it has the power to upset a whole paradigm.

Less boat. More tree.

 

What is the Robin Hood tax?

The Robin Hood Tax would be a tiny tax of  0.5% on Wall St. transactions: stock buying and selling.  There are so many of those stock trades in an hour, many worth huge money, that such a tax would make hundreds of billions of dollars per year.  That would be good to help the poor, and good for education, healthcare and as a backup if the banks almost destroy the economy again. (Ordinary taxpayers paid the bill last time.) The good thing is, the rich pay the tax because mostly the rich trade stocks. The poor would get the benefits.

Simple idea. Social justice.

Here’s information: The Robin Hood Tax.

History shows stock market rises more when Democrat is president

CNN quotes finance research which shows that over several American presidencies, a Democrat president is better for the stock market than a Republican president. Markets rise less when a Republican is in the White House.

That’s odd. Aren’t the stock market and Wall St itself bastions of Republicanism?

Fox News reports the same finding here. Generally, corporate profits are better under Democratic administrations. Here.

Not so odd. Republican presidents don’t steer too well, prefering no regulations and we remember the cascading damage left after Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush.

Republican leadership lets America down. More reason for lefties to feel a little angry on the inside.

The far right’s patriotism problem…Larisa Alexandrovna

Analysis here.  She says authoritarian ideologues distort to squash dissenting views.

What is dead peasant insurance?

Large companies take out life insurance on their rank-and-file employees, so if the employee dies, the company gets all the money. The employee’s family gets nothing. In fact the employee usually doesn’t know about this. No surprise, WalMart and many of the big banks have dead peasant insurance on their employees – here

Once we had a White House that spoke softly and carried a big stick. Now we have a White House that walks around in slippers

Obama-the-Cautious is quietly waiting to end this term.

What is wage theft?

 Wikipedia: “Wage theft is the illegal withholding of wages or the denial of benefits that are rightfully owed to an employee. Wage theft, particularly from low wage legal or illegal immigrant workers of color, is common in the United States.^[1] Wage theft can be conducted through various means: overtime, minimum wage violations, employee misclassification, illegal deductions in pay, working off the clock, not being paid at all. These violated rights have been guaranteed to workers in the United States since 1938 by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).^{[2]]  “}

How common is wage theft?

Wikipedia   “A 2008 study based on surveys of over 4,000 workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City found: Wage theft from low wage workers in large cites in the United States is severe and widespread. Incidence varies with the type of job and employee; however, any worker may be impacted.^{[4]   “}

 LA Times  article survey how much low-wage workers suffer, shows average lose 12.5%  of their pay, here

Wealth of the world’s 85 richest people equal to that of the 3.5 billion poorest

That’s according to Oxfam.   Here

Afghanistan is a policy black hole

This from Daily Beast:

“The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an independent agency created by Congress to monitor U.S. spending in Afghanistan, has detailed the money wasted in the Afghan supply process in a series of audits focused on procurement of fuel and vehicle parts for Afghan security forces.

As of March 2013, the U.S. has spent (PDF) about $54 billion funding security forces in Afghanistan and $92 billion on reconstruction, agriculture, and other development projects, according to a SIGAR report.”

New on income inequality – officially it’s getting worse

Janet Yellen,  Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank, at a Conference of Economic opportunity and Inequality, made a speech, here and raised the hackles of corporate business.

‘A hungry man is not a free man’

America is the biggest exporter of food.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture reveals that at home, 4% of American households are going hungry for lack of money (that’s 4.4 million households), and another 12% are food-insecure: they eat if they don’t pay rent or other bills.

American poverty is a multifaceted disaster. Why do we export liberty and abundance to other lands when America is not taking care of its own?

We have had a conservative leadership. Many conservatives simply don’t want to take care of our poor. More welfare, according to Social Darwinists, just encourages the poor and then they won’t work. These conservatives are proud of their ruthlessness.

Those conservatives who do believe in helping also believe that the only help should be in the form of charity.

Many conservatives believe that charity is the answer to poverty.

(This is obviously wrong, because if charity really worked, there would be no more homeless and hungry.)

What’s the catch?

