Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in creek_muskogee's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, December 4th, 2011
6:40 pm	Occupy Wall Street - my policy prescriptions My policy recommendations inspired by Occupy Wall Street, in other words, how to make the economy stronger and tax and regulatory policies fairer and more effective. The LA Times made a good start in their editorial on December 4, 2011. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-manifesto-20111204,0,463446.story But, as expected, it is quite timid. Following their list of issues, I will submit my ideas. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that, even though I don’t sanction their tactics of encampment, the Occupy movement has scored a tremendous success in changing the national agenda: it has changed from merely budget balancing to the question of who is the economy for, if not the majority of people? The critical divide in America is not between Republican and Democrat, but the wealthiest 1% versus the 99% of people. FINANCIAL REFORM: the big banks knew that the country was in a massive real estate price bubble. For instance, the Nicholas Kristof editorial in the NY Times 11-30-11: Regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, James Theckston fully acknowledges that he and other bankers are mostly responsible for the country’s housing mess. Top management pressured them to make high-risk, sub-prime loans. Account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans. They ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. “The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.” Yet what is scandalous is the basic unfairness of what has transpired. The federal government rescued highly paid bankers from their reckless decisions. It protected bank shareholders and creditors. But it mostly turned a cold shoulder to some of the most vulnerable and least sophisticated people in America. Last year alone, banks seized more than one million homes. Still, 28 percent of all American mortgages are “underwater,” according to Zillow, a real estate Web site. That means that more is owed than the home is worth, and the figure is up from 23 percent a year ago. That overhang stifles the economy, for it’s difficult to nurture a broad recovery unless real estate and construction revive. Sure, some programs exist to help borrowers in trouble, but not nearly enough. We still haven’t taken such basic steps as allowing bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of a mortgage on a primary home. We should go further and allow all the underwater mortgages to be written down to a balance equal to their current market rate, and make the banks take the loss. That would be fair, and a fair return for taxpayer bailouts. The LA Times is correct in supporting a financial transactions tax, called a Tobin tax, which might be as little as 0.005%, to reduce dangerous speculation without hurting long-term investing. TAXATION: a progressive tax structure is based on common sense: the first $30,000 or so you make goes toward necessities like food, clothing and shelter. As you make more, you can afford to pay more taxes. During the “golden age of American capitalism, 1945 – 1965, the top income tax rate was 90%. The economy boomed, so obviously the tax burden did not inhibit the economy. Since 1980, all the income gains have gone to the top 20%. Everyone else is working longer hours to make the same amount. No wonder people feel squeezed; they are being squeezed. At the same time, the top income tax and capital gains rates have gone down, a major cause of the federal deficit. There is still plenty of money; it’s just hoarded by the top 1% or 0.1%. We need to restore higher taxes on higher incomes. We should tax capital gains at the same rate as income taxes, so Warren Buffett doesn’t pay lower rates than his secretary. I encourage everyone to read the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan to balance the budget by restoring a progressive tax system and cutting defense spending. This can be done while protecting Medicare and Social Security. CORPORATE INFLUENCE: here is where bold thinking is especially needed. Businesses should not be allowed to restrict consumer options by buying out their competition. Corporations should not be allowed to influence the political process and should be barred from political donations. Further, the law has been corrupted to confer rights of persons on corporations. This must be reversed by amending the constitution: We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. EDUCATION: This country grew the most when high-quality education was made widely available at low cost. Education of the people represents an economic investment, much like the infrastructure of roads and reservoirs. It is fair to tax the wealthy because their profits came about by the education of their employees and consumers. Marijuana: a trivial issue, but it should simply be legalized, like many former Chiefs of Police argue. Like Prohibition, the current laws don’t work, and only fund criminals and undercut support for the rule of law. Get the government off our backs, and move on to more important issues. HEALTH CARE: this was not mentioned by the LA Times, but it represents an area of tremendous waste of money in America. Most countries spend HALF as much as we do, and are just as healthy. How? Through replacing private health insurance companies with a government “single payer” health insurance, and using that leverage to reduce prescription drug prices. Canada, France, Germany and many others demonstrate the efficiency of such a plan. The only losers would be the private health insurance companies and the big drug companies. Everyone else would win, saving on average over $3,000 per person per year, and still have the same health. And you wouldn’t have to listen to any more commercials about the purple pill. Once the health care system was transformed, Medicare would be back in the black, problem solved. WARS, AKA Defense spending: also unmentioned by the LA Times, this represents another tremendous source of savings for government spending. Does anyone else remember the Soviet Union? We were always told the justification for our massive military spending was the threat of the Soviet Union. Then they collapsed, and the Russians became our allies. Did we slash military spending when peace broke out? No! We kept right on spending almost the same amount. Then on 9/11 some Arab hijackers armed with $2 box cutters crashed us, and we went on a binge of spending on military and security. America conquered the Afghanistan and Iraqi armies in a few weeks, but 10 years later, we are still spending $700 billion on wars and war materials. The amount Al Qaida spends is probably too small for the Defense Department to measure. We should slash spending in half within 5 years. This would still be 3 times China’s defense spending, and they are our ally. Who would China sell their stuff to if we went to war? The US is by far the #1 market for China. Military spending is the least efficient in spurring the economy. The US could save $350 Billion annually for deficit reduction or investments in infrastructure. Europe uses HALF the energy per person as the US, and enjoys nearly the same standard of living. Rebuilding roads, bridges and trains and increasing the energy efficiency of buildings would put the unemployed back to work, reduce energy imports and make our economy stronger for a generation. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 27th, 2011
1:07 pm	Myth and Reality of America’s Foreign Policies The recent uprising in Tunisia and Egypt exposes the gulf between what our leaders say we represent and the reality of this country’s actions. For example, President Obama said in his State of the Union address that “America's moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom and justice and dignity.” Just how shiny was America’s moral example in Tunisia? “The country nominally operated as a republic under the authoritarian regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who governed from 1987 to 2011 before fleeing following wide-ranging protests. Tunisia … had suffered corruption benefiting the former president's family.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia Surely an America supporting freedom and justice would not back a corrupt, authoritarian regime like this. What did the U.S. actually do? U.S. “relations have been close since Tunisia's independence” and “reflects strong bilateral ties. The United States and Tunisia have an active schedule of joint military exercises. U.S. security assistance historically has played an important role in cementing relations. The U.S.-Tunisian Joint Military Commission meets annually to discuss military cooperation, Tunisia's defense modernization program, and other security matters.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia_%E2%80%93_United_States_relations Maybe that little country was an exception. Let’s look at neighboring Egypt, a country of 80 Million people, which is “a close U.S. ally.” Egypt has been ruled by the same person for 30 years, under emergency law the entire time. But the people are fighting for freedom and justice against their government. “They were the latest in outbursts of political discontent in Egypt that have been growing more frequent and more intense over the past year. Protests have erupted sporadically over police brutality, poverty and food prices, government corruption and mismanagement, and more recently sectarian strife between Christians and Muslims. Parliamentary elections in November were widely decried as fraudulent.” L.A. Times 1/26/11. The U.S. is no moral example to the Egyptian people. The reality is, according the U.S. State Department: “The United States and Egypt enjoy a strong and friendly relationship based on shared mutual interest in Middle East peace and stability.” http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm So the merest inspection of America’s actual role reveals a profound hypocrisy. The folks back home are soothed by our leader’s assurances that we are a good people, while in reality we back the ugliest regimes in the world. Why? The U.S. backs dictatorships because they support our interests. Americans run a global empire, but we don’t call ourselves imperialists. Our control isn’t the 19th Century style of holding and governing distant lands. No, we have found it more efficient to have locals do that work for us, as long as corporate interests are served, with raw materials and labor available at low prices. If not, have the CIA overthrow their government. If that doesn’t work, call in the Marines. Even tiny, poor countries can’t be allowed to use their meager resources for the benefit of their own populace. That would be “the threat of a good example” as the secret Pentagon Papers explained our war against Vietnam. Another example is Haiti, whose poor organized and elected Aristide. In 2004 the U.S. Embassy Chief of Staff told him he had to go or be killed. U.S. Military took him away to exile. But Americans like thinking we are exceptional, and exceptionally good. We like our Presidents telling us we support freedom, when we don’t. Democrats and Republicans all do this. No internal disagreement means there is no story for the media to report. Perhaps we could debate whose moral crime is the greatest: our leaders who lie to us, or we who do not challenge them? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 4th, 2010
