INTELLECTUAL PARALYSIS ON THE LEFT. WHY?

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Ayn Rand, sociopathic politics

GOP’s in a civil war

 In-house purge against GOP who are not right enough. In Facebook, Palin shows discipline to Senators who might not vote correctly:

“It’s on to the Senate now. Our legislators can listen now, or they can hear us in 2010. It’s their choice.”

PALIN IS SO SCARY SHE’S BOOSTING FUNDRAISING FOR DEMOCRATS

– GOP EATS ITSELF, here –

——

DO WE HAVE A LEADER ON THE LEFT? Healthcare to be debated in the Senate.Why is the President being so cautious?

Obama  strangely quiet as both sides gird for a firefight.

This healthcare reform has a 50% chance in the Senate, and if it fails, Obama’s other causes will lose power. Republicans, despite some internal fractures, will fight this one as a steely unit. With that opposition, a real leader should be shouting up the corridors, running the streets, putting rockets in the sky and rallying all support. Where is Obama? He should be pounding incendiary speeches all day to punch up the troops. Instead, he’s watching from the windows. He’s entertaining foreign dignitaries, and promising to find a reason for Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama thinks he is patternng himself after Lincoln - perhaps using the Civil War as a template. Lincoln’s early rounds in that War were unconvincing as he tried to work with unmotivated Northern army leadership and against a fomented opponent.  If Obama thinks he can safely absorb early losses because Lincoln’s first moves were also uncertain, he needs to know his opponents also study history.

Obama cannot win this stage of the battle by seeming cryptic and looking aimiable. It demoralizes the troops.

That noise in the Senate is weapons being unsheathed. Battle approaches.

GREED - the original essay

———-

Finance reform battle begins in the

House

GEITHNER’S GETTING TOUGH (here). BUT NOT TOUGH ENOUGH – WHERE’S GLASS-STEAGALL?

DO YOU TRUST THEM? – BANKS AS PUBLIC ENEMY

Summers:  ”The time has come for fundamental change in the financial sector of our economy — both in how financial institutions conduct their business and how they are regulated”

—

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

Banks try another vulgar power grab – Huff

- they want to suspend accounting rules if things get to crisis point again

GOLDMAN SACHS, AGAIN:

The more Goldman Sachs gets described in the press, the more it resembles a mysterious, small, walled-in country with its own people, customs, morals and its own mission. It keeps itself carefully separate. Its annual profits are more than some countries national incomes, its salary structure is formidable. It supplies governments with its fabulously wealthy alumni. And it believes what it’s doing is for the general good. The ruling class  always avoids accusations of exploitation by saying it acts for the people’s own good, of course; and again we are unblinkingly to  understand. Goldman Sachs is doing God’s work, here.

Unemployment climbs again, but Bernanke says recession is over   Credit card defaults are rising  Banks reducing loans  More than 1,000 banks may fail in 3-5 years 

Obama must win healthcare, or this -

Conservatives are looking for a failure – any failure – in Obama’s campaign for change, to show he doesn’t have political knuckle and if Obama loses in the confrontation over finance regulation, or climate change, or if his stimulus doesn’t work, they say, the wheels fall off his change movement.  Neocon Kristol says the underlying problem is that Americans still don’t want government control. Kristol is wrong. Americans accept government regulation, and they want change, they don’t want decisions to be made by the rich and corrupt, and they understand the obstacles: Democrats in Congress who vote conservative. What’s missing: lefties know about the intricacies of Congress, but they still don’t know what they want.

Obama can’t free America from this chokehold because liberals still lack root convictions.  We are waiting for a leader – for Obama – to tell us what we want.  The right has ideology, rotted out as it is. And the right has a political style: defiance. With fangs. The left knows only accommodation. The left doesn’t know dog fight.  The left doesn’t understand right-radio talk shows which run on granite diction and the etiquette of a stomach pump: we have reached a point in our culture where not logic but loutish disrespect wins. If his healthcare push fails, Obama, for all his eloquence, will be nursing political nosebleed for the rest of his term. The right will claim vindication, and we will lose America to the hyperventilating Hannitys, Savages and Limbaughs who, at least, know what they want.

—–

 FORECLOSURES SKYROCKET

1 in 4 mortgageholders underwater now    HALF OF HOMEOWNERS WILL BE UNDERWATER BY 2011

What’s the connection between astronomical Wall St. profits and  the nation’s economic woes? Is it coincidence? – and why does this coincidence keep happening?

