This late April Fool's joke by former Labor Secretary and "liberal firebrand" Robert Reich is so funny I really did laugh out loud:
Which brings me to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Some wonder about the strength of her values and ideals. I don’t. I’ve known her since she was 19 years old, and have no doubt where her heart is. For her entire career she’s been deeply committed to equal opportunity and upward mobility.
Some worry she’s been too compromised by big money – that the circle of wealthy donors she and her husband have cultivated over the years has dulled her sensitivity to the struggling middle class and poor.
But it’s wrong to assume great wealth, or even a social circle of the wealthy, is incompatible with a deep commitment to reform...
Oh please Robert, stop it, I don't know how much more I can take. And just how is Queen Hillary supposed to show her "commitment to reform" anyway?
So we must resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act and bust up the biggest banks, so millions of Americans don’t ever again lose their homes, jobs, and savings because of Wall Street’s excesses.
Also: Increase taxes on the rich in order to finance the investments in schools and infrastructure the nation desperately needs.
Strengthen unions so working Americans have the bargaining power to get a fair share of the gains from economic growth.
Limit the deductibility of executive pay, and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Oppose trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership designed to protect corporate property but not American jobs.
And nominate Supreme Court justices who will reverse “Citizens United.”
Oh fuck it, I'm not laughing any more. I'm not laughing because it is obvious that Robert Reich is being a duplicitous piece of shit. Reich knows damn well which president signed the repeal of Glass-Stegall: Bill Fucking Clinton. And Reich was IN FUCKING OFFICE as Labor Secretary when Bill Fucking Clinton signed the first two major "free" trade agreements, NAFTA and GATT, into law. And he surely knows raising taxes on the rich or the federal minimum wage will be a total non-starter with the Republicans in charge of one or both houses of Congress. Not to mention that Reich cannot possibly believe that Hillary can get elected without mucho donations from Wall Street and big corporations, the spurning of which would likely put her at least a billion dollars behind Jeb in fundraising.
Some of you may think I'm being unfair to poor ol' Robert Reich. Yet I truly believe he is not a stupid man. Therefore, the only explanation I can come up with for why he wrote this particular piece of drivel is that he is lying through his teeth in order to give his delusional liberal/progressive audience false hope. Sadly, he is hardly alone in that regard.
Bonus: "Let 'em eat cake," she says...just like Marie Antoinette
It should be no secret that the Democratic Party is in deep shit. The 2014 midterm elections were a major disaster, and the party is about one stock market crash between now and November 2016 away from losing the White House as well. Despite all the drivel you hear about Republicans' supposed long term demographics problem, it is the donkeys who seem to be heading towards if not extinction being reduced to a regional party--only politically viable in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest and West Coast and a smattering of college towns in between. Their are four main reasons for this:
1). Outside of presidential races, Citizens United is allowing Republicans to clobber the Democrats in fundraising.
Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush will likely have similar war chests when they face off against each other next year as their respective parties' presidential nominees. That's because there are enough Wall Street and big business types who either still lean Democrat in presidential campaigns, or who hedge their bets by giving to both parties at the national level, to blunt the effects of Citizens United. But at the state level, where as John Oliver recently pointed out the real lawmaking is going on in this country these days, conservative billionaires like the Koch Brothers and business groups like the Chamber of Commerce have figured out that they can get a much bigger bang for their campaign donation bucks, as it were.
The Republicans have already successfully gerrymandered Congressional districts in enough states that in 2012 the party retained their majority in the House of Representatives despite the facts that the Democrats won a plurality of the congressional vote (49% to 48%). Only 18 current state governors are Democrats. Most tellingly, Republicans control BOTH houses of the legislature in 33 of 49 bicameral states (Nebraska's legislature is unicameral and at least nominally nonpartisan)--even in such supposedly "blue" states such as Wisconsin and Michigan. In most of the states they control, their numbers are overwhelming (in Indiana for example they occupy 71 of 110 house seats and 40 of 50 Senate seats).
2). Young people have figured out that the Democrats do not represent their interests.
In 2008, record numbers of people in the 18-29 age group voted--and most of them voted for Obama. Their excitement and enthusiasm was palpable, and they really believed that President Hopey-Changey would cure America's many social ills and fix the deck that had very much become stacked against them. By 2012, however, Obama may have still gotten their votes but their level of enthusiasm for him had visibly waned. That election was decided more by television advertising than though armies of college-age kids volunteering and knocking on doors. By the 2014 midterm elections, Obama's abandonment of his base had caused so much cynicism that the young voters who had been so motivated to see him get elected largely stayed home--and the Democrats got annihilated.
3). Ambitious young politicians have recognized that the Republican Party is where the action is.
First, let's recognize who the loathsome Ted Cruz really is: the latest heir to Joseph McCarthy's political legacy. Like old "Tail Gunner Joe," Cruz has been clever enough to realize that providing the media with liberal-baiting sound bites is the easiest way to get ahead quickly in Washington--especially in the Fox News era. To take another example Michelle Bachmann, a back bencher of no distinction, was able to become a powerful force to be reckoned with in the House of Representatives (while reaping the considerable monetary benefits that go along with that power) by making a media spectacle of herself. And there are plenty of others who strive to follow the examples of Cruz and Bachmann.
Young Democratic congresscritters, on the other hand, lack a tailor-made media outlet like Fox News. So instead they have to be content plodding along for many years building up seniority behind fools like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, hoping that one day they can land a committee chairmanship (a longshot for the party these days, especially in the House) or a leadership post. All along the way they have to be careful they don't get targeted for defeat--which is hardly a recipe for the kind of risk taking that vaults one into the spotlight.
4). The Democrats' focus on identity politics is a dead end.
Quick question: what party does the only current black U.S. senator represent? That would be the Republicans, natch--and more incredibly he's a teabagger from South Carolina. Meanwhile, lilly white Utah not only elected a black congressWOMAN, but she's the daughter of Haitian immigrants. South Carolina and Louisiana are run by Republican Indian-American governors. The last Republican president named the first black and then a black female as Secretary of State (and gave us the first Hispanic attorney general), and key conservative national firebrands of this past decade (Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman) have been women.
The point is that the Republicans have learned that finding ambitious non-white, non-male useful idiots to run for office is not all that difficult, and that their troglodyte base will actually vote for such people if they spew enough hateful rhetoric and Fox News tells them to. Through this strategy, the Republicans are increasing their percentages of the minority vote just enough to counterbalance the perceived demographic disadvantage that results from old white bigots dropping dead right and left. Viewed in this light, the party's efforts at voter suppression are not only overkill but are actually counterproductive because they allow the Democrats to play the racism card.
Speaking of the racism card, given that the Democrats have sold out to big business and Wall Street and their record on economic and foreign policy issues has become virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans, that is really the only card they have left. Hillary's hope to win the presidency is that women voters in particular will be excited enough at the prospect of one of their own ascending to the White House that they will overlook her long and dismal prowar, pro big business record.
But say Hillary does win in 2016--what happens going forward when the reality sinks in that she is every bit the liberal/progressive sellout that Obama is? The Democrats will have already given us the first black and first female presidents. With the Republicans putting forward more and more diverse faces (even if they are touting policies that reinforce the control of the same old white male oligarchy), America's supposedly liberal party will have NOTHING left to run on to distinguish themselves from the GOP.
If I were your standard liberal/progressive editorialist, I might try to con you into believing that what I just wrote above opens the door for a truly leftist populist third party to emerge and sweep the Democrats from the stage. But I have more respect for the intelligence of my readers than to ever try and convince you that such a thing is possible or that Skittle pooping unicorns do in fact exist (yes, I believe it is POSSIBLE that change could happen at the state and local levels were the left motivated to do anything more than just futilely protest once in awhile, but I do NOT believe it WILL happen).