3:39 pm	Economics 101 Economics 101 Lots of people, pundits anyway, make claims that they say are “Economics 101” as if it is universally accepted as a basic true concept. Often such people are wrong. I wish to make my own claims about what is Economics 101 in light of our current weak economy and various policy proposals. Having run my own business for many years, I have come to understand the market in ways I would have denied previously. This leads me to a key hypothesis: that companies only invest and hire more when they think this will increase their profits and/or market share. They do not do it because they have more money themselves, either as retained earnings or access to capital. Its all about demand; that is the rate-limiting step, not supply. Capitalism tends to result in oversupply. All they need now are customers. Much of the mainstream pundit class is saying the opposite. They say we need to cut taxes for the rich so that they will invest more and this will lead to increased hiring. Nonsense! Companies are not starved for capital. Quite the contrary, this economy is swimming in a vast sea of capital, desperately waiting for good investment opportunities. Companies are now holding record amounts of cash, hoarding it rather than investing it. In such circumstances, giving them more cash will not lead to any increase in purchase of capital equipment or employment. After decades of substantial investments in computer hardware and software, companies can do much more with far fewer people. Thank you, Bill Gates! I remember typing on carbon paper, where a mistake at the bottom of the page meant I had wasted the past 10 minutes. Those days and those ways are gone forever. Companies currently have all the staff they need for the current demand. Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle. Only if the consumer demand increases would they need to hire more employees. This is where John Maynard Keynes wrote the book on economics. Keynsianism is the economic theory that a stimulus by national governments can shorten or alleviate recessions (“counter-cyclical spending”). Absent government intervention, capitalist economies are quite capable of crawling along at a very low level, even in the face of mass unemployment (“inefficient macroeconomic outcomes”). When capitalism hits one of its regular recessions, only the federal government has the ability to increase economic activity. The other two players in the economy, business and consumers, cannot spend more, so the recession will linger or even deepen. A generation ago, everybody knew this. Keynsianism was accepted as Economics 101. In 1971, Republican US President Richard Nixon even proclaimed "we are all Keynesians now". But that has all changed. Now they are listening to Milton Friedman. The class war has intensified, and the wealthy still want more. Now they are getting all hot and bothered about deficits. They say we need to provide the investor class with more money so they can grow businesses. But, as we established above, this is false. In fact, cutting government spending will worsen the recession. We are witnessing this in California as thousands of teachers are laid off, sending the economy spiraling downward as the newly-unemployed buy less. Politicians and pundits are busy trying to forget Economics 101, and replace it with dubious justifications to benefit their wealthy masters. It is still false. Don’t buy it. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
11:47 pm	Rand Paul is dangerously wrong The Worst Part of Rand Paul’s Politics Libertarians and Greens agreed on a significant number of issues. Protection of the environment was an area of great disagreement, but the one way these came together was in holding polluters accountable. If an oil company spills oil, it should have to pay for the cleanup and everyone’s economic losses. But now Senator-elect Rand Paul opposes accountability. He says “it was an accident,” thus letting companies off the hook for their damages. This undercuts any high ground once held by Libertarians. This is just blatant serving the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the people. Miners killed and injured, coal slurries, oil spills. Paul says “No one is responsible. Move along, nothing is happening here.” I strongly disagree. Accountability is essential. It must be supported by conservatives, moderates, liberals and independents of all stripes if we want to maintain American freedom and justice. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
8:56 am	No to tax cuts for the rich - my letter to editor of Ventura Star published 11-13-10 Dear Editor, Please write to Congressman Gallegly: urge him to not vote to cut taxes for the rich. Those Bush-era tax cuts need to expire as planned. Why? Our nation simply cannot afford the $750 Billion price tag. Many say don’t raise taxes in a recession. That is an argument to renew the tax cuts for the bottom 90% of the people. They (we) immediately spend almost all of any tax cut received. But the wealthy don’t have to spend this windfall, and it doesn’t help the economy if they don’t spend it. So in economic terms, it is a wasteful and inefficient way to boost the economy. In this recent election, many people expressed their great concern about the increasing federal deficit. OK, deficit-hawks, are you still paying attention? This is the time and the place to take action! We won’t see any less painful ways to cut the deficit. We should not risk the future of our nation on this expensive, unneeded tax cut for the wealthy. (Comment on this)
8:55 am	Brown not Whitman for Governor - my letter to the editor of Ventura Star published 9-15-10 Dear Editor, Meg Whitman has my respect for her business accomplishments. But her private sector experience would all have to be forgotten before she could even begin to govern in a democracy. Just like Ross Perot had some good ideas, but he would have been a disaster if he’d won the Presidency. Governing is so different from running a business. The State can’t simply get out of the business of housing prisoners or providing education or administering Medi-Cal. Prop 13 made local governments dependent on the State for funding. The Governor cannot bark orders. He or she has to persuade a squabbling Legislature to go along with their agenda. So Whitman would have to rely on her consultants, just as she has for her entire campaign. They would doubtless make policies to benefit their class, the wealthy elites. Meanwhile the majority of us would suffer. Whitman’s wealth isolates her from working people’s lives and concerns. Whitman’s utter and profound ignorance of democratic governance would be very costly to us citizens. Jerry Brown knows how government works. He has devoted himself to public service, and lived in touch with regular working men and women of this state. Besides being Governor, he was Mayor of Oakland, where he had to make government work with very limited resources! For non-wealthy people like me, who need good schools for my kids, a good job and safe streets, a Governor Brown would be a lot better. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
9:05 pm	George Will - not! Dear Readers, George Will and other Washington pundits constantly tell us how we are supposed to think. How do they get away with calling the corporate press “liberal”? His column always runs in the Washington Post, allegedly a purely liberal paper. If you don’t know who Will is, you could watch Meet the Press, where he seems to be part of the furniture. He sits in his bow tie, looking like he just ate a lemon, as he lectures a nation on its vices such as maintaining a remnant of a safety net for those down on their luck. I could easily make this blog a running counter-argument to such propaganda. Will’s November 11 column, reprinted below, spins the recent election in a predictably conservative fashion. Reasonable people can, and do, disagree! He starts with a “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy, claiming Obama’s presidency “resuscitated the right.” Actually, “Conventional wisdom holds that the President's party will lose seats during a mid-term election.” Source: The American Presidency Project. The 2010 results fit this historical trend, but the shift was more pronounced. Why? The economy is terrible, and voters always blame the party in power. Secondly, in the last several elections the Democrats had made big gains by winning in many predominately Republican districts; in this election the voters returned to type. The Republicans cynically plotted to block every initiative, then complained Obama hasn’t done enough. Will claims Republican gains were partly a result of the health care legislation. Well, “partly” is hard to disprove, but Obama campaigned on this issue in a big way, and accomplished his goal. The media and every right-wing soapbox spread lies and distortions, like Palin’s non-existent “death panels”. Despite all that, a new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1. So health care was not really a factor in the election, Mr. Will, except perhaps to depress Democratic voter turnout because Obama’s reforms were too timid. Will whines about whether Congress should have called health care charges fees