The catch is the conservative mindset that charity should only be given to people who are ‘deserving.’ (And conservatives insist on making that judgment themselves.)

So we have 18% of American children living in poverty, and their numbers are growing. We’d rather give charity to foreigners. Conservatives are giving charity selectively because of their prejudice against the poor. — These kids’ parents are welfare cases, so are not ‘deserving.’

But a nation with many hungry millions cannot be a strong nation. A hungry person is not a free person (originally Adlai Stevenson’s dictum) because hunger is coercive. A well-fed person can explore his options, read, and act as an informed member of a democracy. But a hungry person is a problem: he’s distracted, fearful, resentful, and he must look for food.

Unequally distributed hunger creates a division in a society.

Next: in a dangerous dog-eat-dog world, which conservatives insist, there’s Darwinian competition between nations. Conservatives keep saying: to survive, we have to be top dog. But how can we be top dog, with these internal divisions? Outsiders, looking at us, certainly see us weakened by them.

I’m not saying conservatives are rational.

Taking care of our own would heal us, naturally. But fathoms deep in the conservative mind is some dark, lurching logic that weakens us. Something even stronger than the fear of outside threats prevents them helping their fellow Americans.

An absurd calculus. It means that while America is the biggest exporter of food, we have hunger. We have poverty and blight. From the outside it cannot look like America is the land of the free.

Related article here.

Banks as public enemy

Banking is a predatory industry.

Congress says it can’t find the money to provide healthcare for ordinary Americans, who are the public. Investment banks at this writing are furiously lobbying Congress and writing new legislation to push back regulations. And they know they will win. Those coiffed gentlemen want to play the very gambles that helped drop us all in the banking crisis of 2008. And they will do it again. Banks act like they own Congress. And thus you are entitled to feel violated.  Read more here

Left turn

  

Essay: THE WAR on INTELLECTUALISM

Foreign war

Capitalism and happiness

Question: If the freemarket capitalistic system is the best, providing people the most freedoms and satisfaction, which of these three nations has the highest suicide rate?   (1) England (socialist) (2) Canada (socialist) (3) US (capitalist)

Answer:  USA. It ranks 33  (out of 110 countries); England ranks lower at 37; Canada ranks 40.  People are killing themselves more in America, which also has the dubious distinction of more military suicides than lives lost to enemy combat.

Source here

Obstacle to democracy: Equality is a deal killer for conservatives

 

Democracy stands on two main values: Freedom and equality.  But conservatives think equality would take away incentive in their lives, here.

 

A strong society means you can trust your neighbor

Put together this little game and check out the real motives of the person sitting next to you. It’s called the Nuts Game. Here…

Stock market rigged, says majority

    Nearly 2/3 of voters think the stock market is rigged against them, here.

The ranks of the numb

Ed Shane, media consultant, says people are more isolated, withdrawing to defend themselves against today’s media deluge. Media agressiveness backfires, and we become more separate from others (Disconnected America: The Consequences of Mass Media in a Narcissistic World – E. Shane)

Anything we can do to keep Wall St. legal?

  With J P Morgan paying nearly $2 billion in fines this time, we are reminded Wall St continues to behave like it was a power unto itself and pretty much lawless. It never gets better. Our laws have little influence because the Street is so scantily policed. (Unlike Occupy Wall St movement demonstrations, see above). What changes should be made if we want a lawful Wall St? – Keep in mind we are dealing with a coiffed horde  of ultra wealthy sociopaths. Al Lewis comments.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Is this a coincidence?

The heart of conservative economics is the idea that rich people’s wealth eventually benefits everybody. Rich people begin businesses, hire the poor, and pay them. Rich people spend money on goods the poorer people manufacture. So the wealth at the top “trickles down.”

We’re supposed to see a diagram here of the shape of society as roughly like a diamond, viewed from the side, with most people in the middle class. And as the rich get richer, the top of the diagram moves up, pulling lower ranks up.

But actually the bottom of society is not moving up. So as the top goes up, society just gets longer and more unequal. That’s what’s happening.

Trickle down theory is fairy dust. (But it drives a lot of government policy.) To a large extent, very wealthy people invest in things that bring no benefit for the working poor: paintings, jewelry, real estate.