Nonetheless, the elites NEED the Democrats to maintain the illusion that American still has a functioning democratic system. What will happen if, say, Jeb wins in 2016 and the Republicans score the magic filibuster-proof Senate majority of 61? How will they then plausibly explain their inability to roll back Obamacare, or to start a war with Iran, or to close the borders against all immigration as so many in their base want them to do? Not to mention that they will then be responsible for ALL of the bad shit that happens to the country as the realities of resource depletion and environmental degradation slowly bite harder and harder, and won't have the Democrats to "kick around any more."
All of this will be moot for at least four more years if Hillary wins in 2016 and the status quo of "gridlock" on the national level and the real work of enacting laws to strip the remaining wealth from the middle class and working class continues to quietly happen at the state and local levels, but if Jeb is the winner this could become a real appearance problem for the oligarchy. They'll quickly need to find another Obama, an ambitious young climber with a decent liberal record not only willing to sell out all of his or her principles but also able to get up in front of the party base and shamelessly lie repeatedly and effectively. I don't see such an individual on the political horizon right now, but there has to be at least one talented young sociopath out there who would be willing to audition for the role.
Almost everybody is familiar with the demographic marketing phrase: "the key 18 to 54 age group." As if every human being over or under that age range is somehow less valuable. Well, they are actually--at least to corporate America. The first half of that age group is supposedly when young adults form the brand loyalties and shopping habits that they will retain for a lifetime, while the latter half are in their prime earning (read: consumption) years. This is why marketing for most products other than dietary fiber supplements, incontinence garments and mobility scooters are slick, flashy and heavy on the "coolness" factor. Given a choice between possibly offending older consumers versus cementing brand loyalty of the 18 to 54'ers, most companies figure that while granny may indignantly chuck a slipper at the screen, she's unlikely to change her 50-year love of a particular breakfast cereal brand as a result.
All of this is a long winded way of explaining why Walmart shocked a lot of people when it came out strongly against the Arkansas religious "freedom" measure that was very similar to Indiana's. It was one thing for Apple to condemn the Indiana law--Apple presumably has lots of gay and lesbian customers and the bigoted old white fuckers who support these shitty discriminatory laws aren't likely to ever understand how a smartphone works, let alone ever buy one. But the stereotype is that Walmart customers are exactly the kind of Fox News watching, assault rifle totin,' Jesus lovin' morons who would applaud a law like this. After all, to cite another common but probably not completely inaccurate stereotype, your average gay couple's tastes in home furnishings do not likely run to the kind of clapboard crap on display at Sam Walton's megastore hellholes--nor would they ever want to be caught dead wearing the sweatshop assembled, ill-fitting polyester dress shirts hanging on the clothing racks.
Walmart probably could have stayed quiet regarding the proposed Arkansas law. After all, no one was ASKING the company for its opinion. The fact that it chose to say something represents an obvious awareness that younger Americans, even those less financially well off, on average tend to be more socially tolerant than older ones. Young adults today are far more likely to have friends who are openly gay than their older cohorts. Walmart just found a free way to get the best advertising it could have in the form of news stories that will make little Brandi and Justin feel better about shopping there so they will hopefully develop a lifelong habit. After all, what are Bessie and Elmer going to do, stuck as they are on a fixed income and living in a trailer with no savings account, suddenly boycott Wally World in favor of Nieman Marcus?
So let's all get our warm and fuzzys about this shining example of good corporate citizenship without getting all wrapped up in the truth of the matter, which is that if they didn't think it would help improve their bottom line the greedy fuckers who own and run Walmart wouldn't have said jack shit. And let's not ponder the day when predatory megacorporations like America's biggest retailer have finally destroyed the livelihood of average Americans to the point where even most gay and lesbian couples have no choice but to shop there whether they like it or not.
Bonus: "Indiana wants me--but I can't go back there"
Looking back upon the last few years, it really is amazing just how great things are going in America these days. President Obama has turned out to be a combination of Abraham Lincoln and FDR. Not only has he done more for black people from the Oval Office than any president since the Great Emancipator, his economic record has been right up there with the New Deal as the best thing that's ever happened to working class and middle class Americans. If you don't believe me, look at all the outstanding recent job creation numbers. The Obama record on foreign policy has been nearly as successful. Not only did he turn Afghanistan into a stable democracy, but Iraq is peaceful and prosperous and life in Libya is so much better since Obama helped depose their evil dictator.
Based on his record I am convinced that Obama's visage should be etched in stone atop Mt. Rushmore as the fifth president to be so honored. In fact, when his likeness is rightfully installed up there they should make sure they paint the rocks to match his skin tone. What better way to remind future generations of the incredible wisdom Americans showed in 2008 by making him our first ever non-white president.
Obama's legacy would be best reinforced with the election next year of Hillary Clinton, who is by far the best qualified of all the likely candidates. Not only was she a fantastic Senator and the best Secretary of State we've ever had, but she already has eight years' worth of White House experience as First Lady. In fact, I'll give you my own personal campaign moniker for election 2016 right now: "You Know the Drill, Now Vote for Hill."
Hillary could face a tough challenge in the form of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who admittedly is one of the wisest and most level-headed statesmen I've observed in my lifetime. Besides, he's a Texas politician who attended two Ivy League schools, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with a resume like that one? Cruz is likely to be challenged for the nomination by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who has been the best friend to the working man his party has seen since his own state's legendary Senator Robert "Fightin' Bob" LaFollett Sr., who once said: "No free people in history very long maintained their political freedom after having once surrendered their industrial and commercial freedom."
Of course, all of these good times would not be possible without some good old fashioned American know how and ingenuity. Thanks to the ingenious entrepreneurs in the fracking industry, American oil production has increased so much that we are once again energy independent and no longer need any oil imports at all. With gasoline prices plummeting, every American should do their patriotic duty and go out and buy the biggest SUV or pickup truck they can find--it's great for the economy, after all.
Yes, it feels so exceptional to be living in such exceptional times in this truly exceptional nation. Now if y'all will excuse me, I'm going to go out and get one of those big ass American flags that platoons of soldiers carry onto football fields during the national anthem so I can bring it home and drape it over my house.
Bonus: Exceptional times require an exceptional song
It would be perversely amusing if what will likely be by far the most expensive presidential election campaign ever is actually decided by an outside factor completely out of the candidates' control. As it stands now, just over 19 months away from the November 2016 balloting, the final stages of the Obama administration look to be eerily similar to that of the Bush administration before it. Like Obama, at this point in his presidency Bush faced an overwhelmingly hostile congress, which greatly limited his ability to maneuver on domestic and economic issues. Like his predecessor, Obama is also hoping that an impending crash in an important segment of the economy (fracking this time versus housing under Bush) doesn't take the stock market down with it and thus destroy his party's chances of retaining the White House after his departure.
Poor Hillary. If the likely 2016 matchup pitting her against Jeb were to happen tomorrow she'd likely win. The higher turnout and lack of gerrymandering in presidential races favors the Democrats, and there are plenty of women voters who will be energized by the thought of placing one of their own in the White House despite the fact that her record indicates that she will be even less sympathetic to the concerns of the Democratic base than Obama has been. But all she can do is desperately hope that Obama is able to keep the illusion of recovery going long enough to avoid another stock market crash before the election.
Back in 2008 John McCain was actually gaining ground on Obama despite the albatross of Sarah Palin hanging around his neck. He nearly pulled even in the polls just in time for the bottom to fall out on the market, taking his chances to win the election down with it. A similar occurrence this time around would almost certainly be enough to tip the balance Jeb's way.
The Democrats will no doubt shriek about all of the horrible things another Bush presidency will bring, especially in combination with a Republican controlled Congress. In reality, however, a Jeb presidency will likely not be a radical departure from Obama--just as Obama has largely steered the same course as Jeb's idiot brother. Take the possibility of war with Iran, for example, as one issue in which there would appear to be a huge difference between the parties. The true elites who run this country seem to sense that even airstrikes on Iran would likely be very bad for business. Thus, even he though he will be pushed into sounding warlike while stumping for the nomination to appease his party's neocons, President Jeb would likely continue Obama's strategy of negotiation--no matter what Bibi and his fifth column allies in Congress might want.
