If the NYPD "Turns Its Back On You" You're Doing Something Right

So the NYPD is "turning its back" on Mayor Bill de Blasio for having the audacity to tell his children what every minority parent in the New York City and probably all across the country ought to be telling their children--be very careful in your interactions with the police. And as to those many NYPD officers who literally turned their backs to the mayor when he was doing what a good mayor should--honoring one of their own killed while doing what police are SUPPOSED to be doing, namely protecting the public rather than choking the shit out of them--let me offer up a hearty, "fuck you." As the elected mayor of New York City, de Blasio has a responsibility to ALL the citizens of New York, not just your immature and insular asses. And yes, that also means calling out the thugs among you--and you all know damn well who they are even if each of you are too chickenshit to do the right thing yourselves.

If the NYPD was trying to send a message, this writer heard it loud and clear. The "Turn Our Backs" fiasco with de Blasio made me think of someone else so many of you sanctimonious fuckers in blue, past and present, turned your backs on. His name was Frank Serpico, and he's a true hero who has been living with the consequences of your lack of support for over 40 years now.

I'll admit I'd mostly forgotten about Serpico until just a few months ago when he wrote an essay for Politico entitled, "The Police Are Still Out of Control." In it, he included this chilling passage about the NYPD:

Forty-odd years on, my story probably seems like ancient history to most people, layered over with Hollywood legend. For me it’s not, since at the age of 78 I’m still deaf in one ear and I walk with a limp and I carry fragments of the bullet near my brain. I am also, all these years later, still persona non grata in the NYPD. Never mind that, thanks to Sidney Lumet’s direction and Al Pacino’s brilliant acting, “Serpico” ranks No. 40 on the American Film Institute’s list of all-time movie heroes, or that as I travel around the country and the world, police officers often tell me they were inspired to join the force after seeing the movie at an early age.

In the NYPD that means little next to my 40-year-old heresy, as they see it. I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers. A couple of years ago after the death of David Durk — the police officer who was one of my few allies inside the department in my efforts to expose graft — the Internet message board “NYPD Rant” featured some choice messages directed at me. “Join your mentor, Rat scum!” said one. An ex-con recently related to me that a precinct captain had once said to him, “If it wasn’t for that fuckin’ Serpico, I coulda been a millionaire today.” My informer went on to say, “Frank, you don’t seem to understand, they had a well-oiled money making machine going and you came along and threw a handful of sand in the gears.”

In 1971 I was awarded the Medal of Honor, the NYPD’s highest award for bravery in action, but it wasn’t for taking on an army of corrupt cops. It was most likely due to the insistence of Police Chief Sid Cooper, a rare good guy who was well aware of the murky side of the NYPD that I’d try to expose. But they handed the medal to me like an afterthought, like tossing me a pack of cigarettes. After all this time, I’ve never been given a proper certificate with my medal. And although living Medal of Honor winners are typically invited to yearly award ceremonies, I’ve only been invited once — and it was by Bernard Kerick, who ironically was the only NYPD commissioner to later serve time in prison. A few years ago, after the New York Police Museum refused my guns and other memorabilia, I loaned them to the Italian-American museum right down street from police headquarters, and they invited me to their annual dinner. I didn’t know it was planned, but the chief of police from Rome, Italy, was there, and he gave me a plaque. The New York City police officers who were there wouldn’t even look at me.

Four decades after Serpico took a bullet to the face because of some cops who were no better than the thugs they were supposedly out to arrest and many in the NYPD, even some I gather who weren't even born yet on the day he was shot, STILL consider what he did to be worse than what he tried to stop.

It's actually a shame that the recent spate of highly publicized police abuse cases have become wrapped up in poisonous racial politics, because ultimately such divides provide the type of backlash political cover that makes it easy for institutional inertia against police reform to continue. Towards the end of the article Frank Serpico, bless him, tries to remain optimistic that his ongoing efforts to combat police abuse will inevitably make a difference. But the sad fact is that until and unless older, well off white people in this country begin to routinely experience what happened to Eric Garner, police will continue carry an effective license to kill. And I say that as one of those who is so insulated--the worst thing any cop ever did to me was write me a speeding ticket.

I rarely feel any sympathy for any politician, but I don't envy de Blasio going forward after having stirred up this hornet's nest. If he gets strung up politically or retreats back into his shell, he'll be the negative example that no other mayor, governor or even president will want to emulate. For every Frank Serpico there are a dozen Daniel Pantaleos, and plenty of others who instinctively turn their backs on the former while covering up for and supporting the latter.


Bonus: "You fire without a warning...without a fucking brain in your head?"

You Might Be An OPWAL If...

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"

Ian Welsh: America’s Depraved Leadership Has Created a Depraved Population

Fellow blogger Ian Welsh, one of the few opinion writers I have a tremendous respect for, today offered an very grim assessment of the fact that a majority of American citizens consumers idiots now approve of torture:

Before Bush, most Americans were against torture. The endless drumbeat of propaganda and the need to justify what America does (America is good, therefore America does not do evil), has had its effect.

I will make an ethical judgment: people think torture is justified are bad people. Depraved people. A society where a majority thinks it is justified is a depraved culture. (And remember, 51% think it was justified, but 20% don’t have an opinion. Only about a third of Americans are opposed.)

While I totally agree with Ian that America has become a depraved culture, I'm going to offer a slightly different assessment of at least some of the people who approve of torture. After all, the title of his post is contradictory to his conclusion.

It is one thing to offer an answer to a drily worded public opinion survey from the comfort and safety of your own home. It would be another to still favor torture after say, being forced to watch a video of the tactics the CIA was using in action. My bet is that after watching such a video, the number who approve of torture would drop sharply and the dumbass "no opinion" responses would also break overwhelmingly negative.

My point is that the ones who would still approve of torture after seeing it practiced are the truly "bad people" as Ian described them. The remainder are the easily led sheep (I really HATE the term "sheeple") who easily submit to authority and allow themselves to be propagandized. In much the same way that the Nazis were unable to win majority support in Germany until after they were handed power by a cabal of cynical nationalist politicians and could effectively drown out any competing voices from the public sphere, not until America's conservative media organs relentlessly flogged the Jack Nicholson, "You can't HANDLE the truth!" message did torture become an "acceptable" American practice. America's depraved leadership did not really "create" a depraved population, it merely led that population where it wanted it to go.