  —————- AMERICA DIVIDED: PRIVATE WEALTH   vs. THE GREATEST GOOD FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER ——————-

Robert Reich: Genuine financial reform will be almost as difficult to achieve as real universal health care. Immense private interests are amassed against the public interest in both cases because staggering amounts of money are at stake

AND THE RICH KEEP GETTING RICHER – WSJ

__________COMBAT___________

The public likes Obama’s plans. But Washington DC doesn’t. Obama’s ideas to slash wasteful defense, agribusiness and healthcare practices threatens to upend the way business is done in America. So whole organizations in DC open up huge warchests and are going to work to sabotage Obama’s plans. For instance the healthcare industry has $20 million for lobbyists to battle Obama’s plan to tax the rich and provide for the poor. Farm industry and aerospace splash money on lobbyists to ensure no changes happen. And this is customary since America is not run by the public’s wishes but by corporations. In an earlier campaign speech, Obama disclosed what he thinks: he believes corporate practices are wrecking America. And those “dishonest accounting practices.” So in his budget, to begin this fight, he is kicking a few bee hives. We won’t see the width, depth and savagery of the upcoming battles because the moves are made by corporate mercenaries in suits and limousines. But we’ll see the outcome: by who, at the end, is wearing the grins. (And see below: “Ferocity expected…)

________

Series: HOW THE ECONOMY RUNS WITH CONSUMERS UNDER SUFFOCATING DEBT

STUDY: THE HAPPIEST NATIONS ARE ALSO HEAVILY TAXED

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CONSERVATIVES ARE THE SINGLE LARGEST IDEOLOGICAL GROUP – Gallup poll

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APPROACHING COLLISION IN CONGRESS:  I

 Wall St. vs. the public interest. Those biggest bailed-out banks are at it again, lobbying Congress to undermine laws which regulate their biggest gambles, which helped tipped the nation into a banking crisis in the first place. Obama wants regulation and transparency. The banks want: back to business, their way, and no transparency. Wall St. won this fight before and with the help of massive lobbying doesn’t expect to go down this time, here.

APPROACHING COLLISION IN CONGRESS: II

Obama supports the Energy Bill which aims to reduce global warming and puts a cap on the carbon emitted by manufacturers and requires car makers to increase gas mileage. Business interests say the bill is a dangerous environmentalist (socialist) plan that won’t work, and they will not let it stand.

APPROACHING COLLISION IN CONGRESS: III

Obama supports the “Employee Free Choice Act,” which unions are clamoring for. GOP sees it as the devil’s work, here and here.

GOP vs. unions

report here. Republicans blame labor costs for ruining the car industry. (Actually labor is only about 8% of the cost of a new car, here). Preparations for battle: Citibank (newly bailed out) holds conference to block the EFCA, here. Fox News attacks unions, here. Both sides threatening Senators, here. Business PACs’ big money rolled out for opponents, here.

Gallup poll: a majority of Americans support unions – 59% – but only 8% belong, here.

__________________

1 IN 10 AMERICANS NOW ON FOOD STAMPS

HEDGE FUND MANAGERS STILL MAKING BILLIONS

RECESSION: JANITOR JOB GETS 700 APPLICATIONS

Greenwald: HOW THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA PROTECT THE ELITE

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Gallup poll: Public wants Government, not business, to handle economy, with sharp Republican-Democrat division

________________________

FEROCITY IN LOBBYISTS’ ASSAULT ON OBAMA’S HEALTHCARE PLANS

Health industry lobbyists have defeated every reform effort since WWII. Anti-reform campaign is spending 41% more on lobbyists, here. Protesters in the Senate, demanding single-payer, are removed by police, here.

___________________

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

NOBODY LISTENS TO LIBERTARIANS ANY MORE

This crisis, spreading its execrable wreckage and anxiety through our population, is a result of Libertarian principles.  A deregulated free market just doesn’t work. Why are Libertarian think tanks still open?

Poll: 87% say cause of crisis is deregulation. A majority says government needs to step in on economy: here.

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25 bank failures in 2008,  120 so far in 2009.  This crisis predicted to get worse. Workers will desperately need jobs. Corporations which take American jobs and outsource them to foreign countries are unpatriotic

American taxpayers, already fearful for their jobs, are being required to pay for bailing out corporations. Those corporations turn around and hire foreigners.  And the hard-earned money you pay as interest on your credit cards, as the credit companies likewise outsource jobs.

Not exactly for the common good.

And economists tell us this is rational behavior.

____

Analysis: US productivity has climbed and climbed, but wages have not. If the minimum wage was on track it would now be $19, here.