The biggest laugh will be if under a Jeb presidency repealing Obamacare suddenly disappears as a Republican Party priority. No doubt the party will make a show of TRYING to repeal the supposedly hated "socialist" program, but damn if those 40-odd Democrats in the Senate won't magically be able to thwart them for Jeb's entire term by placing a seemingly permanent filibuster on all repeal attempts. If Fox News suddenly stops talking about Obamacare after Jeb is elected, you'll know the fix is in and the program won't be going anywhere.
At this point, I'm leaning towards rooting for a Jeb victory just because it will be so much fun to watch Hillary being ultimately thwarted after compromising every principle she ever had as a former antiwar 60s radical, swallowing her pride and staying with Bill after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, whoring herself out to Wall Street as a New York senator and then having her 2008 electoral ambitions derailed largely because of her "Yes" vote on the Iraq War. Wouldn't it be just awesome to see her snap during her concession speech and start to strangle Bill on live television?
That last part would never happen, of course. But a lonely blogger can dream, can't he?
Bonus: "God save the queen--she ain't no human being"
"First they came for the unions, but not being a union member I did not stand up. Then they came for the black people, but not being black I did not stand up. Then they came for the gays...and I realized that maybe I should have been paying attention earlier."
So once again, there are protests in the streets decrying massive injustice. This time, it is in the form of thousands of people waving signs in downtown Indianapolis decrying the passage of a horrendously discriminatory bill against the rights of gays and lesbians allegedly in the name of "religious freedom." Just like the 2011 pro-union protests in Madison, Wisconsin, and last year's post-Michael Brown shooting protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the protestors have a legitimate reason to be aggrieved. Nevertheless, I would still like to ask the them one simple question: how many of you got involved in the midterm election campaigns for your state representatives last year and, relatedly, how many of you actually bothered the vote in said elections?
Because I just went and checked the voter turnout and saw that only 30% of Indianan registered voters even bothered to show up at the polls. In addition, you cannot tell me that the voting records and political views of the cretins in the state legislature who voted for this horrendous, pandering law were not easily available before now.
Maybe, just maybe, instead of whining, complaining and protesting the better strategy would be to organize, get your own people on the ballot, resist the corrupting overtures of the Democratic Party (form your own third party would be my advice) and beat these fuckers at their own game. Again, I realize that national and even statewide elections are so rigged by the big money as to be virtually hopeless. But the bigoted, opportunistic assholes who created and voted to pass this law by and large won their seats with only a few thousand votes. They CAN be defeated.
But no...have fun instead chanting your chants and waving your signs. It's all just sound and fury, signifying nothing. It'll feel good for a few days--kind of like watching an episode of The Daily Show or Real Time with Bill Maher. Then most of you will no doubt go home to your iPads, iPhones and 500 channels.
And that law you hate so much will still be on the books.
HBO's John Oliver hit another one out of the park this past Sunday with a brilliant rant on municipal fines and the predatory private companies that are now profiting on the backs of our poorest citizens (video embedded below). Watching it, I was reminded of some passages in Gus Russo's book, The Outfit, about the history of organized crime in Chicago, in which he makes a strong comparison between "the underworld" and "the upperworld" and how most of the great American "legitimate" fortunes were made either by using extortionist tactics similar to those of the mafia or through actual organized crime connections.
Russo cites a quote from robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, then one of America's richest men, who confessed that: "You don't suppose it is possible to run a railroad in accordance with the statutes, do you?" He also cites the example of John Factor, brother of cosmetics baron Max Factor, who began his business career with a huge, multimillion dollar white collar scam in his native Great Britain, then fled to America an became involved in the Chicago mob in the 1930s. Factor not only avoided extradition thanks to mob influence, at one point with mob help he actually faked his own kidnapping in order to send a business rival to prison for 20 years. Eventually, he ended up running a Las Vegas casino for The Outfit. Late in his life, Factor tried to obscure his criminal background with many philanthropic efforts, and actually broke down in tears when asked by a reporter about his various unpunished crimes. "How many good deeds does a man have to do to erase his past?" he reportedly sobbed. Old Joe Kennedy was probably wondering the same thing right after his son was assassinated.
The point to all of this is that in this age of the war on terrorism, the mafia doesn't make many headlines anymore. That's partly because the FBI and Department of Justice did such an effective job during the 1980s and 1990s of smashing traditional organized crime, particularly the legendary "five families" in New York. But it is also in part because the primary activities the mob made its money on (gambling, loansharking) are now legitimate businesses in the form of widespread casinos and payday lending operations, and because labor unions have been so effectively neutered that they are no longer the cash cow they once were.
As Oliver points out below, incredibly another common mob practice has not only been legalized but is now being perpetrated by private companies on behalf of municipal governments. The video features the victims of legal shakedowns, indigent minor offenders who often ended up paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars in "late fees" because of their initial inability to pay their fines. Difference being that these shakedowns are backed by the threat of imprisonment rather than the target having an arm or leg broken. In fact, Oliver doesn't explicitly make the connection but it is likely that the people shown in his video were not only being shaken down by these private "probation companies" but were also ensnared by legal loan sharks--taking out car title or payday loans in a futile effort to keep paying the ever escalating "vig" on their tiny original fines (last year, Oliver also attacked the payday loan industry--see second embedded video below).
Oliver ends the video with a brilliant point that the "right" to "pursue happiness" should also include the right to fuck up every once in awhile with getting fucked by your own government, or privately hired goons acting on behalf of your government. Of course, rich people already enjoy that right. Robert Durst has been in the news a lot lately, but to me the most astonishing aspect of his case was his acquittal on murder charges after he killed and dismembered his neighbor. Only someone with the millions to afford to buy the best legal defense possible could ever hope that a "self defense" defense could possibly be successful in such a situation.
This is all happening because of a phenomenon I cited in my last post: namely voters in this country idiotically paying the closest attention to the one election that has the LEAST importance to their daily lives and which their vote has become utterly meaningless (for president), and paying the LEAST attention to the elections that not only have the most effect on their daily lives but in which a relatively small number of them could in most cases actually change the outcome (for state and local officials). Now all we have to do is convince them to turn off American Idol (how is that POS show still drawing high ratings after 14 excruciating years?) and get them involved politically in their own communities. Yeah, right...good luck with that.
Bonus: Why does it take an Englishman to so deftly point out what is going wrong in America (Part 2)
In the past two days, two editorials were published that do a reasonable job of summing up some very disquieting new American political realities. The first, entitled "Ferguson and the Criminalization of American Life," by Anthropoly Professor David Graber of the London School of Economics, uses the recent Department of Justice report as a centerpiece to show how local governments are increasingly becoming predatory institutions, using the criminal justice system to financially squeeze those at the lower end of social ladder on behalf of the big banking institutions:
The police, then, are essentially just bureaucrats with weapons. Their main role in society is to bring the threat of physical force—even, death—into situations where it would never have been otherwise invoked, such as the enforcement of civic ordinances about the sale of untaxed cigarettes.
For most of American history, police enforcement of such regulations was not considered a major source of funding for local government. But today, in many municipalities, as much as 40% of the money governments depend on comes from the kinds of predatory policing that has become a fact of life for the citizens of Ferguson. How did this happen? Some of it, of course, has to do with populist anti-tax movements, beginning with California's Proposition 13. But much of it has happened because in recent decades, local governments have become deeply indebted to large, private financial institutions—many of the same ones that brought of us the crash of 2008. (In Ferguson, for instance, the amount of revenue collected in fines corresponds almost exactly to that shelled out to service municipal debt.) Increasingly, cities find themselves in the business of arresting citizens in order to pay creditors.