So does that mean I'm letting those Americans off the hook who are so shallow that they don't really even grasp the evil they are supporting? Fuck no. The only "Good Germans" circa 1933-1945 are those "political undesirables" who ended up in the concentration camps alongside the Jews, gays and Gypsies, or the rare ones who risked the very same fate by trying to hide would-be Nazi victims.

A truly sickening aspect of these public opinion findings for me is that nearly six years after war criminals George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left office I find myself more ashamed and disgusted by my own country than ever. And not that chickenshit Obama was going to use the release of this report to launch an inquiry to hold those responsible for the torture accountable anyway, but now he has even more incentive to stick his thumb up his ass and do nothing.

One last point: if you look at the actual poll results, you'll notice that even a plurality of black Americans now support torture. Which means there had to be quite a few torture supporters out protesting police violence this weekend. That such protestors are unable to make the connection between American war crimes committed overseas and the crimes being perpetrated by the police against their own kind back here at home is yet another dismal example of how there is no hope for America anymore.


Bonus: "You don't like the sound of the truth...coming from my mouth"

The Cynical Politics Behind the Release of the CIA Torture Report

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"

Bill Cosby: A Fitting "Hero" for 21st Century America

It's been a tough time recently for asshole moralizers of any race who like nothing more than to shake their collective finger at the black community and blame it for its own perceived failures rather than the institutionalized racism that, while it is not quite as omnipresent as in generations past, still remains very much a reality. A half-century after the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, shithead cops are gunning down 12-year-olds holding toy guns and choking to death street vendors while asshole prosecutors steer grand juries away from even indicting them. And if you're the kind of person who believes that Tamir Rice, Eric Garner or Michael Brown would have been killed had they been white, or that Garner and Brown's killers would have gotten away with killing them had they been white, then you are at best completely blinded to the kinds of injustice black Americans face on a routine basis.

Unless, of course, they manage to become rich celebrities. That's one thing that HAS changed for black Americans in the past 50 years. O.J. Simpson was the first black man to really benefit from the "celebritard effect," literally getting away with murder thanks to his trial turning into an out of control media circus and, not incidentally, the fact that the detective who found the key piece of evidence against him used the word "nigger" on the job like he was starring in a Tarrantino movie. At the time of O.J.'s acquittal, many white Americans were dismayed that so many blacks celebrated the verdict--much the same way I imagine the tables were turned here recently after the decision not to indict Darren Wilson. Personally, both results sickened me, but I'll admit to being pretty weird in that I happen to find the killing of innocent people repulsive no matter the race of the victim(s) and/or the perpetrator.

The recent events in Ferguson, Cleveland and New York City have unfolded coincident with appalling public spectacle and spectacular downfall of comedian, racial scold and apparent serial rapist Bill Cosby. Because a vast majority of Americans are apparently stupid enough to believe that the personality they see on teevee hawking Jello pops reflects the real character and personality of the individual doing the hawking, Bill Cosby's career was until very recently able to survive and prosper despite it being open secret for many years that he was in the habit of drugging and raping any young actress or model unlucky enough to come within 100 feet of him.

It particularly galls me to be writing such things about Cosby, who was a true childhood hero of mine. As a kid I had several of his old comedy albums, and listened to legendary routines like "The Chicken Heart" so many times that I was able to entertain other kids in the neighborhood (back in the bad old days before VHS or even Betamax players) by reciting them literally word for word. But given that my favorite athlete back then was Pete Rose, I guess I really shouldn't be at all surprised by this particular belated loss of childhood innocence.

Of course, like so many prominent Americans, Cosby wasn't immune from engaging in monumental hypocrisy and wagging his finger at the supposed failings of others of his own race. In his case, his target was black parents who were supposedly failing to teach their children proper standards of moral behavior. Until the rape scandal finally blew up in his face Cosby was still lecturing to black communities "about his frustrations with certain problems prevalent in underprivileged urban communities, such as illegal drugs; teenage pregnancy; Black Entertainment Television; high-school dropouts; anti-intellectualism; gangsta rap; vulgarity; thievery; offensive clothing; vanity; parental alienation; single-parenting; and failing to live up to the ideals of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and African-Americans who preceded Generation X."

Which if you think about it makes Cosby almost the perfect embodiment of 21st century America, believing itself to be an exceptional "shining city on a hill" spreading "freedom" and "democracy" around the world when the reality has been one long unbroken string of war crimes, torture and massive human rights abuses. Just as American police officers routinely abuse and murder black Americans with impunity, our soldiers, bombers, drone pilots and intelligence operatives have been doing the same thing to brown people living in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia who desire nothing more unreasonable than to live their lives completely free of American interference and exploitation. Collectively, Americans think of themselves as Cliff Huxtable, when in fact they are really Charlie Manson.

The good news in Bill Cosby's case is that even though he is unlikely to be sent to prison where he belongs at least he has lived long enough to finally have his many crimes exposed and to see his legacy as one of America's most beloved entertainers utterly destroyed before his very eyes. It will take quite a while longer, I'm afraid, for America as a nation to receive a similar comeuppance--when its economy finally crashes for good and drags its hideous, bloated military-industrial complex down with it. And like Bill Cosby, when it does finally happen, rather than facing up to their country's many crimes most Americans will instead be wearing a befuddled look of utter incomprehension as it all comes crashing down around them.


Bonus: In retrospect this may well be the most offensive joke any major comedian ever told

Soon it Might Not Just Be "Open Season" on Black Teenagers

The reaction in many quarters to the Michael Brown shooting and verdict have been quite interesting. It was disappointing for example to see that James Howard Kunstler, whose 2005 book The Long Emergency served as my wake up call for the issues of Peak Oil and resource depletion, has used his recent blog posts to expose himself as a typical old white latent racist of the "get those kids off my lawn" variety. Being Jewish, Kunstler is no doubt familiar with the old Holocaust anecdote that begins with "First they came for the Jews, but not being Jewish I did not speak up," and ends with the narrator himself being hauled away by the Gestapo with no one left to speak up for him. But Jim seems completely oblivious of the fact that by failing to speak up for the young black men being executed on the streets of America by unaccountable cops there may well come a day when it will be "open season" on radical authors who repeatedly agitate against the government and Wall Street--even if they happen to be grumpy old white men.