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NATION GIVES ADVICE ON HOW TO LIVE ON THE STREETS

HALF OF AMERICANS TWO PAYCHECKS AWAY FROM HARDSHIP

“HORDES” OF AMERICANS DRIVEN TO SUICIDE OVER FINANCES,  here

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– Odd stuff happening over at the White House –

BUSH OFFICIALS WON’T BE PROSECUTED OBAMA HIRES TRIPLE CANOPY (ANOTHER PRIVATE ARMY LIKE BLACKWATER) FOR IRAQ OBAMA CAMPAIGNED HARD TO PROTECT HABEUS CORPUS, BUT NOW… OBAMA QUIETLY SUPPORTING BUSH’S WIRETAPPING OBAMA WANTS TO LIMIT RIGHT TO COUNSEL OBAMA CONSIDERING INDEFINITE DETENTION OF GITMO PRISONERS HERE’S A JAW-DROPPING LIST OF OBAMA’S BROKEN PROMISES by PAUL STREET

Why Does Our Government Still Spy On, Arrest and Persecute Dissidents? - Spence

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LEFT WING: TORTURE IS IMMORAL. RIGHT WING: USING TORTURE KEEPS US STRONG AND THE IMMORAL THING IS TALKING ABOUT IT

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Crises, market corrections and collapses are always distributed unequally, and the poor are hurt worst. But this collapse is different. This financial crisis will be recorded as a great social leveller; the worst hit will be the opulent and our segregated elite, here.  Only through their collapses will we learn about the existence of these financial pinnacle-walkers and it will be a time for us to gape and to wonder.

Watch the words “populist resistance,” and “populist strategy” now being use in media. They are euphemisms for the reactions of America’s poorer folks who find themselves out of house, out job, out of money, out of health care and out of a foreseeable future – people who have been running on empty for too long. Those reactions are from fear and anger bubbling. For “populist” read “the people,” and we understand what the media has noticed: the people (perhaps a hundred million of them) are really scared and really pissed. They are upset at the people who are supposed to be steering this ship, the ruling class. The people are noticing that the ruling class is always overflowingly wealthy, and can never get leading the country right, and are so self-absorbed, taking care of themselves, they never seem to notice the poor. The people are noticing that it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether it’s Democrats or Republicans who are in power: the difference that counts is wealth. (Everybody watched Titanic.) When the media stops referring to acres of people’s seething discontent as a strategy, the media might catch the real issue. It’s who’s in charge. Because in a democracy, that’s supposed to be the will of the people. So “populist resistance” means the people figuring out that anybody could run things better than the manicured men in Congress whose main concern is getting the right table at the right restaurant with a lobbyist for lunch. When the media starts noticing this abysmal disconnect between the government and the people governed, the people can finally take hope that  they don’t have to do something silly to get noticed.

Populist rage. We watch those highest-paid tv newscasters with their upholstered voices, discussing the people’s feelings, rage. These manicured professionals, making around $10 million a year,  show a swan-like elegance as they report on the next national crisis and the next. All Americans are following this and these news anchors present a regal image. But like swans, underneath the water their feet are paddling like hell: it’s a question for these icons: which way to turn?  They know they are caught in big change. The nation’s magnetic needle is swinging away from glitz and toward job fears and debt-rage. Watch.  These news celebrities mesmerize us; but their expressions have no more moral content than the weather.  The program director wants a show of frustration. They can role-play anger. The nightly news ends with smiles. Appearance management. And we wonder; do the fortunes these beautiful people make have something to do with our mangled public morality? We are a nation trained to trust in imagery.  In increments, only in increments, do we think to separate appearances from what is right.

REPORTER’S QUESTION TO OBAMA: “why haven’t you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing?”

As the internet grows, so does political anger. Blogs have a fundamentally different tone from television: many are angry. Yes, television editors keep the programming frothy and light. But there’s another difference. Television’s ever-interrupting commercials effectively break up the viewers’ thinking, keeps the dots disconnected, breaks up complex  ideas, keeps complex feelings from growing. Television shatters continuity. It discourages memory, which involves a time span. Filled with chirpy commentators and ever-flashing cosmetics, it is a visual medium and on tv, politicians with beautiful teeth are so impressive in the moment that we forget what they said at another time, and we cannot remember context. So politicians can pull the public around by the nose all year long, through contradictions and broken promises, smile after smile.

