Sep 20 2009
If you missed this on friday, The Bill Moyers Journal you may want to at least catch his essay for this week. The rest of the show would do well to watch as well, on the Death of Conservatism, the State of Unions and a read of ‘Young Workers: a Lost Decade’.
September 18, 2009
A Bill Moyers essay on the protests in Washington, D.C. and whose funding opposition to health care reform.
Bill Moyers Essay Sept 18th
Sep 17 2009
Conservative voices have continued to rehash, as part of the Reagan mythology, the military impotent of President Carter a la Iranian Hostage Crisis. They use this as their catch-all justification for and evidence of the evils of a weak military. Advocating for a strong military is the same kind of feel-good panacea as pushing for a strong local police force. Both of them promise security and peace of mind, when what they often produce is neither secure nor peaceful. A policeman on every corner will not necessarily keep young women from being violently attacked and seventeen police cars on the road at all time will not eliminate bank robberies or theft of property. However, many people like to entertain the delusion just the same. The facade of security is much more popular than the reality. For example, a sure-fire way to render yourself instantly unpopular is to propose a sharp reduction in money earmarked for the police department, no matter how justified one might be in requesting it.
In my own place of residence, the city has had to cut back funding for a variety of projects and departments. In particular, the school district has been given a much smaller share of tax revenue then ordinarily allotted it, while a far larger share has been allocated to the police force. As for me, I’d much rather have an informed and educated citizenry of our future leaders than the spectacle which routinely greets me when I’m driving around town—that of bored policemen and policewomen driving around to make their visual presence known, but seemingly not much else. While I do appreciate that most of the police vehicles these days run on flex fuel, not conventional gasoline, I still can’t help reflecting on how many tax dollars are being squandered on the latest state-of-the-art gadget or technique that is funded out of the paychecks of ordinary citizens and will be used infrequently, if at all. Many police purchases I have observed come across to these eyes as nothing more than expensive toys for grown ups.
On this same subject, a former Bush treasury official has stated in the Wall Street Journal that he fears Health Care spending will exceed military spending. Like the good Quaker I am, my immediate response is, of course, “What’s wrong with that?” A sure-fire way to render yourself instantly unpopular is to start talking about war as an immoral agent in direct contradiction to Jesus’ teachings—one that needs to be banished from the face of the earth. I suppose I’d much rather people be healthy and live long lives as free from pain as they can than for us to have the unfailingly depressing capacity to blow the hell out of our latest enemy. Not only that, I might even be enough of a dreamer to believe that improving the quality of life for all might be a far more unifying solution than violently ending lives in an inferno of evil.
To draw a parallel between a city police force and the U.S. military, all kinds of devices are utilized that give the facade of protection and safety. In reality, they are little more than window dressing and wishful thinking. As we have determined, a color-coded terror alert system does not keep us safe. An increased troops presence in Afghanistan has not interrupted the opium trade, nor prevented the reformation of the Taliban. Constant patrols in armed vehicles have not completely eliminated violent acts. Nor has this deceptively insufficient shift of soldiers from one troubled country to another prevented journalists from being kidnapped. My point in identifying these limitations of military force is not to inspire fear, but rather to illustrate a very difficult lesson: complete safety is an illusion.
The President and others have talked constantly about the need to eliminate waste, graft, and corruption in the health care industry as a means to pay for the massive overhaul commonly known as Health Care Reform. I don’t doubt that the program will, as promised, pay for itself if serious efforts towards eliminated frivolity and superfluous procedures are eliminated. Living for the past fifteen years with a chronic illness have provided more than enough examples of that. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t as aware of the absurdity as I am. However, somehow we as a society haven’t quite confronted the subject of waste and needless expenditure as regards military spending. Though noting the negative impact of the military-industrial complex is a start, if we are committed to reduce our deficit and to streamline certain titanic segments of our economy, we might be wise to consider military spending reform, too.
Though I might be an idealist at times, I am far from a fool. If we thought that Health Care Reform inspired incredible hatred and spite from the Right, imagine what kind of missiles would be lobbed at us if we proposed ways to modify the military. The Republican response would be immediate. We’d be painted as soft on terror, soft on defense, and accused of inviting other countries to invade us. Uniformed people at Town Hall Forums would demand that they didn’t want a government-controlled military. The same snidely dismissive charges that greeted Candidate Obama when he advocated at least giving diplomacy with our enemies a chance would resume. In many situations, particularly this one, my spiritual beliefs are tempered by pragmatism. I do recognize that the only way war can be set aside is if every country gets on board and that for, a variety of complex and interlocking reasons, that is unlikely to happen any time soon. Even so, we have a distressing tendency to believe that our military always works flawlessly and that the more tax dollars we add to it, the better it functions. The same people who speak out against government incompetence or are the first to assert that “throwing money at a problem is no solution” notably do not extend these same scathing criticisms to our military.