Surprisingly, one writer who has been pretty sensible about all this is Market Ticker's Karl Denninger, who pointed out how Darren Wilson was allowed to lie to the Grand Jury even as the local prosecutor deliberately steered that same jury to a no bill:

Nobody, with the exception of this site and, believe it or not, one particular thread on Daily Kos, have examined the actual issue -- the fact that the physical evidence did not support the police officer's narrative -- not originally, not as the case developed and not in the Grand Jury testimony.

Further, there is plenty of hard, documentary evidence of intentionally false instructions being given to the Grand Jury -- specifically, the standard for the use of deadly force by officers was presented to them as the pre-Supreme Court decision in 1985 (Tennessee .v. Garner) on shooting fleeing felons. The Grand Jury was instructed that this was permissible when in fact this has not been for 30 years. That's not an accident, it is intentional and willful misconduct on the part of the authorities. Were you or I to give an intentionally false presentation to a Grand Jury we'd find ourselves in prison and with good cause. The Prosecutor will not face that same punishment, yet it was a direct and proximate cause of the no-bill decision.

But now we have the NYC case in which there was a refusal to indict as well -- and this is even more outrageous as the conduct in question, a police choke-hold that was found by the medical examiner to be the cause of death as he ruled it a homicide is a banned practice in most police departments -- including in NYC.

What has been most revealing and particularly disheartening about these cases going all the way back to the Trayvon Martin travesty is the reflexive rallying of support for the shooters. It has been reported that over $500,000 has been raised for cold blooded killer Wilson (and yes, given that Wilson said in an interview he'd do it all over again the exact same way, I have no hesitation in labeling him a sociopath), and a similar online fundraising effort was undertaken on behalf of Zimmerman. Worse yet was the rash of police officers around the country publicly posting or proclaiming "I am Darren Wilson," which ought to make any conscientious citizen of any race, creed or color's blood run cold.

What you see here is an America that is rapidly regressing in area where true progress had ever so recently been made. After repeated public disclosures of police corruption and abuse that were published and broadcast starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a nationwide effort to clean up and improve the profession. College degrees became far more common for officers as Criminal Justice became a sought after university major. "Civilian oversight" became a common catch phrase that was begrudgingly welcomed by the leadership of departments that knew they needed to get rid of at least the worst of their bad apples and shore up their public image.

Unfortunately, the aftermath of 9/11 had the same kind of corrosive effect on law enforcement that is has had in so many other aspects of American life. The images of NYPD officers rushing into to the towers and losing their lives to save their fellow citizens turned them into heroes--in much the same way as were the soldiers and Marines going off to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq to "avenge" those who died in the towers. Unfortunately, the hero worship of police officers has persisted, making them virtually immune from criticism in many circles, particularly among those who believe "law and order" is far more important than numerous Constitutional amendments--save, of course, the 2nd.

Dovetailing the 9/11 hero halos placed upon the police, was the militarization of police forces as federal homeland security money was generously heaped upon departments so they could purchase the excess military grade hardware being churned out by American defense war contractors. Historically, one thing that has separated America from being like the tin pot dictatorships and banana republics around the world is that we don't send tanks and regular army units into the streets to restore order. But with our police now driving APVs, outfitted like the stormtroopers on the Death Star and carrying high power weaponry, the distinction is rapidly fading.

Though petty police corruption such as taking small bribes to ignore misdemeanors may not be as prevalent today as it was a couple of generations ago, with their repeated displays of wanton violence against citizens police departments are more out control today than they ever have been. Worse yet is when the asshole prosecutors, whose fucking JOB it is to protect the public from criminals, even and ESPECIALLY those criminals who wear the badge, through their actions sanction and condone executions of unarmed citizens, America steps that much closer to becoming a police state. Chickenshit Obama has the option of ordering the Department of Justice to conduct federal civil rights investigations in these cases, as Daddy Bush did after the initial Rodney King verdicts. His failure to do so is inexcusable, though at this point I am beginning to wonder if the U.S. has become so polarized that it might be impossible to get even a federal jury to convict a cop of murder these days.

I'd like to close this particularly grim post by saying that these events, and the public's reaction to them, should finally dispel any notion by liberals or progressives that the election of Barak Obama showed that America had finally moved past its long history of racism. The disgraceful overt cheering on of sociopathic murdering assholes George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson and the repellent attempts to smear the character of their innocent victims demonstrates that racial hatred is not only alive and well among a substantial portion of the population, but is deepening and hardening is ways that portend some potentially very scary future scenarios as America continues to slowly sink into the economic abyss.

Next time it might not be a black teenager impudently walking in the street instead of on the sidewalk who gets gunned down for defying authority, it might be a grouchy old Peak Oil writer who dares to tell the frothing supporters of Zimmerman and Wilson that soon they will no longer be able to exercise their "God given right" to hog the roadways in the Hummers and F-250s with the "Global Whining" stickers plastered prominently on the back bumper. No one will likely speak for you then, Jim, because by when your white skin is no longer sufficient to shield you it really will be too late.


Bonus: "Fucking with me, 'cause I'm a teenager, with a little bit of gold and a pager"

Mr. Peabody and the Case of Rodney King

Mr. Peabody: Sherman, let's set the Wayback Machine to the year 1991.

Sherman: What are we going to study today, Mr. Peabody?

Mr. Peabody: Well, Sherman, we're going to examine an instance of police officers using appalling excessive force in a case that captured the whole country's attention.

Sherman: You mean like in Ferguson, Missouri?

Mr. Peabody: Actually, Sherman, this particular case happened in Los Angeles, and instead of shooting a black man the white officers involved just kept bootstomping him long after he was helpless on the ground. Let's take a look:

(video of Rodney King being beaten to a pulp)

Sherman: Yikes! Mr. Peabody, that is horrible!

Mr. Peabody: Right you are Sherman. What made this case more shocking was that it represented the first time a blatant example of police abuse was caught by a bystander on video tape and shown on national television. Would you like to guess what happened next?

Sherman: The police officers were not convicted of any crime, just like in Ferguson?

Mr. Peabody: Good boy. That's exactly right--and then this happened:

(video of LA riots)

Sherman: Gee Whiz, Mr. Peabody, that looks like what we saw on teevee last night--only worse.

Mr. Peabody: Indeed, Sherman.

Sherman: But, but, but, is that the end of the story? Surely, SOMEBODY could have done SOMETHING.

Mr. Peabody: Well, Sherman, in those days America had an old white Republican man as president instead of a young black Democratic man. What do you suppose he did?