or taxes. Well, excuse me, but this is hardly new. When it comes to politicians calling something when it really is another, the Republicans are experienced at this tactic. Witness the Republican “Healthy Forests Act” that made the forests sicker by expediting clear-cutting, or the “Clear Skies Initiative” that made the skies dirtier with coal burning. The worst, IMO, was the Reagan-era naming a nuclear missile “The Peacekeeper.” Yes, exactly as Orwell said in “1984,” a totalitarian government would say “War is Peace.” Why doesn’t Mr. Will protest those perversions of the language? Then Will gets huffy about alleged “attempts to radically expand government supervision.” The real radical government maneuver was granting corporations the Constitutional rights of flesh and blood people. That fiendish act continues to weaken citizen power. It was further weakened by the recent Citizens United case, allowing anonymous corporate donations in electoral democracy. Now we don’t even get to know who bought our politicians! Will, spinning hard, throws out this curve ball: “In January, the Supreme Court again tormented reformers who are eager to empower government officials to ration speech about government officials.” No, it isn’t about rationing speech; it’s about citizens being drowned out by the power of corporations. Mr. Will might be the only one in Washington that believes money doesn’t control politics. Contrast that with the frankness of Senator Durbin: “And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” Sorry, Will, you are flat-out wrong here, and no desperate spinning will change that. A healthy democracy is “one person, one vote.” It is not “one dollar, one vote,” not when 40% of the dollars are owned by 0.1% of the people. No, Americans are NOT indifferent to arguments about process; Will is indifferent to what we think. Reality: polls show 80% of people oppose the Citizens United court ruling, including 65% who are strongly opposed! Mr. Will’s next target: the health of the planet. He applauds the failure of our leaders “limiting supposed climate-changing gases.” Supposed? It is not “supposed” by the people who study climate change. Rather, it is well-established, even for such a complex system as climate. Will, however, myopically cares only for the economy, not for the planetary systems that make the economy possible. If he thinks controls are expensive, he needs to add up the costs of out of control climate change. (This subject deserves a column all of its own.) Without pause, he launches into the newest front in the class war: the attack on government workers. The main issue is that many government employees still get the kind of pensions that most workers got: defined benefit. But in Reagonomics, most of us got demoted to defined contribution pensions. A generation later, we realize the magnitude of the difference. Sure, there are some excesses, and I support fixing them. But the corporate world routinely sports such excesses, only with more zeroes following. What we ought to do is look at Germany. How can that Capitalist country provide all their citizens with health care, education, 6 weeks annual vacation, etc? And how can we get back to the relative income equality America enjoyed before Reagan? Will grimly ends with an attack on public broadcasting. Naturally conservatives have hated it from Day 1 because they enjoy much better control of the media when they own it outright. To use an old metaphor, it is hard to pick a fight with those who buy ink by the train car load. General Electric owns NBC, so don’t expect them to represent anti-war voices, even, no especially if, they are a majority. They donated over $1 Million to Bush’s campaign in 2000. Mr. Will doesn’t want to rock that boat, as he is being carried so comfortably. OK, I disagreed with NPR's firing of Juan Williams for speaking about his fear of Muslims in airports. I thought they could have simply said he was not speaking for NPR. But to call NPR liberal is simply incorrect. Nixon emasculated it by requiring it to get much of its funding from private sources. Wags call it “National Petroleum Radio” as it relies so much on Chevron and Exxon for funding. So, instead of fulfilling its promise of reporting “without fear or favor” as its charter declares, in reality public TV and radio has to satisfy the same corporate masters as the completely corporate media. NPR originally promised to “speak with many voices, many dialects.” However, it relies on the same elite government and corporate sources as the corporate media. A study of NPR’s partisan sources (including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants) Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent). So NPR is centrist with a conservative bias. Contrast that with other democracies where a strong, independent public media is a major news source for the people. Just because there is Fox “News” and a couple hours of liberal opinion on MSNBC, and all the blogs you want on the internet, doesn’t mean we wouldn’t benefit from an alternative to media owned by General Electric, like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Getting good information from TV and radio is not “silly,” as Mr. Will asserts. Actually, it is vital for a healthy democracy. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ My column above was written in response to this: George Will: The transformative election. Posted November 11, 2010 11:11 AM WASHINGTON -- As he promised it would be, Barack Obama's presidency has been transformative, but not as he intended. Whether it lasts two or six more years, it is an exhausted volcano because its biggest consequence may already have happened: It has resuscitated the right, making 2010 conservatism's best year in 30 years -- since the election of Ronald Reagan. Republican gains were partly a result of the "shock-and-awe statism" (Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels' phrase) of the health care legislation passed in March. Seven months later, a federal judge in Florida, hearing arguments about the constitutionality of penalizing Americans who do not purchase health insurance, was bemused. Lawyers defending the legislation said that the fee noncompliant Americans would be forced to pay is really just a tax. But during congressional debate on the legislation, Democrats adamantly denied it was a tax. So, in a rehearsal of an argument that will be heard by the Supreme Court, the judge said: "Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check." This year two attempts to radically expand government supervision of Americans' behavior collapsed. One concerned regulating the political process, the other regulating the planet's climate. In January, the Supreme Court again tormented reformers who are eager to empower government officials to ration speech about government officials. The court ruled that because the First Amendment proscribes laws limiting political speech, it proscribes laws that limit independent candidate-related advocacy by Americans organized as corporations. In 2007, the court had held that the First Amendment protects issue advocacy by corporations. In his meretricious autumn campaigning, Obama told Americans that democracy was threatened by the amount of political speech the court empowered. Americans, however, are indifferent to arguments about process, which failing candidates talk about to avoid discussing their unpopular policies. Last summer The Economist noted that "the idea of a cap on America's carbon emissions died (in the Senate) with barely the bathos of a whimper." Although both Obama and John McCain endorsed the idea in 2008, Congress refused to be stampeded. This guarantees that the international climate conference that begins Nov. 29 in Cancun -- successor to the Copenhagen (2009), Kyoto (1997) and Rio (1992) failures -- will fail to do multitrillion-dollar injuries to global economic growth, and especially to America's growth, by producing a binding treaty limiting supposed climate-changing gases. In 2010, Americans awakened to the fact that their financial future is much more precarious than they had understood. They realized they owe trillions for unfunded government employees' pension and medical benefits. Thus there suddenly emerged an issue that may dominate this decade's debate -- how the collaboration between government workers' unions and elected officials has looted state and municipal governments. In January, New Jersey's new governor, Chris Christie, began concentrating attention on the process by which public sector unions prosper: They collect dues to spend electing their employers, who then hire more dues-paying union members who elect even more -- and even more compliant -- employers. Unionized public employees now outnumber unionized private sector workers, so unions desperately desire "card check" legislation. It would make it easier to herd private sector workers into unions by abolishing the right to secret ballots in unionization votes. The 2010 elections made "card check" as dead as government subsidies for broadcast journalism may soon be. As icing on conservatism's 2010 cake, there was NPR's self-immolation. It fired Juan Williams, ostensibly for speaking about certain feelings he has -- and deplores -- regarding some Muslims in some settings. NPR probably fired him because his views are too heterodox for some NPR liberals who favor diversity in everything but thought. From its inception in 1967, as a filigree on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 1970 begat NPR, has been a solution in search of a problem. Forty-three years later, in the context of today's information cornucopia, "public" broadcasting -- its advocates flinch from candidly calling it government broadcasting -- is even sillier than would be a Corporation for Public Newspapers. But in 2010, NPR became useful. It became a conservatives' answer to the liberals' challenge, "Where precisely would you begin cutting government?" George Will's e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com. (c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
