Humboldt Sentinel

Waldo Mellon
Professional Guesser

Dear Waldo,

I was in the college library where I was supposed to meet this girl who never showed up and I’ll admit it, I was gassed out of my mind on this sick weed my roommate brought back from Humboldt, and I wandered up to the third
floor which I had never been to and there was this enormous
globe of the world.

I had heard about it but I never saw it due to my not liking of geography and my not coming to the library almost ever.  This fucker must be ten feet in diameter.  So I started spinning it because a sign says that’s OK to do if you want to for research purposes.  At first I zoned out on all the colors, but then I started to notice there goes China, there goes India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Atlantic ocean, New York, the Great Lakes, Pacific ocean and then it all started up all over again, China, India, around and around.

And then I had this amazing thought I admit I probably wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t so ripped out of my gourd.  What if I had this giant rake, OK?  And what if what this rake did is, it raked up just these two things: People, plus all the things that people have ever made.  And what if I’m standing in the library with my giant rake and I keep spinning the globe and running my rake over the entire ball except now it’s the real world and I’m raking up all the people and all the things that people have ever made into one gigantic pile.  I rake up the Empire State Building, every house on the planet, every truck, every couch, every shoe, books, the Great Wall of China, tools, pipes, wires, oil tankers, movie theaters, every screw, every brick, every road, airplanes, building materials, bulldozers, cranes, hottubs, garbage, bottles, let’s even say satellites. Everything, every single person and every single thing people ever made, into one gigantic pile.

Here’s my question: If I raked up all that stuff into the United States, what’s the smallest state you think I could fit that entire junkpile in?

I just got back from going into the bathroom and I’ll admit it, I sucked down some more Humboldt weed because I was getting all cheesed out on this globe thing and a whole nother unbelieveable idea came to me: What if a sorcerer came along and I traded my rake for a magic wand which I know is a cliché even wrecked, but what if I made the trade anyway and then poof, I got rid of the entire pile of people plus all the shit people have made.  Poof.  Pile gone.  Which leads to my question number two: Would the planet be better off or worse off?  I can not deal with my own question. That is one mind-fuck question.

Well, that’s it.  No, one more question.  Do you think smoking dope
is good or bad.  Because I’m guessing I’m going to wake up tomorrow
with a familiar feeling that goes What the fuck.

Thank-you,
Paul

Dear Paul,

Stoned out of your ever-loving mind or not, I think you’ve stumbled upon a fascinating proposition.  I’ll bet most people think of the world as theirs, as a platform made especially for them.  There’s animals and bugs and plants and that kind of thing, but most folks think this production is sponsored by us, humans, and that the planet is really our stage, and so quiet down Everything Else because we got a show to put on.

But this giant rake concept of yours makes it clear that people, for all their huffing and puffing, have had nothing to do with most of what goes on in our planet.  My guess is that the smallest state that could accommodate all of the things your rake rakes up would be, ohh, Massachusetts.  I live in Massachusetts and it seems to me, as I look around while driving, that there’s plenty of extra room here for a gigantic pile of every house, battle-ship, truck, cinder-block etc., particularly if you take care to pile things efficiently.

I could be laughably wrong.  I realize that there are minds capable of approaching your question with tools much more sophisticated and precise than my handy all-in-one Wild-Guess Mallet.  And so let’s choose a place on earth which we all can agree is sufficiently large to accommodate this pile you’re talking about Paul.  Texas?  Alaska?  Definitely one of those.  Let’s pick the bigger of the two: Alaska.

Rake rake rake rake rake rake rake.  Good.  Now there’s everything made by man ever, plus every person on earth, in a pile on Alaska.

Spin that globe Paul.  Well what do you know.  It’s clear we’re really not responsible for much, given all there is.  Just that little pile of shit every time Alaska comes around.

Anyway, in answer to your second question Paul, about would the world be better or worse without us.  If those are my only two choices, I say better off.  Please keep in mind that I could be laughably wrong.

In answer to your third question, here’s what I say about marijuana, chardonnay, Heath Bars, LSD, coffee, nutritious foods, nicotine, water, or anything else that eventually enters our bloodstream:  Holy shit!  How about this!  We’re nothing but test tubes filled with a balance of chemicals so delicate that we can change moods or even go kerflooey at the drop of a hat!

Thank-you for your letter Paul.  Happy Graduation!

Your Fan,
Waldo Mellon

* * * * * * * * * *

Waldo Mellon wishes he had more writing credits to boast about, but he doesn’t.

He did go to a fancy, expensive college, yet most of the things that got stuffed into his head there are now nowhere to be found.  In fact, he has a breath-taking lack of the kind of knowledge that comes from things he’s read and things he’s been told, as opposed to things he’s experienced.

A mysterious fellow, he likes his life very much and that’s the vat he draws from.

The high crime of torture must be prosecuted

By Rob Urie
Humboldt Sentinel

Confirmation by the Constitution Project nearly a decade late that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military and ‘intelligence’ services committed acts of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere appears a Rorschach test for the ‘sentiments’ of the American people. However, sentiments aside, formal indictments of culpable officials on war crimes charges and the start of impeachment proceedings against current President Barack Obama are the only relevant responses to the report. Torture is a crime under laws to which the U.S. is signatory. And with his war on Iraq George W. Bush and his administration murdered, or caused the premature deaths of, more than a million people and substantially destroyed a modern nation state.