Sherman: Oh, ha, ha. You're funny, Mr. Peabody. He did nothing, of course.

Mr. Peabody: Ahhh...that's where you are wrong Sherman. Let's take a look, shall we:

(video of federal jury finding Rodney King beating police officers guilty)

Mr. Peabody: So you see, Sherman, the old white Republican man president launched what is called a federal civil rights investigation against those cops. And in federal court, which is not as susceptible to prejudice and corruption as state and local courts, those cops got what they deserved--years in prison.

Sherman: Wow, Mr. Peabody, that's great! So, do you suppose that our young black Democratic man president is going to do the same thing in Ferguson?

Mr. Peabody: (Sighs) Not bloody likely, Sherman.

Sherman: But why?

Mr. Peabody: Because sadly, Sherman, America is irreparably broken.


Bonus: Bill does Rodney King (except in retrospect he got Bush's response wrong)

Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation is Heading into a "Perfect Storm"

One interesting thing I've noticed after my nearly two-year break from blogging is how some of the worst economic news these days gets reported in such a hum-drum manner. You would think that a story as big as a near doubling of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation's annual deficit would generate a huge amount of coverage given that the agency is all that stands between over 40 million retirees and the poor house. But no, you'd be forgiven if you missed it given that CNBC gave it exactly FOUR short paragraphs on its website:

The federal agency that insures pensions for about 41 million Americans saw its deficit nearly double in the latest fiscal year. The agency said the worsening finances of some multi-employer pension plans mainly caused the increased deficit.

At about $62 billion for the budget year ending Sept. 30, it was the widest deficit in the 40-year history of the Pension Benefit Guaranty, which reported the data Monday. That compares with a $36 billion shortfall the previous year.

Multi-employer plans are pension agreements between labor unions and a group of companies, usually in the same industry. The agency said the deficit in its multi-employer insurance program jumped to $42.4 billion from $8.3 billion in 2013.

By contrast, the deficit in the single-employer program shrank to $19.3 billion from $27.4 billion.

Sometimes it also helps to add a little historical perspective. Back in October 2011, I wrote about the the rising PBGC deficit, highlighting this factoid that was on Wikipedia at the time:

During fiscal year 2010, the PBGC paid $5.6 billion in benefits to participants of failed pension plans. That year, 147 pension plans failed, and the PBGC's deficit increased 4.5 percent to $23 billion. The PBGC has a total of $102.5 billion in obligations and $79.5 billion in assets.

At the time, private pension underfunding was reported to have risen to the staggering total of $512 billion. Since then, as you can see above, PBGC's annual shortfall has accordingly nearly tripled in size, which doesn't bode well for the future.

There has been a lot of crowing in the financial media about the falling federal budget deficit (down these days to ONLY about $1 trillion annually). Looks like there is at least one federal agency that's going to be putting lots of upward pressure on that figure going forward.


Bonus: If you have a pension just relax, enjoy this upbeat little ditty and don't worry about where you'll be in five years' time

What do Jerry Brown and Samuel L. Jackson Have in Common?

"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 citizens consumers 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.

---

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"

Lord Kitchener and "The Banality of Evil"

image: Uncle Sam is a piker compared to Lord Kitchener

"The banality of evil" was a phrase first used by political theorist Hannah Arendt to describe Nazi bureaucrat and key Holocaust cog Adolf Eichmann when the latter was finally put on trial for war crimes back in 1963. It arose from Eichmann's claim that what he had done in the service of of his country was not wrong because he was "doing his duty" and "just following orders." Arendt's thesis about Eichmann is summed up thusly:

Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely average person who relied on cliché rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. Banality, in this sense, is not that Eichmann's actions were ordinary, or that there is a potential Eichmann in all of us, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was wholly unexceptional. She never denied that Eichmann was an anti-semite, nor that he was fully responsible for his actions, but argued that these characteristics were secondary to his stupidity.

And as a result of such stupidity--the same kind of stupidity that is unfortunately all too common in our own country these days in such places as the Pentagon and Wall Street--did Eichmann become one of the most notorious names of the 20th century.

But what about those who are NOT stupid, and are NOT motivated by the desire for promotion? Those at the top who make decisions knowing damn well millions of people are going to suffer and be killed as a result, yet don't particularly seem to care? Are they not far more hideous monsters than the likes of Adolf Eichmann? After all even Eichmann's ultimate boss, Adolf Hitler, was not exactly history's brightest bulb.

My last post got me to thinking again about the First World War. Unlike the second global conflagration, the wake of World War 1 never saw any serious attempt to hold those whose decisions were responsible for slaughtering over 37 million of their fellow human beings responsible for their actions. And if one wants to talk about stupidity in power, one needs to look no further than the collection of hereditary monarchs and preening fools from Kaiser Wilhelm to British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith who were in charge of their respective countries when the war broke out. Most of these esteemed statesmen stupidly believed that the war would be short and glorious and that the troops would be "home by Christmas," as the popular expression went in those fateful early days of August 1914.

One reason so many of these so called "leaders" were so confident was because Europe had not seen massive continental warfare since the Battle of Waterloo ended the career of Napoleon almost exactly a century before. They truly could not envision (because they were stupid) the wholesale slaughter that modern industrial warfare inventions such as artillery, the carbine, the machine gun, the airplane and poison gas were going to precipitate everywhere from Flanders' "bloody fields" to the Gallipoli Peninsula.

But there was one man in particular who knew the horrible truth even before it all started: British Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Considered at the outbreak of the war to be "Britain's greatest living soldier," Kitchener had already had plenty of opportunities to see up close and personal what the rapid advance of military technology had wrought in the years since the Grand Armee's wave finally crested and broke in the burned out ruins of Moscow.

Kitchener had spent most of his career fighting colonial wars. He was particularly renowned for his victory in the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan, in which by training his Maxim machine guns on horseman charging with spears his forces killed 10,000 enemy soldiers and wounded 15,000 more while losing only 47 of their own. As author Scott Anderson put it in his fascinating book, Lawrence IN Arabia, during his career Kitchener had participated in more one-sided slaughters than probably any man alive. But because he had, Anderson adds, Kitchener also had a pretty good idea what would happen on a battlefield in which BOTH sides possessed the same level of superior military technology.

