They’re getting bolder. Aren’t they?

President Obama appointed his deficit commission, the “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” to take a fresh look at long range plans to resolve the Federal budget deficit. The commission was supposed to be a bipartisan and objective group, empowered to think outside the box.

As it turns out, the commission was infested from the beginning by right-wing ideologues financed by corporations and the ultra wealthy who served a “volunteer staff.” What a terrific idea, saving the government all that money by volunteering you time and expertise.

It’s difficult to say which is more troubling:

• the fact that a number of commission staffers are paid by Peter Peterson the billionaire hedge fund manager who brought us the Blackstone Investment Group debacle a couple of years ago and is now financing “Fiscal Times” (Peterson’s lackeys are saying that his organization is misunderstood and that, besides, they’ve recused themselves of any connections for the time being.); or that
• last summer commission co-chair Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), complained that that the government is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits!" (He later apologized for the remark but refused demands for his resignation.).

Nevertheless, the week the commission released the draft of the outline of their report which is due out in December. The outline relies heavily on cuts to government programs like Social Security and reductions or eliminations of many middle class tax breaks like the mortgage interest deduction. And -- Surprise! -- there’s only passing mention of the possibility of increasing revenue through tax hikes on the wealthy!

Washington Post, 11/11/10: Many deficit commission staffers paid by outside groups

 

Meet the new boss

MUMBAI, India — President Obama, fresh off a stinging electoral defeat for Democrats, opened a 10-day tour of Asia on Saturday with a courtship of corporate America, including private meetings with American business executives who are here for his visit and an announcement that he will lift longstanding restrictions on exports of closely held technologies to India.

(New York Times, November 7, 2010)


Fascism: the organization of a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems.


Fascists believe:

• The nation requires strong leadership and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong
• Individual identity and pluralism are dysfunctional aspects of society and justify a totalitarian state as a means to maintain order
• Attempts to create autonomy are an affront to the nation and a threat to order

Fascists reject:

• The autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated
• Opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement
• The concepts of egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism in favor of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit, and will

 

Massive dislocations

Good morning campers!

It's gonna be a lot of fun keeping our eyes out for the seemingly unrelated indicators of our slip into corporate fascism ... like this from today's newspapeer:

TCF suit warns of 'massive dislocation'

TCF (a corporation, by the way), is suing the Federal Reserve (its own government regulator) arguing that the corporation is being denied its constitutional rights because the new financial reform law (ObamaFinance?) limits the fees large banks can charge on debit card transactions. According to TCF, it's a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution because it gives unfair advantage to the little banks. And, just for good measure, they want the Court to agree that the new fee limits are an unconstitutional "taking" of the corporation's private property.

Then, just to hammer home their point, TCF threatens that unless the new law is overturned, their "return on equity" (that's profit for the owners) will be harmed so much that they'll need a government bailout to stay in business.

Massive dislocations indeed.

Afterglow in Fallujah

Good morning campers!

Remember back in 2004? Way back then -- even before the iPhone -- the locals barbecued a few Blackwater mercenaries and hung them from a bridge. In order to show them who's who, the USA bombarded the city of Fallujah for a few weeks, and then subsequently pulled out.

Well it turns out that during the intervening six years -- while we've all been busy upgrading to HD -- some very strange things have been happening in Fallujah: babies with serious birth defects (including a girl born with two heads), paralysis of the lower limbs, a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults.

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

The study, Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009, was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and seems to confirm the use of depleted uranium munitions.

Scientific study shows soaring cancer rates in Fallujah; DU suspected

At the time -- six years ago when US consumers were waiting a year to buy a new Prius -- right thinking Americans were incensed when the US military admitted that it was using white phosphorous bombs on the citizens of Fallujah.

It turns out a little burned flesh was the least of their worries.

"Is this land made for you and me?"

When Woody Guthrie finally got sick and tired of hearing Kate Smith on the radio during World War II singing Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" he sat down and wrote an alternative narrative that he called "God Blessed America for Me."

The song didn't catch on right away.  Folk singers weren't very much in vogue what with the war going on and all.  Besides, the lyrics were a little, well, seditious ... especially for a nation that fighting the good fight -- and with God on its side:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I'd seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn't say nothing;

That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

The song was finally published in 1951 under a new title, "This Land is Your Land."  But it was the McCarthy era and these three verses were omitted from the published version that was sung by generations of school children.

More than half a century later, 90 year-old Pete Seeger restored the progressive lyrics when he performed the song at the inauguration in 2008 ...

Spectator Sports

The story about the oil tank truck crash in the Congo was on page eleven of the morning paper, sandwiched between the Wal-Mart ad and a story about American teenage girls risking eye damage as they use imported contact lenses to make their eyes look bigger.