8:42 pm	Press 1 for Multiculturalism “Press 1 for Multiculturalism” Diversity and multiculturalism are a hard sell. After all, people are more comfortable with their own kind, even if it’s a literally skin-deep signifier as skin color. So electing a half-black Barack Obama to President is hard for a lot of white people. It restimulates all the challenge of living with an increasing number of brown people speaking Spanish. Oh, if only it was like in the imagined good old days, popularly imagined as an Eisenhower, Leave It To Beaver time, where WASPs ran the country and the relatively few people of color were in the background, or the back of the bus. Obama’s political opponents are busy painting him as an “Other” every way they can, no matter how ridiculous. For instance Newt Gingrich, who should be a reasonable, responsible voice, is trumpeting Dinesh D'Souza’s claim that, as per Eugene Robinson: “Obama somehow absorbed a fully elaborated, frozen-in-time, anti-colonial worldview from his Kenyan father (who left the family when the future president was 2). Yet Gingrich finds this claptrap a "stunning insight" -- or pretends that he does.” Robinson concludes: “Gingrich seems to believe that our culture and values are also threatened from within -- by black and brown people who demand that they, too, be given a voice in defining that culture and those values. He really needs to get out more. But, hey, it's a free country. If he wants, Gingrich can imagine himself a retired British colonel in 1963, harrumphing in his armchair about who lost Kenya. A diverse and multicultural America has long since moved on.” Sock it to ‘em, Robinson! Libertarian blogger Doug Mataconis writes, "I can honestly think of only one reason for Gingrich and D’Souza to say stuff like this. It’s not racism per se so much as it is a desire to feed into the idea that Barack Obama is not a real American. Why else emphasize his ties to a country he’s only visited twice in his entire life and to an era of history that most Americans have no connection to at this point ? It’s cheap, and it’s cynical. In other words, classic Newt Gingrich. If this is what we can look forward to if he runs for President, I hope it’s a very short run." Multiculturalism is in your face everywhere. When you call a mega-corporation, you hear "Press 1 to continue in English." Why do I have to do this? Why don't they learn English? But the market has determined that serving their customers requires imposing this step on us English-speakers. Damn capitalists! I could not apply for a job as a food microbiology Supervisor because it advertised “must speak Spanish.” I drive down the street and see the day laborers. And we hear that colleges have been taken over by multiculturalism, which is somehow anti-American. The Nation Magazine in its review of the Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, started off noting Stanford decided in 1988 to include third-world authors along with Europeans. “Virgil, Cicero and Tacitus gave way to Frantz Fanon.” http://www.thenation.com/article/154582/it-was-heaven-they-burned I want to give a big shout-out to my college student daughter Danielle who educated me about who Frantz Fanon was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon I’m glad my money (and yours!) is going to help her understand the world she lives in, versus the world view propagated by the likes of Gingrich. People who pass for white can feel free to ignore the history of our country, where Irish, Italians and Jews somehow became “white.” Hey, I can get into that kind of rage. I felt weird when I couldn’t apply for a job as food microbiology supervisor because Spanish language proficiency was required. Why don’t they learn English? Actually, this train of thought ignores our real history. The USA has always been a nation of immigrants, at times much more so than now. http://www.path.coe.uh.edu/seminar2002/week2/immigrant_facts.pdf “Between 1880 and 1920, almost 24 million immigrants arrived in the United States. These “New Immigrants” were primarily from Southern and Eastern European nations — Italy, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungry, and Russia. These “New Immigrants” fleeing poverty and persecution faced difficulties in assimilating into American culture that immigrants in the 1840s did not. Most could not speak English, nor were they literate in their own language.” I am struck by the similarity to today’s complaints of white people against the immigrants, especially about assimilation, language and culture. I think that today’s immigrants will assimilate in a generation, just like past generations of immigrants did. What is most important is the moral dimension: every person is entitled to respect of their inherent human dignity, regardless of their economic standing, immigrant status or language. If we can get that right, everything else will be OK. ¿Como no? (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
8:32 am	I can turn around General Motors To: President Obama From: Orval Osborne Date: February 19, 2009 Subject: I can turn around General Motors Dear Mr. President, One of your problems is the American auto industry, of which GM is the biggest force. I have a plan for turning GM around. Put me in charge under Treasury Secretary Geitner. Or better yet, your Administration should make a condition of receiving more bailout money that they accept me as CEO. The Orval Osborne turn-around plan has three main parts: 1.The U.S. adopt a single-payer health care insurance plan. (cost reduction) 2.Close down several car lines. (consolidation) 3.Replace all the top management with people who respect their customers and employees. (management reform) Each part deserves a lengthy exposition, while this paper merely explains them in summary form. 1. The U.S. adopt a single-payer health care insurance plan (cost reduction) Single-payer health care takes health care costs off of employers. GM must get out from under this burden if it is to survive. The main reason the American car companies cannot compete with the Japanese companies is the the cost of health care for workers and retirees. GM pays $5 Billion a year for retiree's health care. The Republicans are taking the low road, with their seizing this crisis to attack organized labor itself. The unions are not the problem; auto workers past and present are not over-compensated. The problem is health care in this country is just too expensive. Health care is too expensive because of the way we pay for it, i.e. the health care insurance system. Every other industrialized country enjoys BETTER health while paying about HALF what Americans pay. And the cost is rapidly increasing. Adopting single-payer will get you several of your main goals: 1.Providing health care for all, 2.It will be a tremendous stimulus plan in itself. The savings to the national economy could exceed $250 Billion annually. The stimulative effect of taking health care costs off of employers will be greater than cutting payroll taxes. Entrepreneurs like me will be emboldened to grow our businesses like never before, hiring freely, and less likely to discriminate against older applicants. 3.Save Medicare. The main threat to Medicare is the rapidly increasing cost of medical care. The Single-payer system is much better able to lower and restrain costs than the current system. Passing a single-payer plan through Congress would be very difficult. You know how powerful the pharmaceutical and insurance companies are. Unfortunately they are benefiting at the expense of the rest of the country. As GM's CEO, I would lay it on the line to Congress: if you want an American auto industry, you must take employee and retiree health care costs off the employer. There is no other way. 2. Close down Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and GMC. Keep Chevrolet, Cadillac and Saturn. (consolidation) A. Chevrolet is still the #1 selling brand. Pontiac and GMC merely duplicate its offerings with minor changes. B. Cadillac has the best brand image, so should be kept as the top of the line. Buick and Oldsmobile are just discounted Cadillacs. C. Saturn is the brightest star in GM's constellation, shining with innovation, quality and consumer-oriented appeal. It is the most “Japanese” of any American car company, and thus best able to compete. D. The minor models (Daewoo, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Saab, Vauxhall and Wuling) need to be evaluated individually whether to retain them or spin them off. GM needs the cash from sales, and managers need the focus of fewer lines. Already Saab and Hummer are reportedly for sale. But some, like Wuling, Opel and Daewoo, are players in foreign markets, an important long-term consideration (if there is a long-term). The number of vehicles sold in the U.S. has dropped by 25-50%. The predictions are that volumes will remain well below recent past. GM must adopt a business model where they profitably make far fewer cars and trucks. The quickest way to achieve these reductions would be in eliminating entire makes: close down Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and GMC. Retain Chevrolet, Cadillac and Saturn. GM's lines are rife with duplication. This was fine in the past. When GM had a 50% market share they benefited from saturating all the niches. My father bought a 1973 Buick Electra that everyone knew was a Cadillac with a little trim change and a price cut. (Man, that was a nice ride!) But now the costs of duplication outweigh the benefits. GM can no longer afford to make and keep in stock parts for five lines, when they could do with two. We must dispense with nostalgia, and shift to a lean, profitable machine. 