Thus, while the other idiots in the British cabinet that summer (to include Winston Churchill) were confidently predicting that the war would be over in months, or even weeks, it was Britain's greatest living soldier who sounded the very sobering and completely accurate warning. The war would drag on for years, Kitchener told them, and it would not end "until we have plumbed our manpower down to the last million." Needless to say, it was NOT a message the politicians running his country wanted to hear.

So, knowing what he knew about how the war was likely going to unfold what did Kitchener, whose word carried more weight with British public opinion in all matters military than even King George V, DO once it became apparent that the nation's "leaders" were determined to drive the country into the abyss? Did he resign in protest at a time in which doing so could possibly have halted the insane rush to war? Of course not. Instead, he allowed himself to be appointed Secretary of State for War. Almost immediately, Kitchener's became the very public face of the British war effort, as well as the drive to get young British men to voluntarily sign up to be led off to slaughter (the country did not resort to drafting soldiers until 1916, around the time of Kitchener's death).

Going back to Arendt and "the banality of evil," Kitchener was rare among the "leaders" of his day in that he was obviously not a stupid man. Nor at the time that he helped initiate what for his country was a war of choice knowing that it was going cause many millions of deaths was he likely motivated by the hope of professional promotion. In fact, Kitchener's ambition was to be Viceroy of India, not Secretary of State for War. So if Eichmann represents the "banal" figure who commits massive crimes against humanity because of a combination of burning ambition and no moral compass, what exactly does that make the likes of Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener? Yet one is (rightfully) vilified as a monster while the other has an elaborate memorial monument permanently on display in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Bringing all of this forward to America in the present day, I doubt if I'll get too many arguments if I assert that our current "leadership" features countless figures who are in fact monumentally stupid. But perhaps the lesson we should keep in mind from the example of Lord Kitchener is that it's the rare smart ones who when they do appear that we should REALLY be wary of.


Bonus: "In the fields the bodies burning...as the war machine keeps turning"

Remembering "Remembrance Day"

"I'd rather be hanged as a traitor than go to war for Wall Street" - Eugene Debs

With all the ass kissing of veterans that goes on every November 11th, a tradition that has gotten particularly annoying in the wake of 9/11, it is worth remembering what the November 11th holiday is SUPPOSED to be remembering. Called "Remembrance Day" in the British Commonwealth, the holiday there pauses to reflect on the over 800,000 soldiers of Great Britain and her Empire who perished in what has to rank as mankind's most fruitless and futile war.

In America, where anything that's happened more than six months ago is considered ancient history, most people have a pretty dim awareness of the First World War, assuming they remember it at all. Go into any bookstore (if you can find one that's still open), and even with the recent "splurge" in publications about the war to commemorate the centennial of its outbreak in August 1914, the number of World War 2 books will still outnumber it on the shelves by at least 20 to 1. That's a shame for a lot of reasons, but particularly because it means that the MOST important historical event of the 20th century is far less well understood even by the tiny fraction of people in this monumentally stupid country who actually still read non-fiction.

In addition to arguably being the first war to feature death on an industrial scale (the last year of the American Civil War also has an argument in this area) it was also the first war to feature airplanes, tanks, massive starvation of civilians (largely in the old Ottoman Empire) and the world's first modern genocide (again, courtesy of the Ottomans). The war's end also redrew the map of the Middle East to the abomination that has led to so much subsequent misery and bloodshed as well as a hideously one-sided peace treaty that created the political conditions that would allow a thuggish young upstart named Adolf Hitler to eventually seize control of what had previously been one of Europe's most enlightened nations.

Taking things across the Atlantic, Woodrow Wilson's decision to plunge America into the European abyss not only tragically and needlessly wasted the lives of 117,000 young men, it also witnessed the unconstitutional political persecution and even imprisonment or deportation of antiwar leaders such as Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who correctly surmised that American involvement was first and foremost to protect the interest of big business in selling war material to Britain and France. It was, in fact, America's first neoliberal war--sold as a humanitarian mission (the "war to end all wars") while fattening the pockets of the wealthy benefactors of America' corrupt politicians. Worse yet, had America ultimately stayed out, World War 1 would have likely ended in a stalemate, which would have meant no Versailles Treaty, no "stab in the back," no Hitler rising to power and no World War 2, at least in the European theater.

But lastly, the First World War is an interesting study in just how far "leaders" of nations will go in slaughtering their citizens in order to maintain their power, as well as how far said citizens can be pushed while their fathers, brothers, uncles and nephews' lives are being fritted away by megalomaniacal and incompetent psychopaths. Yes, many French soldiers rose up against their officers in 1917, and in the same year a revolution finally brought down the pitiful Czar in Russia, finally taking that beleaguered country out of the war, but for the most part the young men of Europe and later America marched suicidally into blanket artillery and machine gun fire like lemmings drowning themselves in the sea while the civilians back home watched in horror but sat on their collective asses and effectively did nothing to stop it.

From this example come the lessons we should take to heart as the American empire lurches ever forward to its eventual collapse: 1). Don't ever underestimate the lengths the elites will go to in order to maintain their power, and 2). Don't ever overestimate the willingness of your fellow citizens consumers idiots to revolt against whatever their "leaders" who say they will do to "protect" the homeland and keep them safe.


Bonus: "It was dark all around...there was frost in the ground...when the tigers broke free"

Soviet America (Part 2)

(image: Soviet era bread line)

The Guardian published an interesting article the other day called, "As the Berlin Wall fell, checks on capitalism crumbled," the title of which pretty much tells the story:

The immediate cause for the collapse of communism was that Moscow could not keep pace with Washington in the arms race of the 1980s. Higher defence spending put pressure on an ossifying Soviet economy. Consumer goods were scarce. Living standards suffered.

But the problems went deeper. The Soviet Union came to grief because of a lack of trust. The economy delivered only for a small, privileged elite who had access to imported western goods. What started with the best of intentions in 1917 ended tarnished by corruption. The Soviet Union was eaten away from within.

As it turned out, the end of the cold war was not unbridled good news for the citizens of the west. For a large part of the postwar era, the Soviet Union was seen as a real threat and even in the 1980s there was little inkling that it would disappear so quickly. A powerful country with a rival ideology and a strong military acted as a restraint on the west. The fear that workers could “go red” meant they had to be kept happy. The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high.

There was no need to be so generous once the Soviet Union was no more. What was known as neoliberal economics was born in the 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that market forces reigned supreme. The free market spread to poorer parts of the world where it had previously been off limits, expanding the global workforce. That meant cheaper goods but it also put downward pressure on wages.