What’s the alternative? Well there’s a new idea called the Winner Take All theory which says in this competitive society people have an intense drive to win. And the prize for rising to the top is that you grab it all – or a huge percentage – then the losers divide up what’s left.

A winner-take-all society has a different shape. A tall pyramid.

That shape is more accurate, because currently the top 1% of our population actually owns 40% of the wealth. This means a sharp inequality.

So are the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor?

The Left is naturally opposed to laissez faire (free market) economics because it produces big wealth only for some people. What it always produces is inequality. The Left doesn’t like hierarchy (inequality) anyway, and the inequality creates great pain for the people who are left behind. The Right actually encourages social inequality. Some of them say it makes the economy run better.

There’s a statistic which population experts now use called the Gini Index. It shows how unequal a society is. It runs on a scale from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality) and in the U.S. it has been increasing steadily, and it stood at 0.47 in 2011. If the Gini Index gets high, it predicts social unrest.

And there’s some new scientific research comparing nations. It shows that the more social inequality in a country, the shorter the life expectancies. For everybody. Naturally, the Right is vigorously ignoring that research. But it’s your health. That research is the single biggest threat to free market economics. More here.

One in six Americans lacks a secure supply of food, while 40% of all new food is thrown away

New study says this is due to shops throwing out food  at “faulty expiration dates.” Here 

The study says just 15% of all this wasted food would be enough to feed more than 25 million Americans every year.

“Collateral Damage” – the video that got Bradley Manning 35 years in military prison

UTube here

Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years for leaking this miiitary video of an American attack helicopter killing civilians in Iraq.  The video comes from inside the cockpit of an Apache helicopter. It records the voices of the crew as they find some Iraqis walking on the street, then decide they are carrying weapons, then shoot them all to death.  Turns out they were not weapons the civilians were carrying but cameras.  Two of them were local reporters. Turns out one was not killed, he crawled away wounded and when a local van stopped to rescue him, the Americans turned the helicopter back and shot up the van too. Two school children were inside the  van. They were badly wounded.  Altogether maybe 12 civilians were killed. This is a wrenching video, the more so because the American crew were recorded adding comments like “nice” to their carnage.

Because Pvt. Manning turned the video over to WikiLeaks, he was court martialed and will now spend most of his life in prison.

The video Collateral Damage is also on WikiLeaks here 

Brash new political novel

BRASS AND IRON is set in 1898 Chicago, with the birth of unions and the story runs with labor protests,  work mutinies against exploiters , and it features a red hot, class-conflict romance. Available hereor click on the image.

Story: A sweeping romance set against the labor riots of Chicago in the 1890s. The young Wyand returns from war to Chicago. He is broken with war nightmares. 1898 finds big cities in America the same: the ultra-rich live next to the desperate poor, extravagance flaunted in the face of the overcrowded hungry. Wyand finds no work except in one of the hellish southside factories. The poor neighborhoods are awash in brutal labor riots. Wyand stumbles into a labor mutiny where he saves the life of a beautiful worker, Kate, about to be killed by hired goons. She promptly rejects him as an educated boy, not her working class. He is smitten by her spirit and her beauty, and he pursues. She extracts a price for her affections: Wyand has to help her organize another mutiny against the stranglehold of their exploiters. She leads him into the labor turmoil across gang-infested streets. Strikes were illegal and brutally crushed, and twice their organizing is broken, and suffering and hunger fill the streets. But Wyand is hypnotized by Kate’s spirit. Jailed for striking, he returns to the cause and wins the respect of the workers. Seizing the moment after a bloody street battle, he picks up as a street orator and once again rallies the crowd of desperate and broken. Kate is finally impressed. Together the two work tirelessly to get a foothold in the struggle for justice. They plan a third big uprising against deadly obstacles. They once again confront the widespread fear, the factory owners, the law.

1% of Americans but 47% of Congress are millionaires.

Nearly half of Congress are very rich, here

When will voters get popular representation?

Struggle not going away: 4 of 5 adults in America will face near-poverty: survey

According to this AP article some 80 percent of American adults face poverty, near-poverty and unemployment at some time in their lives. Harvard’s Professor Wilson says it’s a social class thing, and there’s growing inequality.