Blogs stay put, day after day. Meaning, memory is allowed – much more than other media like newspapers which disappear daily. Simply, blogs allow continuity. So comparisons across time are allowed. We can re-connect the dots. This is healing. Feelings return. For example, we can compare politicians’ promises with current performance. Compare before-after, and see how politicians break the public trust. And then the anger comes back.

This is the depth of the political danger we are in, because Americans are socialized to be a television nation. In Europe, angry people get on the streets and demand change. In America, angry people watch television. Get pleasantly fragmented, and can’t remember.

GALLUP POLL: 44%  AMERICANS ARE STRUGGLING

-while 44% U.S. Congress are millionaires

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

The economy is going through some seismic jolts, caused by a lot of sub-prime mortgages going into default, then the lenders of those mortgages - finance houses and banks - failing. A domino effect is following through the credit markets.

The problem is, several bubbles are bursting: the real estate bubble, corporate takeover bubble, the credit bubble, and this is an international event. The world financial system is on the edge of a meltdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned, here.

There’s a backstory: over the years, everything has become inflated in value: stocks, real estate, companies strutting huge on borrowed money (leveraging), it’s like everybody walking round on stilts. People acting like they’re rich but it’s the credit cards. So now is what you expect: widespread de-leveraging is the crashing house of cards.

So the Bush administration pushed, and Congress hurriedly approved, a scheme for the government to bail out banks by buying stocks in them.

Who is to blame? 

Conservatives said: house buyers, borrowing money they can’t pay back. Liberals said it’s predatory lenders, bank loan agents getting house buyers into debt situations they can’t handle.

The economy is in a screw. The US national debt has just reached $10 trillion. Unemployment is rising fast. And American consumers have stopped spending. So as far as fixing the economy, this bailout is just the beginning. Try this, try that, economists are not sure. It’s like trying to climb a mountain of loose gravel.

Bailout

There’s a lot of argument with the bailout strategies. This analyst says if the bailout money is applied at the top (finance companies, banks) it’s just more trickle down. A lot of other things are going to have to be fixed.

And note that the public doesn’t get to vote on any of this.

The first part of the bailout was essentially a gift to banks – it came with no rules how the money is to be used. Any subsequent handouts are going to come with big government strings attached – so some banks will refuse the money.

Crises, corrections, recessions and depressions are always distributed unequally among people. The middle class sees: elite bailing out the elite, at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer, so there’s considerable hostility on the streets.

Americans 2 to 1 blame GOP for the bad economy, here.

Enron all over again

Except much bigger. And unbridled greed.

To get the first wave of bailout money approved, President Bush stirred extra fear into Congress; in fact Bush’s cycle of economic history was rancid with cronyism, and this bailout still looks like looting and double-shifting. Michael Moore said it’s a coup by the richest people, the biggest robbery in the history of the country.

A poll shows 51% think the bailout is actually a power grab. Paul Farrell says Wall Street is actually sabotaging democracy.

The ironies keep crashing  in.  Obama’s economic advisor, Larry Summers, is responsible with Alan Greenspan for the deregulation in past years that helped create the orininal bubble (even Wikipedia has that).

Admiration

So in a  two-faced way, government keeps giving bailout money to finance titans like AIG and then wringing its hands over the results. This is because of a deep split: America is a house divided over the meaning of  great wealth. One side says we should admire and reward it, the other side says look at history: great wealth is the shimmering height of a tree whose roots often drop to an equal depth in social damage.

Public hangings

That’s what we need! says Charles Krauthammer in National Review. - ”What we need are a few exemplary hangings. Public hangings. On television. Pick a few failed investment firms, lead their CEOs in chains through the canyons of Manhattan and give the mob satisfaction.”

Bloggers delight

Nobody understands everything about this crisis.  So we are thick with theories and they’re all over the blogs. One theory says, a crisis of this proportion could not have happened if the investigative press was doing its job, or to put it another way, there must be media complicity. Which brings us into conspiracy-land: big money is buying big media silence.  Actually, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that news reporters get blocked by their own editors from investigating American financial practices and Wall Street.  Is Wall Street plotting to destroy the economy and this is being guarded by – editors of the free press?  There is a milder version, that mainstream editors don’t want reporters interfering with the corporations which fund the media no matter how illegally those  corporations are operating.  So no adversarial reporting allowed.

But political bloggers are adversarial by nature and they have no big sponsors to protect, so they blow whistle all day long.  And most recently, a sea change is occurring and the walls of silence now seem to be cracking, witness the sudden rush of big-media exposes on bank excesses.  Will independent bloggers actually take Goliath down? Here.