What’s more, there was no longer any need to be inhibited. Those running companies could take a bigger slice of profits because there was nowhere else for workers to go. If citizens did not like “reform” of welfare states, they just had to lump it.

The whole article is well worth reading, except that in the second half it starts getting into potential "solutions" to counter the now unchecked rapacity of the world's predatory capitalist elites. The only real solution that could possibly change the status quo involves a violent revolution and overthrow of every government worldwide that has bought into the neoliberal economic policies that insist that enriching those at the top benefits everyone instead of the exact opposite being true.

But let's be perfectly clear about this--violent revolution is no more likely to happen in the West, especially in America--than it was to happen in the old Soviet Union. The Soviets kept the clamps tightly fashioned on dissent, just as is happening now in America. The only difference is that advances in technology and the increasing effectiveness of mass media propaganda means that (so far) our elites have generally not had to rely on tactics as heavy handed as those employed by the KGB in order to keep the masses in their place.

When the Soviet system did finally come apart it miraculously happened from the top-down after Premier Mikhail Gorbachev tried to "reform" the sclerotic Soviet command economy and failed miserably. To Gorbachev's undying credit, once he realized he had failed he did not try to cling on to power at the cost of a potential second Russian civil war, but allowed the Soviet Union to more or less peacefully collapse. It was an act almost completely unprecedented in world history, and the average Russian paid a steep price in terms of plunging standards of living as a result.

"Collapse" is also almost certainly the only way the current corrupt American system, which may not have any bread lines but is approaching late Soviet era levels of inequality between the elites and the masses, is ever going to cease to exist. The problem is that there does not seem to be any potential American Gorbachev out there who recognizes that peacefully dismantling the American empire, even at the cost of a huge drop in our own standards of living, would be preferable to maintaining the system until it experiences a violent collapse that will likely suck many millions of people into the maelstrom. In any event, even if an American Gorbachev did exist it is unlikely that he or she would be able, given how hopelessly selfish and entitled a majority of Americans are, to successfully "land this sucker" before it all goes kablooie.


Bonus: "Sweet communist, the communist daughter...standing on the seaweed water"

Soviet America

Well, it's election day once again in America and once again I am going to exercise the one meaningful freedom still open to me this day as a citizen of the empire. Despite now being retired and having the whole day to go and "enjoy the franchise" that "brave men (and a few women)" have supposedly "fought and died for," I am instead going to assert my right to not participate in what has become a meaningless holographic (and as the late George Carlin put it: masturbatory) excercise.

We as American citizens may live in a virtual one party state, so under the political control of oligarchs that electoral "change" has become virtually meaningless, but the one thing that separates us from the denizens of the old Soviet Union, or any other totalitarian system that insisted upon having sham elections in a desperate attempt to provide the illusion of legitimacy and democracy, is that we still have the right to not participate--and what's more we won't be fined, imprisoned or fired from our jobs for holding up a stiff middle finger of refusal on election day. Deliberately NOT voting and thus withholding legitimacy, however slightly, from the whole corrupt American political, business and media establishment, is in these "interesting times" the only sensible thing a citizen can still do on election day.

The Democrats have apparently finally given up my support, because I no longer receive solicitations from that corrupt and worthless party asking for money. My dad still does however, and he told me that most of the correspondence directed at him by the Donkeys this year menacingly intones how awful it will be if they lose and the Republicans take control of the Senate. And that's ALL Pelosi, Reid, Biden and Obama (whose names appear on the solicitations) dare to argue with their pleas--there is not one mention from these dubious party "leaders" of just what their party will actually DO if it manages to hold onto the Senate. I think we've seen perfectly well during the current political alignment of the past four years exactly what they will do if they manage to hang on to their slim Senate majority--effectively nothing but continue to allow the billionaires to line their pockets at the expense of everyone else.

There has been a little bit of excitement in the press this election cycle about the unusual number of independent candidates who might actually win their races this time around, as if this is a development of any real significance. It isn't, because even if all of those non-affiliated candidates win they each will be asked to caucus with the two major parties, and they all will with one or the other. For if they don't they won't be allowed to sit on any of the committees that slice up the bacon for distribution to the folks back home. And NOBODY, however well intentioned they may be to begin with, spends the time, effort and money it takes to get elected to congress just so they can become an ineffectual one termer. Nope, before these newbies even move the furniture into their new offices outside their office doors will be lines of lobbyists just waiting to tell them which way to vote and when, and schooling them on how the thoroughly corrupted Washington system really works.

In post-Citizens United America especially, elections have become as big a sham as they were in the old Soviet Union--the one difference being that the voters who went to the polls pre-1991 in Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, etc., unlike most of the voters in America today, likely suffered from no illusions that their votes had any real meaning whatsoever.


Bonus: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here...this is the war room"

A Choice I Hope I Never Have to Make

By now I'm sure most if not all of you have heard the amazing story of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old woman with terminal brain cancer who chose to end her own life while she still could rather than wait around for the disease to consumer her in its ugly, painful fashion. Maynard's situation really hit home to me because not so long ago I thought I might find myself in the same exact position, and I still might should my cancer return at some point. The dismal reality is that despite the "every day alive is a good day," happy talk, there comes a point where life really is no longer worth living. As someone who has suffered an intense amount of pain and discomfort the past two years, I'm not yet sure I know exactly where the threshold lies, but I think I have some idea. And for anyone who has not had the experience of being in excruciating pain and having been told by your doctors that you are expected to live for only X number more months who thinks what Maynard did was morally wrong, let me be the first to tell to please go fuck yourself with a very big stick.

Before I got sick, I knew two other people with terminal cancer who chose to to end their lives early. One was in her early 60s and was suffering the horrendous agony of having the disease slowly eat away at her spine. The other was a just-turned-40 young woman who initially appeared to have defeated breast cancer only to have the damnable disease return and metastasize. She made the courageous decision to stop receiving chemotherapy because she was told there was little chance it would be able to save her a second time and because the first go-around had made her life nearly unbearable.

During my own treatments I also saw people on the other side of the fence, those who continued to struggle despite there being little or no hope. While undergoing chemotherapy I made friends with Tom, a 59-year-old guy who had stage 4 esophageal cancer. Over the months I had chemo with him his condition continued to worsen. Tom was a big baseball fan, and my wife and I decided to use some connections we had to arrange for him and his wife to go with us to see what turned out to be his very last big league game, with the bonus that we were allowed to go onto the field during batting practice and meet some of the players. Several even signed a ball for Tom.