3. Replace all the top management with people who respect their customers and employees. (management reform) The severity of this crisis is the only hope for accomplishing the necessary fundamental changes. I will make culture change itself a prominent feature of the turnaround. I will bring in experts in the culture change field. And the management purge will be very deep, with at least half of the top 1,000 managers being replaced by people from other car companies, other manufacturers and even beyond manufacturing. Ross Perot publicly revealed that GM's management hated their workers and despised their customers. My managers will respect employees and love customers, or they will be let go. I will find salespeople who know what customers want and give them a prominent role in Marketing. When it comes to engineering and manufacturing, Toyota and GM are about equal. Where they differ is in their corporate cultures approach to action, innovation and risk-taking. I will make it clear that we admit we don’t know the future and that we have to experiment. GM people tend to internalize, to think that they can figure things out on their own. I will hire graduates of Cal Poly, where the motto is “Learn by Doing.” I will bring in savvy entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and around the world, people who have always innovated and are quick to steal good ideas wherever they find them. To say this is a colossal task is a gross understatement. Each of the three parts of my plan could be called impossible. But in crisis, there is opportunity. Hunger, like the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully, as Samuel Johnson famously observed. GM is facing it's gravest crisis ever. If it is to survive, the most drastic action is essential. These three broad action areas will result in a much more profitable, if smaller, enterprise. This is the turn-around so desperately needed. My qualifications are my analytical skills and business experience. I am an entrepreneur, from a family of entrepreneurs. My mother was Creek/Muskogee Indian. The Indians are experts in culture change! My father grew up poor in Dust Bowl Oklahoma, a tough bastard who knew all about survival. I started my own business 15 years ago, with no capital, and grew it to 20 employees. I have a record of operating lean, with ruthless cost control born of necessity. I grew up working on cars, perhaps odd for an environmentalist and Green Party activist. But I like to know how things work, what's under the hood. I am a great analyst and a successful do-er. I can turn around GM. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
10:31 am	Winona LaDuke This morning I had the pleasure of seeing Winona LaDuke speak. Cal Poly invited her. She spoke to issues of sustainability, of culture and religion, and of land. Sacred places is a central aspect of Native American spirituality, and this collides with the modern American ethic of land use. LaDuke described the dominant American cultural narrative as the frontier, of "the West," a limitless place to be conquered. This narrative is the opposite of sustainability. We must replace the frontier story if we are to survive. She spoke of responsibility, how this is more important than rights. She acknowledged the complexities of these issues. At the same time, she argues intensely for her values and positions. She spoke of examples, stories of struggles over sacred lands threatened with being turned into a golf course, or a coal mine. She spoke of naming places, and how "naming big mountains after little men" can frame our relationship with the land. The Arctic Wildlife Refuge is called "the place where life begins" by the people who live there. Amherst, a town in Massachusetts, is named after the British military commander, Baron Jeffrey Amherst, the first advocate of biological warfare: he ordered the distribution of smallpox-contaminated blankets to the native peoples. (Winona LaDuke went to Harvard, which is near Amherst.) I know her from her campaign as Green Party candidate for Vice President, with the Ralph Nader for President campaigns of 1996 and 2000. I asked her if she is active as a Green. She said she is still a Green, but is active in other arenas, specific land-use issues, and renewable energy in particular. She is optimistic about those kinds of actions, and named many success stories. PS. After her talk, I bought her new book "Recovering the Sacred - The Power of Naming and Claiming." When I asked her to sign it, she asked what my name means. (As in Spanish, it is associated with gold. "Orval" is the French spelling of "Orville" and can mean "gold town." ) +Orval Osborne (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
8:43 pm	Waterboarding is unamerican. We need the rule of law! I am so outraged at the actions of my government! I am a patriotic American. I love my country for what we say we stand for: the rule of law, for democracy and inalienable human rights. But the Administration of G.W. Bush has utterly disgraced America. He came into the office claiming he would restore honor and dignity to the Presidency. Now, after so many offenses, he has made a mockery of that institution. The Republican Party is criminal and utterly hypocritical as calling for the "rule of law" impeaching Clinton for lying about sex). Now prominent Democrats have joined in as co-conspirators. Michael Mukasey is nominated as Attorney General, and he says waterboarding (drowning) is legal. Terrible! Unamerican! I am offended personally, because my Father risked his life fighting the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII, a regime who tortured captives with waterboarding. President Bush, all the Republican Senators, and Democrat Senator Feinstein are all criminals, all personally spitting on my Father's grave. My Father was a true American. They are unamerican. The only question is which are President Bush's worst crimes: torture, or the war against Iraq, which was justified by lies and violated American and international laws. Mr. Bush parrots the line that we don't torture, but he condones practices like water boarding that everyone knows is torture. Water boarding is where you drown someone, then stop just before he dies. You make someone feel they are going to die. That is torture by every definition, according to US and international law. Water boarding (drowning) was practiced by the Spanish Inquisition. Senator Teddy Kennedy, in explaining his "No" vote on the Attorney Gereeral nominee who could not say water boarding is illegal torture: Democracy Now today (Nov 7, 2007) http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/07/155221 "Make no mistake about it: waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. It’s illegal under the Torture Act, which prohibits acts specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It’s illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And it violates the Constitution. The nation's top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned waterboarding as torture. And after World War II, the United States prosecuted -- prosecuted -- Japanese officers for engaging in waterboarding. What more does this nominee need to enforce existing laws?" Also on Democracy Now today (Nov 7, 2007), the powerful, clear words of Naomi Klein: "What we just saw was lawmakers knowingly voting in favor of someone who has said that one of the classic modern torture techniques, simulated drowning, water torture, is not illegal. So, with that knowledge, he was just endorsed. And to elevate a man who has said this to the highest legal office in the country, I think, just puts everyone of those lawmakers, but particularly the Democrats who voted for him, into bold new territory. They have just crossed a line, because they can no longer pin this on Bush. They can no longer claim ignorance. Anyone who faces these techniques in the future, they will be complicit in those war crimes, in those crimes against humanity -- everybody who voted for this man." It’s an amazing moment. It’s an amazing crossing of the line into active complicity. It’s bad enough that you have Democrats in power who are unwilling to hold the Bush administration legally accountable for the war crimes they have already committed, but now they’ve moved into endorsing it. And they can say all they want, that they’re not actually voting for him when it comes to torture, but they just did it, because he has said it publicly, and they no longer have plausible deniability. It’s gone." And so I am sad, and angry. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from my state, has voted for a man who says drowning a captive, a tactic straight out of the Spanish Inquisition, is not illegal. Wrong! The Democrats are no more moral than the Republicans. Democrats have conspired to drown the ideals of my country. They are criminals and traitors, domestic enemies. Amendment 8 of the U.S. Constitution says cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted. Waterboarding is unconstitutional, illegal and unamerican. Will we be able to overcome the Democrats and Republicans and restore democracy and the rule of law? We need the Green Party, if we ever want to return to democracy and freedom in America. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
8:38 pm	Fire and class I have just finished reading "Ecology of Fear - LA and the Imagination of Disaster" by Mike Davis. His first chapters are about the regular fires that devastate southern California. Indeed, some of the fires are identical to past catastrophic fires, such as in Malibu. But the point he makes so well is that there are strong class issues in how we deal with fire-fighting and in land use. Fighting fires in rural areas is paid on a "whatever it takes" or an after the fact budget. All necessary resources are devoted to fighting fires, for instance, in the mountains above Malibu, where mostly millionaires live. Afterwards, they figure out how much it cost. And year after year, development is allowed in mountain areas known to be extremely prone to fires. But the budgeting is the opposite in the poor areas of the cities, some only 20 miles from wealthy Malibu, such as Westlake, Mid-City and Hollywood tenements. In those areas, LA County sets a fixed budget in advance. Where there are lots of fire-prone shoddy apartment buildings, the fire department often cannot even get there in time to save lives. They rarely have time to do fire inspections, and follow up with landlords to make sure required improvements are made. The occasional inspection will find fire doors nailed shut and smoke alarms don't work, but the landlords rarely get forced to do what the law requires. As a result, when fires do break out, many people die horrible deaths. Now, I am very sympathetic to the current victims of the fires raging across southern California. I know people who are evacuated, and I know people who are fighting the fires right now. So I am bringing up these issues to add to our sensitivity, not to take away from it. If it were up to me, firefighting budgets would be shared more equitably between the poor residents of Westlake and the wealthy folks in the hills above Malibu. And more importantly, I would declare vast areas to be no longer protected by heroic firefighting efforts, or insurance compensation after the fact. There are vast hilly areas that simply should not be allowed to be developed as they have been. We need to stop subsidizing their idiotic development, or periodic reconstruction. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