Solutions

So the government is trying this, trying that, the goal is to shore up confidence in the money system, so then investors, consumers, businesses, investment banks and regular banks will start trusting each other again, money will start circulating and the markets get strong. Because that is another name for this situation:  it is a crisis in trust.

The bailout was the first attempt, and now this idea for the Treasury to lift bad debts off the banks, they are dragging the banks down.

Special language

These are shots in the dark. The money system is a double-jointed, vast house of mirrors, almost a weird culture, where inhabitants hold an ideology and speak a complicated language of their own. So any attempt by government to walk in and fix things is analogous to – um – the US walking into Iraq or Vietnam to fix things. We get stuck, and can’t get out. That analogy because the indigenous folks, in all, were both desperate and hostile to help.  Here, the government, by helping, reverses a whole balance of power in which banks act like they own Congress, and it contradicts free market theory which says that a free market is a precondition for national freedom. So when the government buys its way into banks, it creates a wild-eyed fortress mentality on Wall St. believing it has to be top dog because it is the last bastion of American civilization.

      Numbers       

And the bailout is enormous. Jim Bianco has crunched the numbers to show that it’s adding up to over $8 billion, which exceeds the costs of the following combined:  Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, Race to the Moon,  S&L Crisis, Korean War,  The New Deal, Invasion of Iraq, Vietnam War, NASA.

Fear

Everywhere, nerves are raw. So, more distrust. The pieces of this crisis are only partly pieces of money; the other pieces are like, who’s running this joint, and what part of American reality do you subscribe to. And large fear.

Goldman Sachs theory

Theories swirl.  Rolling Stone carried a story that Goldman Sachs has been behind every market collapse since the 1920s, here, and whether you believe it’s even possible for banks to orchestrate economic crashes, conspiracy theory or truth, Goldman Sachs countered it with an blustering, defensive denial.  

Suddenly, more secrecy

You need sharp eyes. This next one was a night move, spotted by blogger Taibbi. It has big consequences. A terse memo issued as a New York Stock Exchange Regulation simply states that Wall St. institutions will no longer have to report mammoth million-dollar stock market moves, trades which are so big they can tilt the whole market. In other words, Taibbi says, transparency is suspended. Investment banks can manipulated the market secretly now - at least away from bloggers’ prying eyes.

Next twist

Banks would prefer Congress just to stand by with large helpings of cash while banks handle this mess.  Banks do have overweening power in DC, so the next official development is another fun-house twist: private corporations, which are part of this national distrust, will calibrate and run the transactions where government purchases those enormous bad debts from the banks. We recall, those debts were originally the spawn of deceptive acts. – And this will be good for America. 

Anybody’s reality

But in August, Fed Chief Bernanke announced that the recession is ending, and in self-congratulatory style said the Fed’s quick moves saved the world economy from deeper crisis.  A lot of people say, he’s talking out of his neck:  it is true productivity is up, but GDP continues to contract, foreclosures are climbing, personal earnings are down, unemployment is climbing to double digits in many states and commercial real estate values are dropping like a nail in water. Reality is ultimately pliable.

And will anything change?

That is the monster question. America, and the world, may be recovering or may still be on the edge of an economic meltdown but the Chicago school of economics (the theory that the free market can do no wrong), which led up to this catastrophe, still dominates. That theory is written in textbooks, and it will continue to be taught as the truth. When any theory is confronted with contradictory evidence, the theory must change, of course. But this one won’t, even though the contradictory evidence is global, because it has three reinforcing sides: the economic theory, a political program of deregulation (since Ronald Reagan), and a whole pop culture of ditzy shopaholics.  This will be a classic and painful example of a paradigm refusing to shift because nobody – especially the experts – likes to let go of a theory. On the talk shows, top economists will lace their fingers across their bellies and waffle and pontificate, but they will not  change the theory. So to this date, there have been no significant changes in the way Wall St. operates. It is clear: no matter that Wall St. is dangerously dysfunctional, it has dominion over Congress and over the Administration. And unless the Administration puts an edge on its tone of mild reproval, as delivered by Summers and Geithner, nothing will change. A recent Wall St. panel, for instance, says Wall St. is going to return to the way it was just before the crisis.  And millions of people in America, and hundreds of millions of people globally, are going to suffer. 