Despite Obama’s declarations he want to repair the gap, things are not getting better in US, they’re getting worse. The rich get richer and the poor are fighting for breath.

Is anyone interested in reducing social inequality with its proven toxic effects (see post below)? Is anyone interested in closing the gap?

Not the top 1%. 

“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.”

This was not originally Jefferson.  John Basil Barnhill said it in 1914.

Problems with your bank account? That might be because somebody else has your account number. Banks recycle account numbers

Investigative reporter discovers B of A and other banks routinely use old account numbers again. So the previous owner of your account number can continue to write checks on your account. Here.

Bank of America slams its whistleblower employees

    Banking is a predatory industry.

Marketwatch quotes under-oath statements from bank employees who said they had to to lie to customers so the bank could foreclose on their properties.

Marketwatch’s  Al Lewis: …”The accusations are so outrageous, it’s best to read them in the former employee’s own words — which they have submitted under penalty of perjury.”  Here.

Quotes from Bank of America employees:

• “Although I was called a “Home Retention Specialist,” my job was to collect as much money as possible from homeowners,” said Recorda Simon, who worked at Bank of America’s call center in Fort Worth, Texas, from August 2010 to January 2011.

• “We were told to lie to customers and claim that Bank of America had not received documents it had requested, and that it had not received trial payments” when in fact it had, said Simone Gordon, who worked at Bank of America from July 2007 to February 2012. “A collector who placed 10 or more accounts into foreclosure in a given month received a $500 bonus. Bank of America also gave employees gift cards to retail stores as rewards for placing accounts into foreclosure.”

• “I saw records regarding hundreds of homeowners that Bank of America treated dishonestly,” said Erika Brown, who worked at Bank of America from June 2009 through June 2010. “The homeowners were eligible for loan modifications under HAMP, sent back all the required documents, and made all their required payments. Bank of America nevertheless damaged their credit ratings by reporting them delinquent, tacked on additional charges to their loans, increased the amounts it considered as being owed and often referred these homeowners to foreclosure.”

• “I told my supervisors these practices were ridiculous and immoral,” said William E. Wilson Jr., a team manager for Bank of America from June 2010 through August 2012, in Charlotte, N.C. “We were instructed to delay and then push homeowners to accept an internal refinance so that Bank of America would profit. Once an applicant was finally rejected after a long delay, the bank would offer them an in-house alternative. Bank of America would charge a higher interest rate, ranging up to 5%, as compared to 2% if the loan had been modified under HAMP.”

• “The numbers Bank of America were reporting to the government and to the public were simply not true,” said Steven Cupples, an underwriter who worked at Bank of America until 2012. “Employees who challenged … the ethics of Bank of America’s practice for any reason were fired.”

• “Bank of America was trying to prevent as many homeowners as possible from obtaining permanent HAMP loan modifications, while leading the public and the government to believe that it was making efforts to comply with HAMP,” said Theresa Terralonge, who worked for Bank of America from June 2009 to June 2010.

Reich: There’s two centers of power in America that are accountable to nobody. NSA and Wall St.

Robert Reich says we can’t do anything about these two  operations, here, both work under blankets of secrecy. Both are out of control.

George Bush is ok again – Gaullup Poll

According to the poll, George Bush is getting more positive ratings than negative.

Big Brother is listening to you. — Is this the transparency you wanted, Mr. President?

Due to forgotten Bush-era Patriot Act provision, Verizon reports all its phone calls to the government. This follows other phone company spying scandals. TSA agency gets these international and domestic call data, TechCrunch reports here

As well as TSA getting data from Facebook, Google and other sources, here and here

White House says it’s OK, here. 

Obama wants less, but GOP wants more war on terror

Senator Lindsey Graham explains he needs more missles, drones, active soldiers here.

As poverty grows, lawmakers want to cut food stamps

One in seven Americans need food stamps and that number is growing, causing federal costs to grow. Lawmakers in Congress want cuts, here

The most corrupt members of Congress

Every year CREW publishes an updated list.  RON PAUL is on the latest, here

Think you’re liberal? Try this.