In this light the killing of Michael Brown can seen in a much different way, one in which Darren Wilson may not have acted as an out of control racist cop but instead as a glorified bill collector with a gun who overreatced when Brown forcibly refused to be exploited financially for the "crime" of walking in the street rather than on the sidewalk. It is very possible, even likely, that Brown's death was due as much to the greed of the big banks as it was to an institutionally racist police department and citizen apathy.
Graeber goes on to write:
Almost every institution in America—from our corporations to our schools, hospitals, and civic authorities—now seems to operate largely as an engine for extracting revenue, by imposing ever more complex sets of rules that are designed to be broken. And these rules are almost invariably enforced on a sliding scale: ever-so-gently on the rich and powerful (think of what happens to those banks when they themselves break the law), but with absolute Draconian harshness on the poorest and most vulnerable. As a result, the wealthiest Americans gain their wealth, increasingly, not from making or selling anything, but from coming up with ever-more creative ways to make us feel like criminals.
This is a profound transformation, and one we barely talk about. But it is rapidly altering people's most basic conceptions of their relations with society at large.
Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of "we the people."
Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.
Engelhardt then goes on to make his point much more than just "minimally," and actually concludes by saying:
In the meantime, let me be as clear as I can be about something that seems murky indeed: this period doesn’t represent a version, no matter how perverse or extreme, of politics as usual; nor is the 2016 campaign an election as usual; nor are we experiencing Washington as usual. Put together our 1% elections, the privatization of our government, the de-legitimization of Congress and the presidency, as well as the empowerment of the national security state and the U.S. military, and add in the demobilization of the American public (in the name of protecting us from terrorism), and you have something like a new ballgame.
Still, don’t for a second think that the American political system isn’t being rewritten on the run by interested parties in Congress, our present crop of billionaires, corporate interests, lobbyists, the Pentagon, and the officials of the national security state.
Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening.
I'm not really sure who Engelhardt is addressing with that last sentence. Certainly, if your deep down far enough in the weeds of awareness to be reading his blog (or this one, for that matter), you're probably not in denial that something has gone horribly wrong in this country. But it might be because Engelhardt has deluded himself into thinking that he has a greater audience reach than he does and is NOT just preaching to the choir that he starts out so tentatively and, like Graeber, fails to address the really big question of exactly who is to blame for this state of affairs.
Engelhardt dances around the question, citing the influence of big money on politics, particularly after the Citizen's United decision, the supposed "demobilzation" of the Democratic Party and the effects of voter suppression laws. Graeber doesn't assign any responsibility at all, which I guess means that the profound changes he so earnestly documents in his essay have just fallen out of the sky. It's a common affliction of liberal essayists to either cop out by blaming "wealth inequality" for America's political ills or to want to avoid discussing the subject altogether. Because to cite the real problem is to admit that the ignorance and stupidity of the little people they so desperately wish to "save" are in fact the root cause of the very trends that are destroying our so-called democracy from within.
Engelhardt reports that the amount of money spent on the 2014 midterm elections was over $4 billion and that the 2016 presidential race alone is expected to top $5 billion--up from just over $2 billion in 2012--without mentioning that the overwhelming majority of all that campaign cash will be used to buy television advertisements. The days of door-to-door canvasing and get out the vote efforts are as forgone as the need to raise lots of money from small donors in order to have a viable campaign.
Consider the above, and now consider for a moment the level of discourse included in your average 30-second campaign commercial while recognizing that despite their sheer imbecility they are what decide our national elections. The reason for that is simple--the average American voter is so uninformed or misinformed that they either base their voting decisions on the messages they receive from such simple-minded ads or upon the fact that they see more far more ads for one candidate than they do the other.
For state and local elections the problem is far worse. As I cited in my previous article about the Ferguson DOJ report, only 12% of the registered voters in that community bothered to turn out for the last mayoral and city council election and the mayor ran unopposed. And as John Oliver points out in the brilliant rant below from his HBO show, over 1,000 state legislators ran unopposed in 2014--around than 25% of the total. Additionally, if Virginia politics which I follow are at all typical of the other 49 states, even in those instances where an incumbent state legislator or local official does draw a challenger it is rare that the race is even remotely competitive.
All of this is only possible in a system in which the citizenry has collectively abdicated its basic responsibility to stay well enough informed for representative democracy to function. It is true that the rich and powerful have a vested interest in keeping the citizenry distracted through their control of the mass media, but Americans seem particularly eager to allow themselves to be distracted and to thus become effectively disenfranchised from having any voice in their own governance.
Bonus: Why does it take an Englishman to so deftly point out what's going wrong in America?
The two DOJ reports on the epic fuckery going on within the Ferguson, Missouri, criminal justice system ought to send a chill up the spine of every American, not just because of the blatant racism of the city police department but because of what the whole shitty situation says about the state of so-called American democracy. It's hard to know where begin with this hideous story. We could start with the fact that a part time municipal judge who apparently routinely jailed people for being late paying small municipal fines was paid over $56,000 a year for holding exactly TWELVE annual circuit court sessions--at a robust taxpayer funded hourly rate of $1,500. Oh, and that same asshole judge also owes the federal government $170,000 in back taxes. Motherfucker's got some gonads on him, I'll say that.
Even more appalling was the fact that from 2012-2014, 93% of all arrests made by the Ferguson PD were of black people. Additionally, two Ferguson cops and the county clerk have lost their jobs for sending racist e-mails, which is amazing given that the asshole police chief said that he would not fire Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown (Wilson resigned after the grand jury failed to indict him). E-mailing is worse than killing--that's the message here, I guess. And even before the DOJ reports were released, one of the Wilson grand jurors attempted to sue the county prosecutor for his mishandling the presenting of the case, and it was further reported that the prosecutor knowingly allowed one of the witnesses to lie to the grand jury.
So given all of the above, particularly the appallingly racist arrest record of the Ferguson PD, the key question is: how did all of this happen in a community in which as of the 2010 census more than two-thirds of the citizenry are black? Because, my friends, just as I stated in a much different context in my recent post about Hillary Clinton's e-mails, most American voters simply do not give a shit about the rampant abuse, fraud and corruption going on at all levels of their god damned government.
How else does a town that is overwhelmingly black end up with a nearly all white police department, and a racist one at that? How else does all the other corruption and petty bullshit that was going on in Ferguson happen for years on end with nothing being done about it? How else do the city officials get so fucking arrogant as to not only engage in these practices but then to order the jackbooted thuggery we saw being employed against the citizenry when it finally, many years too late, erupted into protest last year? I'll tell you how:
Voter turnout in the most recent mayoral election was approximately 12%. The Mayor ran unopposed.
The sad fact is that everyone in that town, black and white, protestor or not, should take a moment and reflect upon their own culpability at electing the shitheads who created the climate in which the Michael Brown shooting became inevitable. Darren Wilson pulled the trigger. He got away with the killing by claiming he feared for his safety. But by his own admission he was hassling Brown and his friend for the "crime" of walking in the street instead of on the sidewalk, and though we'll never know Brown's side of the story it seems likely HE reacted as the resident of city in which the police were viewed by most as an occupying army but the adult citizenry were to damn apathetic to do anything about it until after he was killed.
But don't get too cocky even though you may not live in Ferguson. It is exceedingly likely that your dismal 2016 presidential choice will be between the twin oligarchs Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. And THAT is the collective result of more that three decades of the vast majority of Americans being so ill informed that they--Republican, Democrat or even independent--have been making increasingly shitty choices, degrading the electoral system at the national level to the point where realistically there is no longer any more choice than there was for mayor of Ferguson last time around.
This does not mean that I advocate participating in sham election like the 2016 presidential contest other than to maybe cast a third party protest vote. But at the very least people ought to pay attention to what is going on at the local level, because the people who have control over your local government have the most direct control over your day-to-day life. Had literally just a few hundred voters in Ferguson lined up behind a reformist candidate for mayor last time around, Michael Brown might still be alive today.