I suppose could mention Abu Ghraib, enhanced interrogation techniques, Guantanamo Bay, the Iraq War, and others in my own defense, but spin and rationalization will always get in the way of logic. There will always be questions considered too dangerous to be sufficiently questioned or even sufficiently answered. I, for one, believe that there is far more to 11 September 2001 then will ever be revealed in our lifetime. Lest anyone misunderstand, what I am NOT saying is that I believe 11 September was an inside job. What I AM proposing, however, is my firm belief that this country was so woefully unprepared for the attack (strongest military in the world, natch) that the entire chain of command as established in the Bush Administration, on that tragic day, resembled nothing less than a comedy of errors. I believe that Vice-President Cheney and high-ranking insiders, not President Bush, ran our government for several hours, if not for several days in the chaos and confusion that ensued in the immediate aftermath; an embarrassing degree of miscommunication and incompetence reigned. Admitting that to the public and to the world would not exactly show us to be the sterling, confident superpower of which we like to portray ourselves.
Much could be learned from both our mistakes and our network of quick fixes. When we outsource our freedom and health to industries and specialized occupations, we effectively place our collective health and safety in the hands of others who might not necessarily have our best interest at heart. No Republican would ever wish to be labeled an anarchist, but their pervasive and recently adamant refrain that government is the root of evil, whether they recognize it or not, is just that. If conservatives wish to follow this line of logic to its ultimate conclusion, they ought to be finding ways to dismantle government altogether. They won’t do this, of course, because dismantling government includes dismantling the police and the military. Anarchy on one’s own terms is not anarchy at all. Those Republican politicians who believe that government is the problem, not the solution would be wise to question why they have made a career out this supposed cesspool of corruption and terrible things. They have had years to prune government down to some arbitrary, more manageable size and have found themselves indebted to the same corruption, out of control spending, and size-swelling as the Democrats they criticize. Quite hypocritically, they have increased the size of the government they agree with at the expense of the government they do not. This isn’t just hypocrisy, it’s also awful policy. That they can still make these arguments with a straight face might explain why they happen to be the minority party who has to embrace the lunacy of their fringes to even stay relevant.
Aug 26 2009
On the heals of What were they hiding? concerning the torture policies of the cheney/bush administration/CIA/Private Contractors/Military, the George Washington University National Security Archives brings a slew of documents on the CIA and Vietnam conflict years, before our invasion, during and after.
Jul 30 2009
The writing of this diary was inspired in part by mwmwm’s jeremiad of Monday. The point is this: the future is cathected negatively because our institutions have failed to catch up with the real future unfolding before our eyes.
Thus institution-based actions are often ineffective. Direct action approaches to social problems, however, offer the immediate replacement of power lost through institution-based strategies of “triangulation.” In relying upon bourgeois, capitalist government in a neoliberal era, we sell out our ideals to that government’s raison d’etre. Thus anarchist direct action (in such a context) suggests grounds for further thought about methods of political problem-solving (and of redress for lost human rights), even for progressives.
(Crossposted at Big Orange)
Jun 16 2009
There is a book by Vernor Vinge called a Fire Upon the Deep. It is a great space opera read, but that is not what this post is about. In the book there are many alien civilizations that use an intra-galactic network to communicate with each other. It is obviously modeled on the early internet. In this book it is often called “The Net of a Thousand Lies” as there is no way to verify every piece of information posted on it by ever poster. This too is similar to the internet. Which leads to the Dog’s question today; how do you decide what to trust and what to ignore?
“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“
Apr 19 2009
Cross-posted from www.Progressive-Independence.org
I was perusing a certain kind of ideological web site when I came upon the following article by Nicole Colson.
ONE AFTER another over the last month, the reports of terrible incidents of violence kept coming:
— A Vietnamese immigrant in Binghamton, N.Y., increasingly paranoid about police and upset after losing his job, kills 13 people at a center for immigrants before committing suicide.
— An Alabama man who had struggled to keep a job kills 10 people in a shooting spree before committing suicide.
— A Pittsburgh man, recently unemployed and afraid that the government would ban guns, opens fire on police responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three.
These are just some of the recent eruptions of violence to make the headlines in U.S. newspapers. In the 30-day period between March 10 and April 10, there were at least nine multiple shootings across the U.S., claiming the lives of at least 58 people.
The individual motives and stories differ widely, but there’s a common thread among these incidents–the worsening economic crisis is becoming a factor in pushing some people who are already on the edge over it.
It seems nearly everyone is concerned with the ever-shrinking middle class, but almost no one is willing to discuss the social class those middlings are being tossed into: the POOR. The platform, speaking for the poor, that John Edwards ran on during last year’s presidential election primaries resulted in his marginalization and eventual banishment from the public discourse as the elite weeded out those candidates who dare point out the disease of poverty. But just because the messengers were silenced does not mean the larger problem went away; it continues to fester, with disastrous social consequences.