6:09 pm	Social Security runs huge SURPLUS! Hold onto your wallets, folks. There is a class war going on, and the rich folks who own the media and the politicians are trying to fool you again. FACT: the Social Security is currently running a huge surplus, almost $200 Billion a year now. The accumulated surplus is borrowed by the Treasury to subsidize tax cuts for the rich and welfare for Halliburton. The total surplus is $1.9 Trillion = $1,900 Billion = $1,900,000,000,000. http://www.ssa.gov/qa.htm Remember that Social Security is not even a flat tax, it is regressive because people stop paying into Social Security at $95,000. So corporate CEO's pay a lower percentage than their janitors. They are trying to scare you with a problem that will not appear for more than a generation. The projected shortfall will occur in the year 2041. Don't we have other problems with a greater urgency than this? The other thing to remember is that the entire shortfall could be eliminated by making it a flat tax, ie ending the ceiling on incomes subject to the social security tax. If millionaires paid the same rate as nurses and truck drivers, the forecasted shortfall 30+ years from now would be gone. What we need to do, if we were fair, would be to CUT social security tax so it was in balance, instead of generating a massive surplus. Then of course we would have to raise income taxes to balance the budget. (Or find other ways to raise revenues, such as the Green Party's proposals to "tax bads, not goods" ie tax pollution and gasoline instead of sales and income.) If you had an honest media, their headlines would read "Social Security runs surplus - projected solvent for a generation or more - minor tinkering would fix its future." You ought to be asking yourself why doesn't the media run those factually correct headlines and stories. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 8th, 2007
9:42 pm	Colombus Day is Genocide Day I write this on Columbus Day, the day that honors the bloody, murderous conquest and genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous People of the Western Hemisphere by the Europeans. I am part Native American, Indian as my Creek/Muskogee Mother said. This gives me a different perspective than the mainstream American story. When I took my daughter to the St. Louis "Museum of Westward Expansion," I had to tell her they expanded westward right over many Nations of Native American Indians. Only after ruthless wars, smallpox blankets and all, did the European-Americans triumph over the Indigenous peoples. At the same time, I have only warm, kind feelings for people of Italian ancestry. Nothing personal. But Columbus Day is personal for me. I cannot celebrate the Genocide of my ancestors, the indigenous people of North and South America. Fort Benning, Georgia, was originally created to fight my particular ancestors, the Creek/Muskogee Nation. I went on a pilgrimage to this country where I saw a historical signpost stating that Fort Benning was the beginning point of the Trail of Tears for the removal of the Creek/Muskogee Nation in the 1830's. The deportation of our neighboring Cherokees was ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court. President Jackson said "Let the Supreme Court enforce that with their own Army." So much for the rule of law the US is supposedly all about. I can't look at a $20 bill without thinking of this treachery. I love my country, but I also know the ugly truths about it. Most people get the ordinary education, which tells the story of Columbus as a brave explorer. By opposing Columbus Day, I take on the task of properly educating the people I talk to. Or accept a widening gulf between their indoctrination and the secret true history - and present - of this country. This is why it isn't easy being Green. Like Noam Chomsky learned, when you accept the conventional wisdom, it is easy to be concise. But when you tell the true but secret history, it takes some time to lay out the whole story. I joined the green Party because, as Mindy Lorenz said 15 years ago, we must build a constituency around the truth. The specific evidence against the School of the Americas (renamed WHINSEC) is not absolutely conclusive, not a "slam dunk." Most of it is classified and thus unknown. What we do know is about the percentages of "evil-doers" who are graduates of the US training school. Please go to www.soaw.org. I think there is enough evidence to support the abolition of this "school." If you do, then please write to your Senators and Representatives to close it down. And on Columbus Day, please take a moment to acknowledge that the building of this country, and the entire Western Hemisphere, came at the expense of millions of people who were already living here. While we have much in our nation to be proud of, at the same time, remember that we are walking on the graves of those slaughtered to make room for this United States of America. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 24th, 2007
8:59 pm	The Role of Third Parties in American Politics From: "Brent McMillan" <brent@gp.org> Subject: [usgp-dx] Ballot Access is the Wild West of Law - Yeeha! Ballot Access is the Wild West of Law - Yeeha! September 24, 2007 Delivered by Brent McMillan, Political Director Green Party of the United States On the Steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Contact info: 202-319-7191 brent@gp.org Clingman vs. Beaver In January of 2005 the high court heard oral argument on the case of Clingman vs. Beaver. The Libertarian Party of Oklahoma argued to open up its primary to include those registered in other parties. At issue was an Oklahoma statute that forbade a party from opening up its primary elections to registered members of other parties but allowed parties to conduct semi-closed primaries, in which independents could vote. Basically the State of Oklahoma argued that its in the interest of the stability of the state to only have two political parties. The Two-Party System and Political Stability A driving force behind the Court's willingness to uphold ballot-access restrictions has been its perception of third parties as a threat to political stability. A solid majority of the courts shares the belief that third parties, if allowed easy access to the ballot, may destabilize the political system. In contrast, the Court views major political parties as the basis of stable politics. Recent cases are replete with praise for the stabilizing function of the major parties and the two-party system. To understand why the current Court is so favorable to major-party organizations, we must look to its understanding of the role of these organizations in the democratic process. Upon examination, it becomes clear that the Court envisions the major parties as critical buffers between the individual and the State. They believe that the major parties protect the smooth functioning of government against the discord of pluralist and populist politics. Thus the Courts values major parties primarily as the guardians of political stability. Is it Working? Exit polling from the 2006 Election showed that the three most important interests for American Voters are (Zogby): 1. Ending the War in Iraq 2. Global Warming 3. Universal Health Care Basically neither of the major parties represents the three most important issues of the American People. The Role of Third Parties in American Politics So what is the role of third parties in American Politics? When the major parties veer too far from the will of the American People third parties step up to champion those issues. Sometimes they end up replacing a major party such as the Republican Party on the issue of abolishing slavery. Other times a major party may pick up their issue(s) and the third party will no longer be relevant. Examples include Women's Suffrage, Social Security, The Weekend, the ending of Child Labor, etc. Clamping down the Lid and Turning up the Heat In the 1970's the major parties began to make ballot access more difficult for Independent and Third Party Candidates. At the same time, they began straying further and further from the will of the American People. They are working to put greater limits on the People's ability to hold them accountable. Instead they serve the interests of the Financial Elites. This has resulted in a decline of the overall quality of life for most Americans. On the other hand our rate of Incumbency is higher than that of the Communist Party in the Old Soviet Union. The Cradle of Democracy is becoming the Graveyard of Democracy Last year we saw the beginning of something that shocked and angered anyone paying attention. The Common Wealth of Pennsylvania decided to hold candidates personally, financial accountable for the cost of a ballot access challenge if they failed to prevail. This has a bone chilling affect on independent and third party candidates from seeking office. Marakay Rodgers was financially intimidated from running for office. She was the Green Party Candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania in 2006. We have to see this effort reversed and squashed. The people behind are the ones who need to be held accountable for their egregious actions. Carl Romanelli, the Green Party Candidate for US Senate in 2006 decided to stay the course and weather the Democrats attempt at financial intimidation. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently affirmed a Commonwealth Court order directing Ralph Nader to pay more than $80,000 to Democratic challengers who successfully removed his name from the ballot during the 2004 presidential election. The court's rationale was that "massive" fraud infected Nader's submission of 52,000 voters' signatures-more than twice the number needed to access the ballot. Nader could thus equitably be required to pay for the transcripts and writing experts needed to prove the Democrats' case. International Human Rights Violation What happened in Pennsylvania is now considered by the International Community to be a human rights violation. Ballot Access is the Wild West of Law The high court is vulnerable in its history of decisions in regards to ballot access. It has been consistently inconsistent. In Rodgers vs. Cortez there is an opportunity for the Court to do the right thing and to look out for the interests of the American People. Isn't it time to move the issue of Ballot Access into the twenty-first century? ...not the nineteenth. REFERENCES Boston Law Review: A Second Look at Third Parties: Correcting the Supreme Court's Understanding of Elections http://www.bu.edu/law/lawreview/v85n5/Evseev.pdf Zogby Post-Election Poll http://www.zogby.com/search/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1194 Politics in Pennsylvania: Putting an end to Ralph Nader and Open Ballots http://www.votenader.org/contribute/index.php?cid=118 In Service: Brent McMillan, Political Director brent@gp.org Green Party of the United States 202-319-7191 (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