So RIP Michael Brown. Sadly, it took your violent and completely avoidable death to wake up your friends and neighbors and get them to demand that things finally change in Ferguson, Missouri. What it would take to do the same on the national level I can't even begin to imagine.
Bonus: "I don't wanna be no mothafuckin 'accident'"
Yes folks, it seems that yet another jaw-droppingly stupid political "scandal" is upon us. This one involves none other than Queen Hillary, who during her tenure a Secretary of State apparently decided to forego using the State Department's e-mail system and instead conducted all of her official business on her own personal e-mail account.
The stupidity here begins with Clinton herself for yet again arrogantly and unnecessarily blundering her way into negative headlines. This is a woman who has been lusting after the presidency for at least most of this current century and who has been the presumed 2016 Democratic front-runner almost from the moment she took the oath to become Madame Secretary back in 2009. In other words, despite knowing the intense scrutiny her every move would be facing as the fateful election year approaches she deliberately chose to violate the Federal Records Act and give every appearance that she has something to hide. Or, as one particularly breathless (but partisanly neutral) editorial put it:
It will be framed as an issue specific to Clinton, evidence of her inability to lead the country in an open and transparent way (or, in this case, a legal way). It will also be used as evidence of her carelessness in handling government business in an non-secure manner.
More realistically, this latest Clinton scandal is further evidence of the secret ways in which the U.S. federal government operates. In recent years, U.S. citizens have grown accustomed to learning about the terrible government practices that have been blatantly hidden from them: the N.S.A. leaks, the C.I.A. torture report, the list goes on. The fact that the majority of Clinton’s Secretary of State emails are unavailable is hardly surprising. As Vox reports, that lack of transparency is nothing new. Several officials of the Bush administration were investigated towards the end of that presidency for covering up or deleting archives of emails that could have possibly incriminated the White House.
Yes, indeed, the list does go on...and on...and on. And that brings me to the second and more pertinent reason why the focus on this scandal is so stupid: because the real problem is not Hillary Clinton's lack of transparency. The real problem in that the vast majority of the American public most decidedly does not give a shit about it.
Oh sure, the Republicans and even a few progressive Democrats will fuss and fume and try to ride this particular (ahem) donkey for as much mileage as they can possibly get out of it. But what will happen after that? Precisely fuck-all, that's what. Just as has happened with all of those other "terrible government practices" Americans have learned about in recent years, this kerfuffle will also be largely forgotten by the time Justin Bieber farts out his next shitty music video.
That is the perverse beauty of the sham two-party democracy that is currently operating in America. "You're either with us or against us," is not just a bullshit phrase that our so-called "leaders" use to justify the neverending war on terror--it's also the way they make the whole system immune from infiltration by political outsiders.
If you despise Hillary Clinton it must be because you're a fundamentalist Christian, anti-science, gay bashing, teabagger troglodyte. The possibility that you might be an antiwar, anti-imperial, anti-Wall Street, environmentally minded individual who knows her ACTUAL RECORD ON THE ISSUES is not allowed to compute within the system. The same is true for libertarian conservatives whose positions on foreign policy and reigning in the Federal Reserve match those of Ron Paul. They'll be told they better line up behind whichever warmongering Wall Street creature wins the Republican nomination or risk seeing the White House occupied by a known 60s radical hippie feminazi commie.
It's also pretty amusing that it was the New York Times that broke this particular story given the paper's own dismal record of withholding information from the public about government surveillance and employing a reporter who fabricated stories used to justify the Iraq War. That's not to say that the Hillary e-mail fiasco is not an important story nor one that the ought not be reported. It's just that if her shady investment deals back in Arkansas; her Hillarycare debacle and the Lincoln bedroom fiasco as First Lady; her senate votes for the Patriot Act, Iraq War and Wall Street bailouts; and her advocacy for the Afghanistan surge, Libya bombing, drone missile campaign and Georgia's disastrous war against Russia as Secretary of State aren't enough to convince someone not to vote for her in 2016 I really doubt that her lack of e-mail transparency is going to be the issue that suddenly changes their minds.
Bonus: "With real arrogance burning inside...I drank in the whole wide world"
Perhaps no prominent organization more perfectly reflects the decline and fall of American representative democracy than the Democratic Party. For it was the Democrats after their 1968 convention disaster in Chicago who begrudgingly decided to truly change their way of picking presidential candidates to reflect the leftist populism that was then ascendant within the party, and appeared as though it would be the dominant strain of American politics for the foreseeable future. The Democrats defused the power of their party bosses to choose their nominees much more thoroughly than the Republicans ever did—embracing primary elections in as many states as possible to choose the delegates who would pick their standard bearer. The Republicans eventually followed suit, but did so in a way that still left as much power as possible within the hands of the establishment.
Unfortunately for the Democrats the first product of this process, Senator George McGovern, the most liberal major party nominee ever, would in 1972 suffer the then-worst general election defeat in American history. Nevertheless, the pattern was set as insurgent candidate Jimmy Carter went from Jimmy Who? to the nominee in just a few short months in early 1976. Once again, however, an outsider candidate proved a poor choice politically even if in his single presidential term Carter attempted to guide America out of the moral swamp of the excruciating Vietnam and Watergate years. Regrettably, Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 was nearly as bad a debacle as the McGovern disaster and it soured the Democrats on true populist candidates.
As a result yet another insurgent candidate, former McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart, failed to topple establishment choice Walter Mondale for the nomination in 1984. Mondale’s whipping by Reagan was even worse than Carter’s and left the party in disarray on the national level, as the rugby scrum of pygmy candidates in 1988 and the disastrous nomination of Michael Dukakis that year showed. By 1992 hard lessons had finally been learned, as moderate “new” Democrat Bill Clinton adopted the insurgent’s playbook as his own to win the nomination. Unfortunately, Clinton's subsequent triumph in the general election (defeating a true insurgent candidate, Ross Perot, along the way), turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for Democratic activists.
By 2000 the Democratic establishment was firmly back at the helm, as Al Gore breezed to the nomination easier than any non-incumbent Democrat had going all the way back to Adalai Steveson in the 1950s. Had Clinton kept his dick out of Monica Lewinsky’s mouth--or had Gore just managed to run a more energetic campaign--he would have won easily, yet somehow he and 2004’s plodding establishment candidate, John Kerry, both managed to kick away close races to the worst president in American history.
By 2008 the Democrats smelled blood in the water and were hungering for a general election win, only to get sidetracked in a huge battle over identity politics as the first woman to have a realistic chance to win the presidency battled the first non-white man with the same aspirations even as the teetering Bush economy finally imploded in the background. Hillary Clinton was initially the establishment candidate, but Obama used the same insurgency tactics and bogus message of hope her husband had in 1992 to prove his electoral viability, and he then won over enough of the major players to secure the nomination.
More importantly but much less noticed was Obama’s decision to forgo federal campaign financing, which had been accepted by every major presidential candidate since Watergate but which severely limited the amount of donations a candidate could receive from any one source. With the financial backing of numerous Wall Street and big business players, Obama raised over $600 million during the 2008 cycle, a staggering sum at the time. In their elation at Obama’s victory, the Democratic party activists largely ignored the dangerous precedent his campaign had set just three years before the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision removed the last remaining barrier to America becoming a true elitist oligarchy.
Flash forward to the year before the 2016 race and it is uncertain whether any other “name” candidate will even try to challenge Hillary Clinton, who appears to have already locked up the support of the party establishment and the huge amounts of Wall Street and big business money that go with it. On an even monetary playing field, Elizabeth Warren would likely have a decent chance to be 2016’s version of Obama and knock Hillary off. But Warren has earned the permanent enmity of Wall Street due to her relatively modest attempts to reform the financial system. Even if Warren attracts large numbers of small individual donations like Obama did in 2008, she could never hope to compete with Hillary’s war chest and ability to dominate the airwaves in early primary states.