 

On one side of a city there are people so wealthy that after big parties, they are throwing out meat. On the other side there are people so poor, they cannot afford to buy meat.

Is this a moral problem?

–This question is a litmus test. It is attributed to John Rawls, liberal theorist from the 1970s. Free market and laissez faire conservatives see no problem – they think it’s “in the nature of things” that some people have more than they know what to do with, while others live with scarcity. For them, the inequality is simply not an issue.

Next, there are people who say it’s a technical problem of not enough food being grown to keep everybody in abundance, not a moral problem.

But liberals see it differently. Liberals feel there is something wrong with a system (city, nation) which in total, contains enough food for everybody, but not everyone is able to get it. The situation is unjust.

Liberalism – the left – rests on moral judgments.  A prime moral is justice.

 

Survey: young Americans like socialism better than capitalism

A Pew Research article 2011, reporting on their national poll, shows that while the average member of the public remains positive to capitalism, people aged 18-29 said they liked socialism better than capitalism (here,  see the table under “Socialism and Capitalism” by category).

Constitution Project report on Bush-era torture: “Democracy and torture cannot peacefully coexist in the same body politic”

Constitution Project report here.

New investigation: US interrogation of detainees in Bush era sometimes used torture, and other “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, which violated laws and international treaties, and were “directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation,” and which “damaged the standing of our nation”

 Contitution Project’s investigation report is here.

Average American in debt spends 3.5 hrs/day worrying about it, here

 

.Life might be good if they let us live it.

US ever deeper in debt – and some huge corporations pay no taxes

Marketwatch: Top 10 companies here paying the least taxes

Social equality?

Conservatives: Social equality would remove life’s goals, – here

What’s the target?

The Occupy movement:>  BIG CORPORATIONS

Libertarians:> GOVERNMENT, AND THE FED

Nobody listens to libertarians any more.

The Occupation:  Why?(video) 

What is Glass-Steagall ?

Glass–Steagall Act (1933) created a wall between banking which deals in stock market securities and commercial banking which accepted your deposits. It prevented banks from taking your personal deposits and gambling with them on the stock market.

It was repealed in 1999, allowing Wall Street bankers to gamble, and lose, with their depositors’ money (Wikipedia). That led to the Financial crisis of 2007–2011 when the banks had to be bailed out.

SENTENCED TO HOPE

Despairing unemployed swell the underclass. And it isn’t going away. -read “Armies of unemployed” – here

America’s shadow: days of cheese and potato soup

HOW INEQUALITY KILLS

Health statisticians find human lives shorter in radically unequal societies,  here.

The shape of American society

US social stratification, surveyed by sociologists D. Livingston and S. Rose. Our society is a pyramid shape (wealth increasing as you go up the left side of the picture) but with an extemely high tip, too high to be shown in the picture, because a small number of people are making exponential income, off the top of graph. Put it this way: if you drew a line on a building three stories high to represent the distance between the lowest and the highest family income, the average (median) income sits at only 10.5 inches off the ground and half the nation is clumped below that. Rose’s bookcontains this picture as a poster.

GALLUP POLL: 44%  AMERICANS ARE STRUGGLING

–while 47% U.S. Congress are millionaires    

CAN OUR ECONOMY RUN WITHOUT FEAR? here

Money

Conservatives say property guarantees your freedom. That’s a silly idea, because our freedoms are already guaranteed by our laws. But the conservative idea has consequences: if you lose your property – house or money – you have less claim to freedom. Less freedom (liberty) for the poor, and that’s another inequality. The conservative mind likes social inequality.

For conservatives, social equality would remove life’s goals, here.

Money and property are competitive in this society. But what about first principles in America? America’s goal is to be the best society in the world, with liberty and justice for all.

Money is not the same as liberty and justice. Money does not advance us. In fact – read all the news – money is tearing this society apart. The real question is, will money and greed get between the public and America’s goals?