8:57 pm	President George W. Bush The President sent the Cavalry to Iraq. But the natives there are no more agreeable to the goals of the Great Father in Washington than my ancestors were for the illegal campaign (illegal by U.S. laws, then and now) by then President Jackson as he committed genocide against the Creek/Muskogee Nation 170 years ago. But the comparison breaks down because the Americans are not moving en masse to take over and live in the Arabian lands, just to control their oil (our national interests, as defined by President Carter.) Yes, old W. has made a mess of things. The Democratic Party leaders voted for war, so the blood is dripping from Democrat hands as much as Republicans. "You break it, you buy it" Colin Powell told the President. But W. ignored him and broke it. Now we are all eating it. General Powell ignored his own advice and sold his soul for another year at the table of power, before he was eventually tossed. But the problem is so much more than the careers of a few American politicians. Perhaps 1 Million Iraqis have died because of what my country did, against my advice. 2 Million people fled their country. Millions more are internally displaced, nowhere to go and nowhere to stay. Their country is broken. All I can say is "I told you so." The Green Party was right, and the Democrats and Republicans were wrong. They put Americans in more danger, while Green Party policies would have made us more secure. We were right before the war, saying don't do it. We were right in 2004, as the Green Party Presidential candidate David Cobb (who you don't know about - why?) said the US needs to immediately withdraw our combat troops, bring in the UN, and pay massive funds to the Iraqis to rebuild the country we destroyed. Today the General tells us only 25% of Iraqis have clean water, versus nearly 100% before Clinton's Iraqi sanctions. If Americans had voted in the Green Party in 2004, we would have saved the lives of thousands of Americans troops, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives, and hundreds of Billions of dollars. Plus, we would be safer today under a Green Party President. Instead, John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry promised more war, and George W. Bush promised more war, and the American people got more war. All I can do is hang my head and say "We were right." Maybe eventually the people will listen to the Green Party, right on the Iraq War, right about Global Warming, and so much more. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
1:19 pm	LA Times propaganda I enjoy reading a big-city newspaper like the Sunday LA Times. An entire section for "Opinion," 10 pages of editorials, is a real treat for a thinking person. But this experience is complicated by my rage against the relentless propaganda. "Propaganda: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person." (Websters Dictionary) Example A, from page 1 of Opinion: "Poppy Wars" about opium growing in Afghanistan mainly employs the sin of omission. The writer never tells us that during Taliban rule, opium production was much lower. The US takes over, and now they are the world's biggest opium producer, growing record amounts. This editorial maintains the fiction that the US government opposes what we created. Nonsense. As documented by Alfred McCoy decades ago, the US military spreads drug production wherever it goes. http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/default.htm. To read McCoy's work is not for the faint of heart. I find it hard to sing about the land of the brave after learning the dark side of my government's actions. I do love this country, and I choose to remain in the USA. But my eyes are wide open. I know the government lies, corporations lie, and the media lies (and its not liberal!). What do you know? Example B, from page M5: This editorial is the blatant worst face of American Empire, the iron fist under the velvet glove. Bruce Bawer brazenly stands on its head one of the most damning critiques of American Imperialism ever, that of USMC Major General Smedley D. Butler, where he calls the entire US militarism a "racket." http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm. Read it and weep. Now this overfed pundit says peace is all wrong, and is even a "racket." But he does not refute any of the examples he quotes. He just hopes you don't have the education to know they are correct and he is wrong. For example, he simply denies international law that the US, as an occupying power, has any responsibility for the atrocities we have caused in 4 years of war in Iraq! This a country where 2 million have fled their home country. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18944557/. And we have caused the deaths of over 650,000 people! http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf The most dangerous part of his argument is where Bawer claims war by the US supports freedom and prevents tyranny. Unfortunately the opposite is true. The US supports the worst kind of brutal dictator, as long as they support multinational corporate profits. (General Butler had this story straight.) In Iraq, the US supported Saddam Hussein, including when he was using poison gas (WMDs) against his own people. Bush the elder dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to assure Saddam Hussein that the US was behind him all the way. One of the best sources on the true US role in the world is Noam Chomsky, author of many great books, including especially "Manufacturing Consent" and "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance." Please read them! Then you will know for yourself. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
8:53 pm	New York Times David Broooks is elitist David Brooks, a writer for the New York Times, wants to revive the Hamilton agenda: "Believes in free market capitalism, but thinks government should help people get the tools they need to compete in it." The other choices are limited-government conservatism, who think the state should be as small as possible. Third, there are "mainstream liberals, who think government should intervene in small ways throughout the economy to soften the effects of creative destruction. Fourth, there are the populists, who believe the benefits of the global economy are going to the rich and we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules." Well, promoting the "Hamilton agenda" must be an easy position to take for a well-paid pundit for the Establishment media. Mr. Brooks is isolated from the harsh realities of the bottom 90% of the working class. Mr. Mainstream Media says, despite Americans working more than before and more than other advanced countries, "we don't need Americans working less." Sure, "we" don't need "them" working less. But, who is a "we" and who is a "them"? As opposed to these easy opinions, consider some facts: Juliet B. Schor, in her book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1991), analyzes some surprising trends-historic, economic, and cultural-in the world of work, with a particular emphasis on the American worker. "In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work. In any given year, such a small increment has probably been imperceptible. But the accumulated increase over two decades is substantial. When surveyed, Americans re port that they have only sixteen and a half hours of leisure a week, after the obligations of job and household are taken care of. Working hours are already longer than they were forty years ago. If present trends continue, by the end of the century Americans will be spending as much time at their jobs as they did back in the nineteen twenties. The rise of worktime was unexpected. For nearly a hundred years, hours had been declining. When this decline abruptly ended in the late 1940s, it marked the beginning of a new era in worktime. But the change was barely noticed. Equally surprising, but also hardly recognized, has been the deviation from Western Europe. After progressing in tandem for nearly a century, the United States veered off into a trajectory of declining leisure, while in Europe work has been disappearing. Forty years later, the differences are large. U.S. manufacturing employees currently work 320 more hours—the equivalent of over two months—than their counterparts in West Germany or France. The decline in Americans' leisure time is in sharp contrast to the potential provided by the growth of productivity. Productivity measures the goods and services that result from each hour worked. When productivity rises, a worker can either produce the current output in less time, or remain at work the same number of hours and produce more. Every time productivity increases, we are presented with the possibility of either more free time or more money. That's the productivity dividend. Since 1948, productivity has failed to rise in only five years. The level of productivity of the U.S. worker has more than doubled. In other words, we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We actually could have chosen the four-hour day. Or a working year of six months. Or, every worker in the United Stares could now be taking every other year off from work-with pay. Incredible as it may sound, this is just the simple arithmetic of productivity growth in operation.But between 1948 and the present we did not use any of the productivity dividend to reduce hours. In the first two decades after 1948, productivity grew rapidly, at about 3 percent a year. During that period worktime did not fall appreciably. Annual hours per labor force participant fell only slightly. And on a per-capita (rather than a labor force) basis, they even rose a bit. Since then, productivity growth has been lower, but still positive, averaging just over 1 percent a year. Yet hours have risen steadily for two decades. In 1990, the average American owns and consumes more than twice as much as he or she did in 1948, but also has less free time." I have more to say against Mr. Brooks opinions that should appear in a separate post. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 14th, 2007