By the time of that game, however, Tom was already confined to a wheelchair, could not hold his head up without a neck brace, could barely speak above a whisper and was permanently attached to a colostomy bag. He ended up passing on about three months later, and the effusive thanks he and his wife expressed to us for arranging that special moment near the end of his life are something I will always remember. Nevertheless, as I observed him that night my thought was that it was great that he was having fun but I doubted I'd be able to stand to let my own condition deteriorate as far as his already had. Thankfully, to date it never has.

Allowing people to end their lives with dignity is a touchy subject in this country. On the cold, analytical end of the spectrum there's the figure that gets thrown about that says in America two-thirds of the average person's total medical expenses are incurred in the last year of life, which would seem to indicate a way that skyrocketing health care costs could be brought down but for the chilling thought of exactly who gets to make such decisions. On the other end are the fundamentalist religious freaks and right to life lunatics who if they could would force every patient to draw every agonizing breath for however long it takes until they mercifully expire. Because these fucking assholes shout the loudest, they make it nearly impossible to have a reasonable discussion about the right to die and the real necessity for legalized physician-assisted suicide.

Then along comes Brittany Maynard, bless her, a pretty young white woman with incredible courage who, dignity despite the media circus that surrounded her, was able to bring national attention to the issue in such a way that was basically impervious to all but the most unhinged criticism. Yes, it's a shame that the media won't pay attention to many social issues UNLESS a pretty young white woman is involved as the victim, but in this case we'll have to take what we can get. And what we got was an incredibly selfless act from a someone who allowed a huge intrusion into her private life at the worst possible time so that others in the future might be able to end their own lives with dignity and while experiencing as little physical pain as possible. I don't often cite heroes on this blog--mostly because I don't think there are a whole lot of genuine heroes left in this shitty world--but Brittany Maynard was a hero. May she rest in peace.


Bonus: No--suicide is NOT "the coward's way out"

The Scariest Halloween Story You'll Read Today

(Editorial note: There was a BBC report earlier this week which raised the alarm about world population growth, stating that rather than leveling off at around 9 billion by 2050, as previously postulated by the UN, that the population could instead reach 12 billion by the year 2100. Just prior to the publication of that article, I wrote the post below in which rather than having a team of scientists furiously studying their latest computer algorithms, I just used a simple calculator and a world population counter to come to basically the same conclusion. I've decided not to alter my original post in light of the BBC report, just to show that figuring this stuff out isn't nearly as hard to do as the "experts" would like you to believe it is).

Boo!

As I highlighted at the time here at TDS, on Halloween Day 2011 at exactly 1:48 P.M. the poplation counter site Worldometers estimated that the world had just added its 7,000,000,000th living human. Not to worry, the optimists assured us, birthrates around the globe have been declining since 1960s and it's a well known "fact" that when the wealth of societies increase, women on average start having fewer babies. Some optimists who study these issues have gone as far as to say that world population will level off at around 9,000,000,000 by around the year 2050.

Ahhh...optimists. They are just so much fun to poke with a rhetorical stick. I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.

Let's start by reminding everybody where we have come from. The data shows that it was upon reaching the 3 billion mark in 1959 that human population numbers realy began to spiral out of control. From that level the world raced to 4 billion in 1974 (just 15 years later) and 5 billion in 1987 (just 13 years after that). The last two milestones were each reached in exactly one dozen years, 6 billion in 1999 and 7 billion in 2011. Admittedly, the raw numbers DO indicate a slow down in birth rates, but the sheer size of the the current human population has caused the momentum of increase to lumber steadily forward anyway. Already we are in a situation where I, one of the eldest members of Generation X, have seen the human population of planet Earth double in just my lifetime.

In that spirit, let's have a little check of the Worldometers website again today, three years after the adding of the 7th billion person, and see if we can see any signs of a continuing slowdown in population growth. Hmmm, seems the total now is slightly above 7,270,000,000. That means that for the last three years the AVERAGE annual increase in human beings was 90,000,000. At that rate, the world's 8 billionth person will be born in 2022, just ELEVEN years after the previous milestone was reached. Extrapolate out further, and world population at midcentury will be around 10.5 billion, not the 9 billion the optimists were touting.

So why have the optimists apparently been proven wrong? Well, the one big elephant in the room is the fact that the the world economy for anyone who isn't among the elites has pretty much sucked since the financial crash of 2008. So much for the idea of rising prosperity serving as a gigantic prophylactic.

There has rightly been lots of worry about ebola, but to put the epidemic in perspective right now it would have to kill about 90,000,000 people PER YEAR just to level off the planet's population. So, as if we didn't have enough real world events to scare us this Halloween, here's an oldie but a goody that just continues to make calls from INSIDE THE HOUSE.

Boo.

(2nd editorial note: putting aside for a moment the fact that resource depletion will likely not allow continued human population growth beyond midcentury, if the planet did theoretically have the resources and we did in fact reach 10.5 billion in population by 2050, even the BBC report's "pessimistic" assessment of 12 billion humans in 2100 would likely be well off on the low side)


Bonus: Happy Halloween, everybody

They Hate You--They REALLY REALLY Hate You

The other day I was scanning online through some old year end "Best of" lists from some newspaper websites looking for books to add to my already substantial reading list. That's when I came upon a review of THIS TOWN -- Two Parties and a Funeral Plus Plenty of Valet Parking! in America’s Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich, which was published last year to some excellent critical acclaim. I haven't yet read Leibovich's book, but some of the blurbs from the New York Times review of it were so interesting that I thought I would share them here:

Not to ruin it for you, but: if you already hate Washington, you’re going to hate it a whole lot more after reading Mark Leibovich’s takedown of the creatures who infest our nation’s capital and rule our destinies. And in case you are deluded enough as to think they care, you’ll learn that they already hate you. He quotes his former Washington Post colleague Henry ­Allen: ­“Washington feels like a conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody else in America quite understands, even though they pay for it.”