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— Essay: THE WAR ON INTELLECTUALISM —

Summary: A working definition of the intellectual. Separating intellectuals from look-alikes. Most culture-watchers agree intellectualism has almost disappeared in America, but they disagree on causes. It’s not just a change in fashion; there are real pressures. This essay rejects some common explanations (television, the rise of religious fundamentalism, materialism, the rise of conservatism, poor schools) as incomplete, and replaces them with better explanations: sequel to the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, the university, technical specialists, the rise of relativism, the rise of psychotherapy, the resurgence of Social Darwinism, and the rise of trash culture. What’s the loss if we don’t have intellectuals? The revival of intellectualism is both a remote and precious possibility: remedies. More –

Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ not working. Again.

NOBODY LISTENS TO LIBERTARIANS ANY MORE

Ayn Rand, sociopathic politics 

                                               

Yes. America is a democracy 

Don’t trip up as you walk in here: there’s two related arguments.

 We hear the argument from some people that America is not a democracy because the Constitution doesn’t include the word “democracy.” That’s idiotic. It’s like saying a horse is not a horse because it doesn’t walk around with the word HORSE written on it.

This nation is a functioning democracy because it contains the mechanics. The Constitution says the people own the place. And the people run it. Except that since there’s acres of people, it’s a two-step process: we vote for representatives, they carry our wishes to the big decision-making buildings in DC, if we don’t like what they do, we vote them out. That happens.

Next. If you voted last time, you acknowledged that process. You used it. You use the democratic machinery, you have to admit it’s a democracy. Like if you use an elevator, and you say, “this is not an elevator,” then we’ll have to find a new notch on the IQ scale just for you.

Yes, this is a democracy, and the way it works, all the mechanics of it, the representative workings the system is specified in the Constitution, so if you can read all that and still say America is not democracy, you’re no friend of reason.

But people do that. They insist it’s not a democracy, that it’s a republic. Do they realize what an insult that is, because if America is just a republic it gets classified with the likes of The People’s Republic of China, or Zimbabwe —  which are republics only for the sole definition: they don’t have royalty running the country. We’re not like those. Also, we choose not to be run by the military. Not to be run by a church (well, except Utah). Not to be run by the ultra-rich who nobody voted for. Not by technical specialists who nobody voted for – because all of that is unconstitutional. And we cannot have no government because that is anarchy (although we have Libertarians, who are like anarchists with cars).

So if you have ever voted, don’t say this is not a democracy, that’s like riding a bicycle and saying, this is not a bicycle.

Listen, if you’re conservative, last eight years, you voted for Bush. Twice. Remember him – the one with the smirk on his face on television while he talked about killings? We all watched that smirk thinking: somebody put the right string on the wrong yo-yo. But you remember what he said? Said he was bringing democracy to foreign countries. Now. Would he say that, if America itself wasn’t a democracy? Obviously not. So the man you voted for, Mr. Bush, believed in democracy here.

And you voted.

Next. The second related argument is a bit different. It says: America may be a democracy, but it should not be. At first when you hear that, you think, that idea is off the short bus.

We’re not done. No, as unAmerican as it is, that’s an argument you hear. The argument says that American is worse because it is a democracy. They say, beware mob rule, saying he nation would do better is it was run by an elite, who got up there by survival of the fittest.

That is not from the Constitution. Because the framers of the Constitution believed in the greatest good for the greatest number. It’s an argument from Social Darwinism, and it says life is a struggle and physical survivors are the leaders we want for this nation. It’s an argument that says, it doesn’t matter what method the fit survive, they are still the best. The argument never did made any sense, it’s a bitchy, saturnine point of view that competition is brutish, the idea that strength is more important that goodness.

Wrong. The fittest members of society are not the best. They are only the strongest. So, you want the nation should be run by weightlifters?

But these people keep running their argument  ‘America should not be a democracy.’ Some survivalist ideology so scrappy it almost looks like dragged through a Tijuana animal shelter. You read their websites, your computer starts blinking red. – In some ways, however, if they do read blogs and spray their vapid opinion around, they are at least stirring the information part of democracy.

Then they tell you it’s not a democracy.

These are people who tell you America is not a democracy, and then they’re first in line at the polling booth. Who does that? They followed the candidates, talked up the one they like, trashed the one they didn’t like, voted and then: it’s not a democracy.

 Gears jammed.

 

 

Low wage workers often cheated – NYTimes

Study shows low wage workers not properly reimbursed for overtime, pressured out of filing for workman’s comp after injury, other abuses here.