Bernie Sanders is the closest thing to a genuine liberal who might enter the fray, but he has less chance at the nomination than Warren and could only potentially affect the election’s outcome by playing a Ralph Nader-like third party spoiler role. Some liberal bloggers are so desperate they are actually advocating for Joe Biden to make what would be his third run for the nomination, conveniently ignoring the fact that Biden has spent the last six plus years carrying water for the Obama sellout presidency and before that spent decades as the credit card companies’ best friend in the U.S. Senate. Beyond those names, dreamers like Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb would seem to be angling to be an eventual vice presidential selection rather than making truly serious bids for the top spot.
So unless something dramatic happens between now and when the actual primary voting gets underway a year from now, the Democratic nomination is Hillary’s to lose. It is even possible that we might see something unprecedented in the years since primaries came to be the preferred method of selecting convention delegates in the early 1970s--a non-incumbent candidate walking to the nomination of a major party virtually unopposed. If so, it would be the most dramatic illustration yet of the corrosive effects of big money on American politics in the post-Citizens United era.
In the past couple of months I’ve heard numerous people express their dismay at the possibility of another Bush-Clinton presidential campaign, and such an eventuality should make it clear to all except the most completely thickheaded that American democracy is dead and and will be buried in 2016 under a mountain of presidential campaign cash that is already predicted to soar as high as $6 billion or more. That is an incredible figure when you consider that what it's really buying is merely an elaborate illusion that, especially at the presidential level, there remains even a dime's worth of difference between the two major parties.
Nevermind that we still have over 22 months yet to endure the presidency of the man once known as Hopey-Changey, the political heavy hitters (and those who’ve deluded themselves into thinking they are heavy hitters) are already lining up to replace him. The one guarantee is that no matter who might come out on top in the November 2016 voting, nothing will fundamentally change in the lives of those non-billionaires delusional enough to participate in the balloting in the belief that it will. Nevertheless, being a former political science major I just can’t help myself when it comes to elections—I simply have to analyze them despite knowing that they have become a total sham giving Americans the illusion that they still have a real choice.
On the Republican side, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that despite couple of rouge billionaires’ attempts back in 2012 to rock the nomination process by backing and giving brief life to the likes of Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, the ultimate result was that the party establishment got the candidate it wanted—just like it always does. All you have to do to see what a lock the party establishment has is to look back on the nominees of the past 35 years.
In 1980 the establishment lined up behind Ronald Reagan, not only because he was viewed as malleable and thereby a safe choice, but because it was “his turn” after he had narrowly missed knocking off accidental incumbent Gerald Ford for the 1976 nomination. In 1988, George Bush senior was the establishment’s guy after he spent eight years in the vice president’s office carrying water for Reagan and doing penance for his “voodoo economics” comment during the 1980 campaign.
By 1996, it was Bob Dole’s turn after he had been Bush’s most prominent opponent in the 1988 primaries. In 2000, the establishment decided to line up behind junior Bush, seeing in him not only another malleable Reagan type figure, but a popular governor who was eager to avenge his father’s 1992 defeat. By 2008 John McCain, Bush’s most prominent opponent in the 2000 primaries, managed by his nearly eight years of post-9/11 belligerency to convince the establishment that he could in fact be trusted. Then once again in 2012 the establishment lined up behind McCain’s most prominent opponent in the 2008 primaries, and it was an added bonus that Mitt Romney was also a Wall Street guy himself.
So where does all of that leave the Republicans as we head into 2016? Well, let’s start with Chris Christie, who was probably the establishment’s preferred candidate until he goofed by being publicly exposed as a man unable to control himself from using his power against those with whom he has petty grievances. Not that Republicans have any qualms about abusing executive power, just that potential nominees need to adhere to the "Nixon rule" and do so by being nimble enough not to get "caught."
Meanwhile, Rand Paul (the "W" to Ron Paul's "HW") has been desperately trying to balance being the guy who can lock down the surely libertarian vote while winking and nodding his willingness to go along with the party's belligerent foreign policies. Unfortunately for the namesake of the Atlas Shrugged scribe, there is far too much distrust of him and his truly libertarian father and their previous lack of demonstrated enthusiasm for America’s quite profitable imperial misadventures.
Scott Walker, on the other hand, is the Koch Brothers’ preferred stooge who'll have some potential viability if the Democrat's favorite billionaire boogeymen put a huge amount of money into his campaign. Too bad though for Governor Union Buster that the Kochs do NOT necessarily represent the party establishment, and hence Walker could well be this year’s version of Rick Santorum--a tiresome monkey wrench who keeps the horserace going past early March.
Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson might be this campaign’s great Republican minority hopes, but each seem to be viewed as far too lightweight to be considered anything other Veep possibilities. Mike Huckabee is again hovering around with more than nominal support in the polls--no doubt from Christian conservatives--but it is hard to see the big money boys lining up behind the false prophet from Arkansas. Then you have Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, who seems to sense that without the big money behind him he has no realistic chance. Or it could be that he just prefers being a Senator--where he can grandstand all he wants without ever being held accountable for anything.
That leaves one man standing: Jeb Bush. Funny that were it not for his now infamous last name, the same last name that allowed his imbecilic older brother to walk to the 2000 nomination, Jeb would be considered just as much of a shoo in for the nomination today. The Jebster and the establishment are in fact so desperate to disassociate him with past Bush family disasters that he even recently came out and tried to distance himself from his old man and his brother by laughably claiming that he would “be his own man.” Are the American voters really dumb enough to believe that load of horseshit? Why yes, of course they are.
So the $64,000 question is: can the Republican Party establishment overcome all of the resistance within the party that yet another Bush family candidacy (which would be the FIFTH in the past 28 years) will no doubt encounter from Tea Partiers and libertarians? Well, they were able to use their vast monetary resources—which are even more unlimited these days thanks to the Citizens United decision—to put the former governor of America’s most liberal state (and who as governor enacted his own version of Obamacare) over the top in 2012. However much the Tea Party may howl and the libertarians may sulk, the view of the establishment remains that putting forward one of those factions' darlings as the nominee will result in an electoral disaster--and they also might prove not completely reliable in the unlikely event that one of them was actually able to knock off Queen Hillary next year.
Hence, as of right now it would appear that Jeb Bush will likely be the Republican nominee in 2016. He already has a small lead in the nationwide polls, though it should be noted that Walker is currently ahead in Iowa. But as with the Democrats, it will be the ability tap into the really big money and saturate the airwaves in early primary states with teevee ads that will ultimately decide this nomination. More on the alleged people's party nomination tomorrow.
Bonus: Bill (prematurely) celebrates the political death of George Bush
I'm interrupting the intended second part of my last post because I had a conversation the other day that's been bugging me ever since and I just had to write something about it (hey, it's my blog, I can DO that, right?). I promise I'll get back to it.
Anyway, I was chatting with an old high school chum who lives in another part of the country when he brought up some problems his teenage son has been having in school. He attributed much of the trouble to the boy's teacher, whom I take it he does not see eye to eye with politically because he actually said about the woman, "I'm getting really tired of the Che Guevara bullshit."
At first I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly, since I cannot ever recall another occasion in which the late Cuban revolutionary's name has popped up in casual conversation. When it finally sunk in I was horrified, not because of what it indicated about my friend's politics--he did a 20-year stint in the navy, after all--but because I realized that he actually doesn't have a fucking clue what Che Guevara really stood for. He was just mindlessly spewing stupid right wing rhetoric.
How do I know this? Well, my friend lives in a mostly lily white exurban area where, I would be willing to bet a considerable sum, no one who actually preaches the teachings of Che Guevara in a public high school class would remained gainfully employed for very long. In fact, if the poor woman is like most public high school teachers these days she is probably too busy desperately searching for some way to elevate the class's standardized test scores so the school doesn't lose government funding to even think about trying to turn her students into a radical bunch of Commies.