UPDATES. 6,000 new bankruptcy filings/day here. White House says there will be no recovery without more government regulation, here. New stimulus plan is expected, here. Bernanke says the recession is ending, that the Fed saved the world from protracted crisis, here. WSJ reports the rich are getting richer, and the gap between rich and poor is still expanding here. The superrich are taking it hard, plutocrats are losing big wealth, here. Predictions of a commercial real estate crash, here. Reforms? What Wall St. reforms? here.  The only thing Wall St. seems to have learned is that greed is good, and that it has ultimate control over Congress, here.

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.

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

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.

Imagine if you were on an airplane where 1% of the passengers had 40% of the seats. That’s approximately the wealth pattern in America.

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…

RESEARCH : MORE SUICIDES UNDER CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS, here.

Half of homeowners predicted to be underwater by 2011 – WSJ

If house owners owe more than house is worth, more will stop paying the mortgage, here. 

Using retirement funds 401K to pay the mortgage on houses with dropping value? here. 

Congress panel will look into predatory lending - here         

New spike in homeless numbers due to job losses, foreclosures, here.

Our new social extremes

36 million in America are chronically lacking adequate food, according to the government. And it’s getting worse.  As bank CEOs, auto executives get $ billions in bailout — NY Times here.

The shape of American society

< Click on the picture to see US social stratification, surveyed by sociologists D. Livingston and S. Rose. It’s 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 book contains this picture as a poster.

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.

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

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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.

ACLU challenges National Security Agency for continued spying on innocent Americans, charging that their unchecked surveillance authority, invading the privacy of innocent Americans, is illegal and unconstitutional here and here. Whistleblowers within NSA have revealed their activities to ABC News. But ACLU is not winning in court.

UPDATE: Russell Tice, an NSA operative, blows whistle. He told Olbermann the NSA has been spying on “everybody,” not just those making out-of-country communications, and particular scrutiny was given to journalists, and that huge amounts of surveillance information is stored on databases; and that his attempts to get hearings were squelched while Bush was president, here.

UPDATE: POLICE SPYING ON LEFT ACTIVISTS, VIGILS. LA Times reports that undercover police added nuns, enviros, pacifist to terror database, with categories for anti-war protesters, anti-government, here.

20,000 troops to help police USA

Pentagon says they are for “domestic security,” here. Whatever happened to Posse Comitatus, the old law retricting the military from doing domestic police work?

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And register your feeling in the opinion poll, right column of this blog, about people fearing the government.

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 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.

- assembled by watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), here.  CREW wants Jane Harman (D) investigated, here.

Councilman pees on crowd

From a balcony, here.

Joe Sixpack, “you betcha,” and President Bush who mispronounced words in his speeches – there’s a culture war and the issue is intelligence, argues Bilerico.

USA ranked 36th in the world for press freedom

Report here.

New evidence: speculators were behind last year’s oil price spike

- and in an unregulated market it may happen again.

Investigation of speculators dominating in ’dark markets’ here and here.

No new refineries have been built in the US in 29 years

 Report here. (They’re not cheap at $2 B – $4 Billion each, here).

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 this year, and the year to come, 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 – or a variation of it.

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.

Profiteer (n): one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit esp. on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency

Your stockbroker’s grinning because growing worldwide hunger means lucrative, sure-fire investment opportunities. Here.

After this recession is over

Predictions vary but many say our economy will be well on the road to recovery in 2 to 3 years. In fact some are saying  things will look much cheerier in 2009.

Then we’ll see a rapid return to the old ways.

Obama will install a few fixes into the economy, and sensible regulations will be hammered onto the financial markets – a few new laws.

Take a breath.

A few new credit cards arrive in your mailbox; suddenly a new crop of businessmen are talking razor slick, and prices begin to creep up again.

Then begins a new national scramble for stuff.

Your broker calls you on the phone chattering about miracle recoveries. New armies of salesmen with 12-foot smiles will be pushing holdings, stocks, shiny investments. – And more of those two-story SUVs.

And this recession will be like a squall of very bad weather that slows the traffic down terribly. (Collapsing banks are like, bad weather.) – But no change in traffic direction.

Eventually the weather passes. Amazing wreckage to be seen, yes. More clearing. But eventually, the old scenery is plain as day again.

Moving again.

And no change in the nation’s final destination: more.

Back to shopping as the center of life.

Listen. Three years is not enough to change the scenery, not the towering corporate landscape. Not the precipitous differences between rich and poor. Not the thick roots of Social Darwinism ever-budding through the dark soil we stand on.

The sooner the recovery, the shorter will be our memory for this debacle. (Anybody remember the Savings and Loans collapses, twenty years ago?)

A snappy return to greed.

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.

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

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, 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 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 2005. 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.