A tank truck carrying fuel oil crashed while trying to pass a minivan in a remote village in the Congo. As the tanker started leaking oil the villagers rushed in with buckets to scoop up the precious oil. In the Congo desperately poor people often descend upon disabled oil trucks and cart the fuel away. It’s hard to find firewood for cooking and heating following years of war in which more than five million people have been killed. Fuel oil is precious.

As I am reading about the tank truck crash the CBS Sunday Morning comes on with a feature story about “new American Hero” Joey Chestnut. I’m transfixed. I’ve never heard of this guy, but it happens that this Fourth of July he is defending his world record eating 68 hot dogs in ten minutes.

There’s Joey, holed up in his Manhattan hotel room talking strategy as he prepares for the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest today. He’s won the past four years in a row. Joey talks about standards for his sport. He won't eat just anything. Cow tongues are out. But he admits he might compete in a mayonnaise eating contest depending upon the prize money.

Apparently food eating has become a spectator sport. There are rules and a regular circuit of competitions throughout the year. And Joey Chestnut is the reigning champion. There’s even a sports book where you can bet on the outcome. Joey is favored.

Meanwhile, back at the village in the Congo it’s getting dark. A villager, hoping to scoop up some more fuel oil so she can cook a hot meal for her family approaches with a kerosene lantern. The spilled fuel catches fire and the tanker explodes burning at least 220 people to death.

The death toll, which includes 61 children, was particularly high because the village was unusually crowded yesterday. One of the few places in the region where there are televisions that can receive satellite signals, soccer fans had jammed into town to watch the World Cup.

Today, it's ready, set, eat for Joey Chestnut

220 die in Congo after wrecked tanker explodes

“The past didn’t go anywhere.”

Remember those FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina? You know, the ones built with cheap insulation that caused them to fill with poisonous formaldehyde gas making them dangerously toxic for use as long-term residences. I’d assumed they were all treated as hazardous waste and scrapped, but it turns out they are back and being pedaled to desperate workers forced to take jobs cleaning up the BP oil spill.

There’s a lesson in the power of the capitalism and the free markets here …

1. Over the course of a century or so we consistently select the lowest price bidder to build dykes in New Orleans that, it turns out can’t hold back the flood surge they were designed to prevent. As a consequence hundreds of thousands are left homeless, but generations of contractors profit from government contracts and politicians get re-elected based on their tight-fisted management of taxpayers’ money.

2. In order to provide shelter for those made homeless by Hurricane Katrina (A natural disaster, after all. Who could have anticipated such a thing?), we accept the lowest price bids to provide tens of thousands of trailers to house the homeless. It turns out that the trailers are designed for nothing more than a weekend camping trip and quite dangerous if you intend to stay in them for any length of time. Nevertheless, the manufacturers profit from the government's emergency contracts and politicians run on being both compassionate (providing housing) and conservative (tearing down the public housing that existed before the storm).

3. Not wanting to waste government money, the unusable trailers are not scrapped, but instead sold as government surplus with the buyers agreeing to maintain on each one a warning label saying it is one of those FEMA trailers and unfit for human habitation. Maybe you can use it for a storage shed or something, but don’t sleep, eat, or breathe while inside. Still, they’re a bargain, sold at a deep discount price since they’re not useful for much. And we can trust the purchaser to play by the rules and re-sell them only for their new purpose.

4. BP, seeking to keep cost down, accepts the lowest price bidders and cuts all manner of corners in order to save money, which leads to a runaway oil well that poisons the Gulf Coast putting tens of thousands out of work.

5. The out-of-work take jobs cleaning up the oil but need temporary housing near the spill sites. Next the new owners of the government surplus trailers step up and offer a selection of virtually unused trailers. Nice ones, if you ignore the glue smudge near the door where the FEMA safety warning was peeled off. Perfectly good trailers. “Why they’ve still got that ‘new car smell.’ ”

Utah Phillips was right when he said, “The past didn’t go anywhere.”

Will the circle be unbroken?

The British media reports that BP is preparing to suspend dividend payments to shareholders in order to placate U.S. public opinion:

BP plans to defer dividend after pressure from Obama

So let's see ...

Taking full advantage of U.S. de-regulation which began with Ronald Reagan and the Bush tradition of weak enforcement of the few rules that do exist, BP drills a high risk well without adequate safety preparation which blows up creating an extinction level ecological disaster that pisses off the normally complacent and anti-government U.S. citizenry who demand that their government do something which threatens to boil over into an international incident causing BP to eliminate its dividends so that the British pensioner whose retirement nest egg is mostly invested in blue chip BP stock winds up eating cat food three nights a week while U.S. citizens continue to drive their 6,000 pound S.U.V.s to tea party rallies where they wistfully recall the Reagan era and loudly complain that their taxes are too high and that the Obama administration is killing jobs.

Is that about right?

Is it any wonder these people hate us? Soon we're going to have to expand the Global War on Terror beyond just the little brown people in the middle east with funny names.