It's a conspiracy, all right, if in fact only a loose one among a large group of sociopaths who hate each other almost as much as they hate you and me. The meat of the review, and thus the book, comes with the author's depictions of four major changes that have come to Washington in recent decades:

Lobbying. President Obama’s first year in office was the best year ever for the special interests industry, which earned $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government. Ka-ching — your change, sir. There’s a phrase in journalism-speak called “burying the lede,” which Leibo­vich appears to do by waiting until Page 330 to cite this arresting figure (previously reported by The Atlantic): in 1974, 3 percent of retiring members of Congress became lobbyists. “Now 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of congressmen do.” No one goes home anymore. Cincinnatus, call your office.

There are a number of sanctimonious standout “formers” in Leibovich’s Congressional hall of shame, but just to name a few exemplars who gleefully inhabit ethical no-worry zones and execute brisk 180-­degree switcheroos on any issue, including the Armenian genocide, so long as it pays: Dick Gephardt, Evan Bayh and Tim Pawlenty. (Christopher Dodd, late of Connecticut, is another beauty. Disclosure: he beat my uncle out of a Senate seat, but judge for yourself if he isn’t loathsome for other reasons.) My own modest proposal is that the media stop referring to these scoundrels as “strategic consultants” or their other camouflage titles and call them what they are: influence peddlers. I know — good luck with that.

The other major change took place pari passu with lobbying: the arrival of big money in Washington. “Over the last dozen years,” Leibovich writes, “corporate America (much of it Wall Street) has tripled the amount of money it has spent on lobbying and public affairs consulting in D.C.” Alongside this money comes the tsunami of dollars from presidential campaigns. He reports that during the 2012 contest, the so-called super PACs and megadonors pumped “upwards of $2 billion . . . into the empty-calorie economy of two men destroying each other.” He refers to a datum courtesy of The Huffington Post, which reported in the spring of 2012 that, so far, “the top 150 consulting companies had . . . grossed more than $465 million” during the campaign.

All of which has given rise to another unlovely development: political consultants and their concomitant celebrity. This breed has, Leibovich says, essentially replaced the old-style political bosses. One might ask: is it a bad thing that we now have the omnipresent James Carville and Mary Matalin and their ilk? Aren’t we better off for this “celebrity-industrial complex” instead of the smoke-filled rooms of yore? Over to you, but at least the boys in the smoke-filled rooms didn’t yap at us on TV on the Sabbath and endorse Maker’s Mark bourbon. (Honestly, James and Mary. They’re also doing the safety briefing voice-over for Independence Air. Is this a great country or what? Meanwhile, on “Good Morning America” tomorrow, George Stephanopoulos’s guests are. . . .)

Bringing us to the fourth change: Pandora’s (cable TV) box. The rise of cable television and the 24/7 news cycle, as well as Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media, have provided all these people with heretofore unimaginable influence. “Suddenly,” Leibovich writes, “anyone without facial warts could call themselves a ‘strategist’ and get on TV. Or start an e-mail newsletter, Web site or, later, blog, Facebook page or Twitter following — in other words, become Famous for Washington.”

It has also enabled journalists to turn themselves into pundits, with all the glittery and greasy emoluments of that lower trade. “Punditry,” he writes, “has replaced reporting as journalism’s highest calling, accompanied by a mad dash of ‘self-branding,’ to borrow a term that had now fully infested the city: everyone now hellbent on branding themselves in the marketplace, like Cheetos (Russert was the local Coca-Cola). They gather, all the brands, at . . . self-­reverential festivals, like the April White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, whose buffet of ‘pre-parties’ and ‘after-parties’ now numbers more than two dozen — because a single banquet, it is clear, cannot properly celebrate the full achievements of the People Who Run Your Country.”

I spent most of my career prior to my recent retirement inside the Beltway, but I was as far away (metaphorically if not literally) from the glitz and glamour of "official" (read: "political") Washington as I'd been when I was still growing up in Illinois. You're either in what the late George Carlin described as "The Big Club" or you're not, and I most decidedly was not.

Nevertheless, what I've witnessed since arriving in the DC area a month before Bill Clinton won his first term in office is how the money pump, which has always propped up the world's largest "company town," has in the years since the start of the War on Terror and particularly since the insane federal borrowing and spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, almost literally paved the streets of the city and its immediate suburbs with gold. This incredible surge of wealth, most of it going to the lobbyists, lawyers and "Beltway Bandit" contractors, can be seen everywhere from the countless new suburban McMansions and upscale shopping malls to the many regentrified DC neighborhoods that have changed the demographic makeup of the so-called "Chocolate City" so dramatically that it no longer has a black majority population. Washington as a workplace is no longer a locale for citizens who really believe in public service (as I once did), but has instead become a gold rush city where the greedy and power hungry come to strike it rich.

And all of this, of course, is enabled by Americans who are either ignorant, stupid or willfully blind enough to believe it still matters what party label the sociopathic social climbers who come to Washington to make their fortune wear. The real truth is personified by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who after his recent "stunning" primary defeat almost immediately signed on as a lobbyist making 26 times the average annual household income of his former Virginia district.

Of course, for all of their bluster and preening these people are still just puppets dancing on the ends of strings held by the billionaires who pay the bills. And the system that supports both them and their paymasters is getting more brittle and creakier by the year. Someday, the whole (ahem) house of cards is going to come crashing down, and those who have so come to disdain their fellow citizens are going to get a rude awakening in just what it means to be the objects of their collective hatred.


Bonus: "They still call it The White House, but that's a temporary condition"

The Earth’s Vertebrate Wildlife Population has Halved in 40 Years

And that doesn't even include members of congress (bada-BING!).

Actually, this story from The Independent makes me very ashamed of my own species:

The world’s wildlife population is less than half the size it was just four decades ago, with unsustainable human consumption and damage from climate change destroying valuable habitats at a faster rate than previously thought, a new report has warned.

The number of vertebrates, which make up the bulk of Earth’s visible animals, has dived by 52 per cent over the past 40 years. Biodiversity loss has now reached “critical levels”, the report warns.

But some populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have suffered much bigger losses, with fresh water species declining by 76 per cent since 1974, according to the Living Planet Report by the conservation campaign group WWF.

There's not really a whole lot I can add to this awful report other than to say you're either a person who actually gives a fuck about the problem or you're one that doesn't. And even if you reside squarely in the former camp, there isn't really fuck all you can do about any of it.

Reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible? Yes, absolutely. Just living below your financial means, which is a smart thing to do anyway if you are able, will help in that regard. But never believe it will add up to anything so much as a cure for what we human beings are doing to the natural world.


Bonus: "Come closer and see...see into the dark"