9:50 pm	A 10-Step Plan for Antiwar Activists A 10-Step Plan for Antiwar Activists By Bruce K. Gagnon. June 13, 2007 http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/1678/2/ I often hear from people asking me, "What should we do about all this? How can we stop Bush?" I would first say that we must move beyond blaming Bush. The fact of U.S. empire is bigger than Bush. Hopefully by now, all of us are more clear how the Democrats have been, and are now, involved in enabling the whole U.S. military empire building plan. It is about corporate domination. Bush is just the front man for the big money. So to me that is step #1. Step #2 is to openly acknowledge that as a nation, and we as citizens, benefit from this U.S. military and economic empire. By keeping our collective military boot on the necks of the people of the world we get control of a higher percentage of the world's resources. We, 5% of the global population in the U.S., use 25% of the global resource base. This reality creates serious moral questions that cannot be ignored. Step #3 is to recognize that we are addicted to war and to violence. The very weaving together of our nation was predicated on violence when we began the extermination of the Native populations and introduced the institution of slavery. A veteran of George Washington's Army, in 1779, said, "I really felt guilty as I applied the torch to huts that were homes of content until we ravagers came spreading desolation everywhere....Our mission here is ostensibly to destroy but may it not transpire, that we pillagers are carelessly sowing the seed of Empire." The soldier wrote this as Washington's Army set out to remove the Iroquois civilization from New York state so that the U.S. government could expand its borders westward toward the Mississippi River. The creation of the American empire was underway. Our history since then has been endless war. Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps, told the story in his book War is a Racket. Butler recalls in his book, "I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service....And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism....Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." Step # 4 We have to begin to change how we think about our country. We have to learn to understand what oligarchy means. I'll save you the trouble of having to look up the definition - A government in which power is in the hands of a few. When you have lost your democracy then what do the citizens do? They must fight (non-violently) to take it back. This of course means direct action and sometimes civil disobedience. Virtually everything good in our nation (abolition of slavery movement, women's suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movements, etc) have come from people stepping up when they were needed. Calling for impeachment by the Congress becomes imperative today. Are you in or out? Step #5 Forget the "every man for himself" mythology. We are all brainwashed in this country to believe in the rugged individualism story. But movement for change can only happen in community - working with others. So forget the ego centric notion that "one great man" is going to come save us. It's going to take a village - in fact all the villages. Just like an addict goes to a group to seek help for addiction, knowing they can't do it themselves, so we must form community to work for the needed change if we are to protect our children's future. Step # 6 What about my job? Another smothering myth in America is success. Keep your nose clean and don't rock the boat. Don't get involved in politics, especially calling for a revolution of values (like Martin Luther King Jr. did) or you will get labeled and then you can forget about owning that castle on the hill you've always dreamed of. In a way we become controlled by our own subservience to the success mythology. We keep ourselves in line because success and upward mobility become more important than protecting free speech, clean water, clean air, and ending an out of control government bent on world domination. Free our minds, free our bodies and we free the nation. Step #7 Learn to work well with others. Sure we all want to be stars. But in the end we have to learn to set aside our egos if we want to be able to work with others to bring about the needed changes. Cindy Sheehan should not be hammered just for telling the truth about the Democrats playing footsie with Bush on the war. Step # 8 It's the money. How can I do this peace work when I have to work full-time just to pay the mortgage? I'd like to help but I've got bills to pay! Maybe we can begin to look at the consumerist life we lead and see that our addiction to the rat race keeps us from being fully engaged in the most important issue of our time - which is protecting the future generations. How can we begin to explore cooperative living arrangements, by building community, that free us up economically to be able to get more involved? Step # 9 Learn to read again. Many of us don't read enough. We spend our time in front of the TV, which is a primary tool that the power structure uses to brainwash us. We've got to become independent thinkers again and teach our kids to think for themselves. Reading and talking to others is a key. Read more history. All the answers and lessons can be found there. Step #10 Learn to trust again and have fun. Some of the nicest people in the world are doing political work. Meet them and become friends with them and your life will change for the better. Bruce K. Gagnon is Coordinator of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Write me at globalnet@mindspring.com (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
9:04 am	US Democratic Party propaganda against Venezuela From Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera to Nancy Pelosi responding to her criticism of President Hugo Chavez. Also see: Myths and Facts About the Radio Caracas Television Case at http://www.embavenez-us.org/RCTVFactSheetFinal_2007.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 30, 2007 The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. Madam Speaker Pelosi, I am writing in the opportunity to respond to your May 30 statement on Venezuela’s decision not to renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). In it, you accused President Hugo Chávez of engaging in efforts to “suppress the media.” I would like to assure you that the decision was made in full accordance with Venezuela’s laws and does not represent a threat to the country’s vibrant media or the ability of the Venezuelan people to receive information and opinion that is critical of the government. Equally, and as many observers have pointed out, since President Chavez came to power the government has tried to democratize the media to foster a diversity of voices to combat the historical monopoly on the broadcasting of information that causes so much harm to any democracy. The decision not to renew RCTV’s broadcast license was a simple regulatory matter that was made according to the country’s constitution, laws and public interest standards. It was not made based on RCTV’s critical editorial stance against the government, nor was it directed at silencing criticism of the government. The Venezuelan media has enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy the right to report and offer opinions, whether or not they agree with President Chávez. This has also been recognized by numerous observers. As Bart Jones, a longtime correspondent for the Associated Press wrote in an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times on May 30, “Radio, TV and newspapers remain uncensored, unfettered and unthreatened by the government. Most Venezuelan media are still controlled by the old oligarchy and are staunchly anti-Chávez.” It is also important to note that while RCTV enjoyed access to the public spectrum, it far exceeded its prescribed role as a media outlet in a democracy. In April 2002, RCTV promoted a coup against the democratically elected government of President Chávez. After that, it participated and encouraged the sabotage of the oil industry of Venezuela, causing tremendous suffering on the Venezuelan people. In both instances, RCTV went beyond taking a critical editorial stance against the government. It used its privileged position as a media outlet to help subvert Venezuela’s constitutional order. In no other country would a media outlet be allowed to play such an overtly undemocratic role, much less using a public broadcast spectrum. Again, in so doing, RCTV single-handedly subverted Venezuela’s democracy. I wonder how the FCC would have responded had such events taken place in the United States. The decision to not renew RCTV’s license will not affect Venezuela’s longstanding commitment to freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of information as your statement suggests. In fact, the majority of Venezuela’s media outlets remain in private hands – of the 81 television stations, 709 radio broadcasters and 118 newspapers throughout Venezuela, 79, 706 and 118, respectively, are privately owned and operated. More importantly, they all exercise their rights freely, often criticizing the government in strident terms reflecting the vitality of Venezuela’s democracy. Since the non renewal took effect, the great majority of media outlets in Venezuela have openly reported on and offered their opinions on the decision. If you have any questions or concerns about Venezuela or the Venezuelan media, please do not hesitate to contact me. I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss this matter. Most importantly, I invite you to visit Venezuela and judge for yourself the vibrant state of the media and freedom of thought and expression enjoyed by all Venezuelans. Respectfully, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera Ambassador (Comment on this)