Dwelling on the subject a bit more after the fact, it struck me that it also goes without saying that the hippie nitwits who go around sporting their designer Che Guevara t-shirts and jackets ALSO likely have no real understanding of what the man stood for. They just know it's a cool way to piss off reactionary old farts like my friend.
So there's the American political system in a nutshell--conservatives who are unable to think for themselves versus liberals who think nothing of turning a anti-capitalist revolutionary into a corporate commodity. No wonder we're fucked.
Bonus: "Standing there with her long brown hair...in a Che Guevara t-shirt"
As I've said here repeatedly, sometimes you really have to shake your head at the sheer idiotic depths this country has sunk to. Though it really isn't a big surprise, newly (re)installed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just announced that the new Republican Senate's VERY FIRST PRIORITY will be to pass a bill forcing approval to allow the TransCanada corporation to build the controversial Keystone Pipeline. That's right, with all the many problems facing America these days, many of our current elected "leaders" believe that enacting a law that will enrich a FOREIGN COMPANY is the most important thing that needs to be done.
McConnell's announcement is supremely stupid on many levels. Let's start with the fact that the State Department is expected to render a final decision on Keystone later this year after a court case in Nebraska over the pipeline's proposed route is resolved. In other words, there is a chance--probably a very GOOD chance--that the pipeline will be approved in just a few months anyway. THEN there is the little matter of collapsing oil prices, which if they remain at or near their current levels for awhile will likely cause a shutdown of Canadian tar sands production--meaning there could very well be no oil to ship through the pipeline ANYWAY. Oh, and let's not forget that one of the supposed reasons to approve the pipeline--to help the U.S. become less reliant on Middle Eastern oil--totally contradicts all of the crowing in conservative circles about how our own domestic oil shale production is turning us into "Saudi America."
But let's put all of that aside for a moment and consider what it is that is really going on here--namely more sound and fury in the ongoing and sadly successful effort to convince American citizensconsumers idiots that there really is a difference between the two parties and that American representative democracy is not in fact dead as a doornail. The biggest reason McConnell and company are making Keystone their top priority is that their troglodyte conservative base DESPISES environmentalists and right now this is the best way to very publicly score political points and stick it to the environmental movement. Forcing Obama to veto the bill (assuming he does) would allow the Republicans to demonstrate how they differ from blue tribe (Obama, of course, would no doubt prefer to sit back and allow the State Department to take the final decision out of his hands).
On the other side of the equation, the environmental movement has been almost as stupid in making the defeat of Keystone such a big (ahem) cornerstone of their own agenda. Even if the pipeline is never built and assuming oil prices quickly rise back into the territory that makes tar sands production economically viable once again, Canada has already indicated that it will build an alternative pipeline on its own soil since much of the tar sands oil is slated to be shipped out to Asia anyway. Assuming the dip in oil prices is short lived, an Obama veto would be at best a pyrrhic victory for the environmental movement. But hey, at least the Democrats would then have their very own "accomplishment" to sell to their idiot base as a reason to keep supporting them. After all, they'll need SOMETHING to point to in 2016 to try and claim that voting for Hillary is a better choice than voting for Jeb.
Back in the 1990s, mediocre Georgia-born stand up comedian Jeff Foxworthy became a big star thanks to his inane "You Might Be a Redneck If..." routines. Though the routines themselves seemed fairly harmless at the time (Foxworthy was adverse to using profanity on stage), in retrospect it seems that plenty of Americans--and not JUST from the south--were taking perverse pride at being exactly the kind of people he was allegedly poking fun at.
I hadn't thought about Foxworthy for a long time, until the recent news reports about the idiot Greenpeace protestors who damaged a national historical monument in Peru while filming an anti-global warming video to coincide with the recent carbon emissions conference being held in Lima. Somehow, none of the twelve morons who reportedly participated in the protest nor anyone else in Greenpeace who was aware of this pending protest before it happened recognized how culturally tone deaf and idiotic it was for a pack of liberal gringos to go traipsing around on some sensitive 1,500-year-old Native American geolyphs. Not only did this stupid stunt open Greenpeace up to charges of insensitivity to native cultures, it also basically handed its conservative opposition plenty of (ahem) ammunition with which to totally discredit the very message it was trying to get across.
But, sometimes such things happen when you're an OPWAL (Over-Privileged, White, American Liberal). And no, we don't know if ALL the Greenpeace protestors were in fact white, but they all easily demonstrated what I would call an OPWAL mindset.
Exactly what is an OPWAL mindset? And how do you know for sure whether or not you in fact are one? Well, in the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy I've developed a series of tests so that you, too, may determine whether or not you are actually an OPWAL. Let's begin, shall we?
If you believe driving a hybrid or even an electric car is good for the environment...you might be an OPWAL.
If you believe having a black followed by a female president is more important that what those presidents actually do while in office...you might be an OPWAL.
If you believe Obama deserved his Nobel Peace Prize...you might be an OPWAL.
If you agree with Obama that the country should "look forward and not dwell on the past" when it comes to the Iraq War, torture and the Wall Street crimes that led to the economic crash of 2008...you might be an OPWAL.
If you blame the Republican minority in congress circa 2009-2011 for blocking the many great things Obama promised to do while in office...you might be an OPWAL.
If you're a registered Democrat but cannot name a single famous labor leader other than Jimmy Hoffa...you might be an OPWAL.
If you believe Bill Clinton was a good president because he presided over a strong economy...you might be an OPWAL.
If you still blame Ralph Nader for costing Al Gore the presidency in 2000...you might be an OPWAL.
If you believed that the 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity wasn't a complete waste of fucking time and energy...you might be an OPWAL.
If you hate congress as most Americans do, but voted to reelect your Democratic congressperson anyway...you might be an OPWAL.
If you have a "support the troops" sticker on your vehicle but don't personally know anyone in the service...you might be an OPWAL.
If you have a Stop Global Warming bumper sticker on your Minivan or SUV...you might be an OPWAL.
If you call yourself an environmentalist but live in the exurbs because your precious snowflakes "need" to have a yard to play in...you might be an OPWAL.
If you saw no reason for antiwar protests to continue once Obama was elected...you might be an OPWAL.
If you think Obamacare has solved America's health care crisis...you might be an OPWAL.
If you ever read a book based upon a recommendation by Oprah Winfrey...you might be an OPWAL.
If you think MSNBC is a true liberal alternative to Fox News...you might be an OPWAL.
If you think NPR and PBS are unbiased news sources...you might be an OPWAL.
If you still have a subscription to the New York Times or Washington Post...you might be an OPWAL.
If you consider yourself progressive on racial issues but the only minorities you interact with on a regular basis are your maid and your coffee barista...you might be an OPWAL.
If you actually think it really matters that the Democrats just lost control of the Senate...you might be an OPWAL.
Anyway, that's enough for now. I'm sure you all could probably come up with plenty of your own. After all, OPWALs are easy targets--almost too easy.
Bonus: "Honey let me introduce you to my redneck friend"
I want to begin this post by assuring my readers (both of you, hi!) that I am glad the CIA torture report, even in its heavily redacted form, was allowed to be released before the new Senate Republican majority hit town and sank the the whole thing to the deepest recesses of the Mariana Trench. ANY report being released that speaks at least some of the truth about what the CIA was up to doing during the Bush years is at least better than no report at all.
That said, the only really surprising thing about the report is that anyone was surprised by what it contained--namely details about what we already knew. The CIA tortured prisoners at so called "black" sites around the world? Check, we already knew that. Numerous other countries participated in torture and rendition? Check, we already knew that. Torture is ineffective as an intelligence gathering device and actually destroys a so-called democracy's credibility when it claims to be a bastion of human rights? Check, we already knew that. Obama isn't going to do jack shit to hold any of the torturers or those who gave the orders accountable? Check, check and fucking check already.