What’s the real unemployment figure?

You can calculate it differently. The government likes to report U3 numbers because it’s not as scary as U6, showing almost double. While Obama is calling for transparency, please, let’s have some transparency in unemployment reporting.  BLS report here.  A call for reality here.

RESEARCH : MORE SUICIDES UNDER CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS, here.

Our new social extremes

In this era of bank bailouts and astronomical Wall St. bonuses, almost 50 million in America are chronically lacking adequate food, according to the government. And it’s getting worse. — NY Times here. Reuters here.

Do corporations pay taxes?

GAO report shows about two-thirds of corporations pay no federal taxes. And even fewer foreign companies which are doing business here. Report.

_______

“IT’S TIME FOR REASONABLE REPUBLICANS TO STEP FORWARD AND DENOUNCE THE LIMBAUGHS AND HANNITYS FOR WHAT THEY ARE:  UN-AMERICAN.” – Michael Massing

__________

Freedom of  the press declines world worldwide – all regions affected.  Report.

(It is not permitted to discuss the following)

It’s a free country of course, you can say anything. But raise these items in any social gathering  and the room gets very quiet

The massive military budget.  Different estimates are that from 20 to 42 cents of your tax dollar goes to defense. Is that good? And what’s the connection with for-profit industry?

What has Obama done to the anti-war movement?  He’s effectively whipped it.  Nobody’s saying anything. Except Z Net

Israel’s authority.  Currently the US gives Israel $4Billion a year. So far as anyone can tell, this is a gift.  Nobody can really explain why, since Israel is an advanced, wealthy, heavily armed nation. It does not manufacture cars or anything we need, and it does not sacrifice its soldiers in our wars. But Israel’s political influence in the US is huge although it has never been clear what Israel does, or has done for us, and our relationship with the country is ambiguous.  Sen. Liebermann of Connecticut is identified as Israel’s primary spokesperson in Congress. He is no longer a Democrat, having switched to Independent.

Question the money, or this relationship, is to risk being called antisemitic. (Brian Cloughley does in his article, Who Runs America?)

This relationship must be clarified. Israel should either be restored to status as a foreign nation. Or perhaps it should be be made a US colony.  After all the money we have sent, over the decades, we have paid for it several times over.

(We note that the unofficial translation of the Hebrew word goyim is cattle.)

Debt and coercion.  We must pay our debts, so off  to work we go. Meaning, we are not free not to work. For life, it appears (since the new bankruptcy laws). Well, they argue, a debtor had the choice not to get in debt in the first place. But any credit card holder knows that you owe interest money long after the principle is paid off, you have to keep working anyway.

What’s the distinction from forced labor?

Prison businesss.  Money-for-justice is an old topic, but the prison-industrial complex has grown so impenetrably ugly we don’t talk about it.  Business is business, and here judges get kickbacks for sending kids to jail. 

Government spying on and arresting dissidents.  The ACLU is at it again, complaining about the surveillance, harassment or arrest you can expect if you express your differences of opinion at  protests, peace marches, demonstrations and the like. Emily Spence points out here, a  longstanding practice to designate peaceful, law-abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still exists in many of our government departments and agencies.  Want to get your name on the US no-fly list (along with Sen. Edward Kennedy and Nelson Mandela)? Make some noise: freely express your dissident political opinions in public.

Why does your health insurance cost so much?

Could it have something to do with the staggering profits insurers and HMOs are making?  – says Corrente , and –

“30%-35% of each dollar of your premium goes to pay for: executive salaries, administration, lobbying, marketing and other non-health care related costs.” Here.   

3 in 10 postpone medical treatments because of cost

Report here.   

HR 676 is the universal health care bill unlikely ever to come before Congress

It’s ‘single payer’ (the government pays), like the Canadian and European models; in fact our own military’s health system (the VA) and Medicare are also single payer models. This bill is what we want and it doesn’t stand a chance in Congress . Click here for information website.

USA ranked 36th in the world for press freedom

Press freedom report here.

Essay The War on Intellectualism, here.

              GREED – the original essay

 Break up “too big to fail” banks? Banks to Congress: don’t even try