Mar 25 2009
A black hole gravitationally sucks in everything that comes near it, and nothing can return from the other side of the event horizon once sucked in.
Banks lending money is one of the major, if not THE major way they produce revenue and profit. In any business, when sales are down you do everything you can do to increase sales revenue – or you go bust – UNLESS you can produce revenue another way.
Yet the real message coming through is that the banks BANKERS seem to have decided that they do not want to increase revenue in any other way than simply taking it from taxpayers instead of lending to generate revenue.
This leads me to suspect that they have no intention of returning to providing the “product” they have always provided to generate revenue, but instead have decided to simply and openly steal it, and that the current economic crisis is not something the government is trying to correct but is instead actively a partner in intentionally manufacturing.
With government help. With Geithner’s help. With the presidents help.
We have a big problem. The problem is not the economic crisis.
What is “government”?
“Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion — such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices.”
–Harry Browne
Thomas Ferguson is an American political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is also a contributing editor for The Nation.
Today Ferguson talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the banking crisis and the black hole at the center of the crisis, the Obama administrations response so far to it, and about something he thinks really needs to be done that is not being done.
Real News – March 25, 2009 – 12 minutes 25 seconds
Obama should save the banks, not the bankers
Tom Ferguson: Stimulus package is dangerously small; plan for toxic assets shovels money to bankers
Mar 03 2009
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Declaration of Independence
1776
Has our form of Governance become destructive to the majority? If so how shall we work to change our government? What would a future with a different form of government, economy, social order look? Where is our current governance taking us?
Once a week I publish an installment in the story. This is followed by the Concepts Behind the Fiction section. This section is filled with information and links for you to investigate.
About a week after I publish on this site, I will publish on The Daily Kos, Z Communications and here. Check my Links button on my website to connect to one of these discussions. These posting will happen simultaneously and on a Saturday or Monday afternoon (depending on which day of the week I have off from my paying job). The day of the posting will be announced on my website. I will make myself available to moderate a discussion and for comments and questions during that time.
A running Post of what readers think are the most important issues for our future and how to get to the future we want will then be created as part of these discussions.
If you are coming to this blog in the middle then check out the Characters List and the Plot Summary pages.
Feb 13 2009
So far nothing has worked; not bailouts, or conversions to bank holding companies, not front page stories or investigative committees…nothing is helping the economic crisis it only continues to get worse.
What if we cannot stop the economic crisis from continuing to deteriorate, what if the economic levees break?
How is our government (Federal, State, Municipal) preparing for the worst case scenario?
How are we hoping they are preparing, what should we be expecting of them, what can we do?
cross-posted at Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
Feb 11 2009
The world is full of people paying for the economic fraud of unelected, rapacious and sociopathic dictators.
Latin America and Africa tend to be the hardest hit by this phenomena.
This is what happens:
Mr. Tin Pot Dictator runs up an incredible debt buying gold cadillacs and weapons with which to dominate and exploit the people of his country. The people suffer miserably, the Dictator lives a lavish lifestyle above the law until he is deposed in some manner, then the banks move in and enslave the people and control the sociopolitical landscape by leveraging that illegitimate debt against the progress of the population, innocent victims of authoritarian rule.
It seems to me that there’s been a quickening of this trend, and it’s taken place right here in America – naked right in the open. Bankers have muscled out the middle man, the Tin Pot Dictator, and have become the Dictators themselves.
Jan 03 2009
Last night, 1-02-009, on the PBS News Hour they held a discussion with “Frontline” correspondent and filmmaker June Cross who describes her documentary “The Old Man and the Storm” which will air on PBS’s “Frontline” on Jan. 6th, New Orleans: Three Years After Katrina.
This is a timely documentary more than three years after Katrina and especially as to the way the Government has been handling that compared to the extremely quick bailouts of the financial institutions in the present economic collapse and at other times when the corporate elite demanded their political friends come to their aid. There are three short video’s at the ‘Frontline’ site that I’m embedding below, the third one touches on just that, especially as to the promises made by the President bush and other Government Officials and to the rapidly failing ‘free market’ ‘trickle down’ economic policy of the GOP.
Dec 26 2008
The various outrages over the “bailout” typically imagine it as a species of robbery — but what needs to be seen here is that the “bailout” is an attempt to “reconstitute capitalism” given the threat to it (see the Economist editorial “Capitalism at bay“) which was prompted by the deflation of the credit bubble and the current economic crisis. If we look at the “bailout” with a sober, steady focus upon its meaning in political economy, we see it, and the capitalism it is reconstituting, for what it really is: a system of domination, where an investor class gets “bailed out” whereas the rest of us are viewed as being lucky to find work and are supposed to be placated through “jobs programs.”
(Crossposted at Big Orange)