But rather than express my outrage over what the report says, as is being done in many other quarters, I'd like to instead focus on the individual who is most responsible for getting it out the door before it slammed shut: namely the senior U.S. Senator from California, and lame duck chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Dianne Feinstein. Who is Dianne Feinstein anyway? Well, she is currently the oldest and one of the wealthiest members of the Senate with a net worth by some reports nearly in the nine figures. She is a Democrat and supposed "liberal" who voted for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act and also for the hideous FISA law removing judicial oversight of the executive programs that spy on U.S. citizens. Not only that, her husband is an investment banker who has made countless millions from defense war contracts.
In other words, she seems like just the kind of fake liberal sellout Democrat who might have chosen delay the report's issuance until Mitch McConnell's new Intelligence Chairman could bury it forever. So why did she do it? Was it the remorseful act by an aging old woman who as mortality approaches is feeling a pang of conscience after selling out every young Californian idealist who ever believed in her? Excuse me if I say, not bloody likely. Feinstein strikes me as another Madeline "half a million dead Iraqi children was worth it" Albright type of crusty old stain upon the human race--in other words not the kind who has any conscience at all.
Nope, my personal belief, having no direct knowledge of the situation, is that this was a way for a Democrat whose party just took a major electoral shellacking and is fast on its way to political irrelevancy to try once again to demonstrate to the idiots voters who support her party that there really is a difference between her tribe and the red one. We Democrats may be "Republican lite" on most issues, Feinstein is saying, but at least we are willing to issue a damning report that states what everybody already knew. And for that it's working beautifully. Right on cue, conservative "news" outlets like Fox and the Wall Street Journal immediately fell in line, blasting the report on a strictly partisan basis. Meanwhile, some of the right's more unhinged troglodytes started spewing the kind of fascist rhetoric guaranteed to get (male and female) liberals' panties into a bunch and frothing at the mouth to--make sure they vote Hillary in 2016. That'll learn 'em.
This whole spectacle is, of course, sound and fury signifying nothing, as here in America at least the report will be largely forgotten about by the general public before the new year even rings in. And if overseas outrage should generate another international terrorist attack or two, all the better to keep that War on Terror gravy train a-flowing for war profiteers like Ms. Feinsein's hubby.
As for the CIA itself, the report will change nothing. Obama had already curtailed the agency's worst GWOT abuses (well after the Inside-the-Beltway consensus had already decided torture was counterproductive), so the agency will claim that there is nothing that needs changing. The whole debacle will certainly be another major public relations black eye for Langley, but really, after decades of abuses and spectacular failures and fuck ups, could the image of America's top spy agency really get any worse?
Bonus: "I don't really give a good fuck what you know or don't know--but I'm gonna torture you anyway"
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
So says Aaron Eckhart as fictional District Attorney Harvey Dent in the movie The Dark Knight, not long before his kidnapping and horrible disfigurement by Heath Ledger's Joker turns him in exactly the way he predicted. In real life such transformations are far more subtle and usually take far longer to reach fruition. Two such contemporary figures who both happen to hail from the great and wacky state of California but who could not have more disparate backgrounds, beloved actor Samuel L. Jackson and current California Governor Jerry Brown, are living proof that for reputation's sake it is rarely a good idea to hang around too long in the public eye.
Let's start with Jackson, who American moviegoers love for his admittedly intense performances in such movies as Pulp Fiction and the remake of Shaft (can you dig it?). Few popcorn munchers are aware, however, that during his student days Jackson became so outraged by Martin Luther King's assassination that he joined the Black Power movement and in 1969 participated in holding members of the Morehouse College board of trustees hostage on the campus, demanding reform in the school's curriculum and governance. You can readily imagine Jackson going into that battle carrying a wallet with "Bad Motherfucker" etched in the leather. He was later convicted of a second degree felony for his actions, and clearly this was a young man willing to go to jail or even risk his life in order to fight systemic abuse and injustice directed toward black Americans.
Flash forward 45 years later, and the bad motherfucker has mellowed out a bit. In fact he's mellowed out so much that he has become unavoidable on commercial teevee as a pitchman for Capital One, hawking credit cards to already seriously over-indebted American citizensconsumers idiots. Not only was Capital One bailed out by the taxpayers during the financial crash to the tune of over $3.5 billion, but the company's current credit card interest rate charged for purchases is 24.9% on money that the bank can, of course, borrow from the Federal Reserve for next to nothing.
It should go without saying that credit card debt most heavily burdens lower income Americans, who are disproportionally black and minority. But more surprisingly is that even middle class black families have come to lean heavily on high interest credit card debt, to the point where nearly four out of five such families are so indebted. Yet there is nary a negative word publicly uttered about Jackson's massive sellout of his previous principles despite the fact that his net worth is currently estimated at $170 million, and he hardly has any financially motivated reason to be out hawking debt to those, especially those of his own race who he once seemed to care about so passionately, who can ill afford it.
Next we have the example of Jerry Brown, who for much of his career campaigned vigorously against the corrupting influence of big money in politics. So how is all that going these days? Here's the Sacramento Bee with the scoop:
Brown began his political career in the 1970s as a radical governor who would take down political corruption and outsized donations from lobbyists. The Brown we see today courts millions in campaign contributions from big corporations and looks the other way when a key government official is caught red-handed trying to protect the company he is supposed to be investigating.
In the case of disgraced PUC President Michael Peevey, Brown has not demanded Peevey immediately resign from office, despite the recent unearthing of his blatantly improper and unethical intervention on behalf of PG&E. The PUC is supposed to hold PG&E accountable and protect the public in the aftermath of the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. What we find instead are backroom deals, bribery, questionable rate hikes, and hand-picking judges who will be favorable to PG&E and the utility industry Peevey comes from.
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Brown’s governance has failed to set a standard condemning influence peddling in Sacramento.
The changes in Brown’s campaign fundraising over the years are a signpost of the kind of leader he has become. Unlike his first gubernatorial campaign in 1974, during which he attempted to ban direct contributions from lobbyists, or his campaign for president in 1992, when he wanted candidates to cap donations at $100, Brown’s most recent campaigns have been marked by raising some of the largest sums in the country. The $25 million in the 2014 race came overwhelmingly from big corporations, labor unions, oil companies and wealthy individuals known for lobbying state government.
The means by which Brown secures such hefty contributions came under suspicion in January, when he asked the California Supreme Court to reverse lower court rulings blocking high-speed rail. Brown filed the appeal just three days after Tutor Perini Corp. – the contractor that won a $1 billion contract for the project despite having the lowest technical rating of those bidding – donated the maximum $27,200 it could to Brown’s campaign.
Is it any surprise that in September Brown vetoed an ethics bill (Senate Bill 1443) that would have required more campaign finance disclosure and reduced the value of gifts lobbyists can give state officials?
No it really isn't a surprise given that it has been quite awhile since anyone, even a politician of Jerry Brown's stature, could be elected to a major post like Gubbner of California WITHOUT pocketing vast sums of cash from such sources. At some point "Governor Moonbeam," who during his first stint as governor during the mid-1970s lived in a modest apartment instead of the governor's mansion and drove around in a Plymouth Satellite sedan instead of being chauffeured by limousine, recognized that he either needed to compromise his principles or give up politics, and we can see which route he chose.
I highlighted these two examples to demonstrate just how commonplace and mundane the selling out and/or corruption of American public figures has become these days. In fact, it has become so much so that those involved in it can no longer see that they are just as big a part of the problem as those they may choose to vilify, as shown by this amazingly clueless quote from Jackson about Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas:
He (Jackson) compared his Django Unchained character, a villainous house slave, to black conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, saying that "I have the same moral compass as Clarence Thomas does".
No, Samuel, sadly it is not just your "Uncle Tom" character who has the "moral compass" of Clarance Thomas, but YOU as well. You and Thomas are part of the same massive hypocrisy, and are both useful "tools of the man" as you and your brethren no doubt put it back in the 1960s. And along with your esteemed governor, Jerry Brown, you are hardly alone.
Bonus: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all side by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men"