By 2004, when pictures of Iraqi civilians being tortured and humiliated at A

bu Ghraib prison were leaked, it was widely evident the Bush administration had established a global system of kidnapping, torture, rape and murder. The grotesque euphemisms ‘take the gloves off’ and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ provided cover for criminal behavior only to the extent Americans were willing to suspend judgment of what was before their eyes. The ‘fog of war’ was the fog of contrived fear and the malicious acts of America’s idiot prince and his bosses and acolytes were fueled by ignorance and fed on arrogance and stupidity. The language of nationalist psychosis was revived to insist the saving of ‘American’ lives was worth any price and as the Constitution Project report demonstrates, America’s victims paid that price in real time. And today under the new boss, Barack Obama, they are still paying.

What at first glance seems surprising in the development of the report is Republican Asa Hutchison, former Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Mr. Bush, and as such a legally culpable party to the crimes exposed in it, co-led the Constitution Project effort. The decade-long use of euphemisms for what was clearly torture served both as legal cover and the public relations interests of the Bush administration. By explicitly calling acts ‘torture’ in the report a boundary of legal culpability was breached. An earlier report conducted by the U.S. Senate reportedly contains similar findings but remains classified. Together these indicate ‘official’ evidence of culpability that could be used as the basis for criminal prosecutions if the will and means to prosecute are found. As such, Mr. Hutchison’s role appears to be as leader of an informal ‘truth and reconciliation’ committee. However, the magnitude of the crimes of aggressive war and torture warrant criminal prosecution, not reconciliation.

In his statement accompanying the release of the Project report Mr. Hutchison proposed that ignorance of legitimate interrogation methods, and possibly naiveté, were behind the Bush administration’s torture policies. The proposition itself is naïve, and in legal terms irrelevant, in that the Bush administration contemporaneously sought legal cover for its actions behind bogus legal theories, engaged in efforts to cover up illegal behavior and carried out phony ‘investigations’ of torture that limited culpability to low-level operatives. In addition to providing clear and detailed statements that Bush administration actions were torture, Mr. Hutchison restated facts of broader culpability: former President Bill Clinton started the ‘extraordinary rendition’ program used by the Bush and Obama administrations and current President Barack Obama continues torture practices and is hiding other current U.S. practices of dubious legality behind the illegitimate veil of ‘state secrets.’

To address the most prominent rationale for recent American defenders of torture: as copious evidence suggests, the George W. Bush administration had been warned of the attacks of September 11, 2001 by internal intelligence services, by overseas intelligence services and through a number of personal calls made directly to Mr. Bush from prominent world leaders prior to their occurrence. The ‘failure’ of 9/11 was the failure to respond to copious and overwhelming evidence an attack was imminent, not from an absence of information. Administration reaction to its failure to prevent the attacks was to fraudulently infer blame onto Iraq to justify launching a war of aggression against it. And illegal torture has been a standard tactic of the U.S. military and intelligence services overseas for decades with no relation to an imminent attack on the U.S. either claimed or inferred. In other words, even if torture had revealed the plot it would have made no difference– it was the failure to act on the available information that facilitated the attacks.

Part of the value of the Constitution Project report is it broadens the realm of ‘officially’ known U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan to include systematic torture by the U.S. military and intelligence services. That is, far from the administration’s contention the use of torture was limited to specific ‘targets’ and designed to yield specific and urgent information needed to prevent another attack on the U.S., torture was widespread, often used where no information relevant to activities against the U.S. was suspected, and was carried out for purposes unrelated to direct ‘U.S. interests.’ When put together with a separate BBC report claiming forces led by American James Steele were sent to Iraq to lead ‘counter-insurgency’ efforts that included the systematic torture and murder of Iraqi ‘insurgents,’ historical continuity is added to America’s torture program.

According to the BBC report, in the 1980s Mr. Steele led counter-insurgency forces in Central America on behalf of American business and imperial interests. That effort also included the systematic murder and torture of accused ‘insurgents,’ often innocents caught in the way of right-wing ‘death-squads’ supported by the U.S.  The cluttered, confused, and ultimately irrelevant legal ‘justifications’ for torture provided by the Bush administration were transformed from theory to fact when Mr. Steele was sent to Iraq. This isn’t to suggest that U.S.-led torture and murder in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t precede Mr. Steele’s arrival, but it ties systematic torture and murder past to present. It cannot credibly be argued systematic torture and murder are a response to specific events when they precede those events by decades.

When Barack Obama entered office in 2009 he claimed the right to ‘look forward, not back’ that wasn’t his to claim. The law requires war crimes be investigated and prosecuted if evidence of guilt is found. Behind a veil of political pragmatism, not wanting to be caught up in ‘partisan’ politics, Mr. Obama moved America’s programs of political torture and murder into the 21^st century. Had he enthusiastically prosecuted Bush administration crimes Mr. Obama could have revived international sanction against aggressive war and torture and ended, even if only temporarily, the of use of ancient imperial techniques in a world with the technological capacity to murder, maim and torture beyond the ancient imagination.

Instead of doing this Mr. Obama claimed the illegitimate and illegal rights of aggressive war, permanent incarceration of known innocents, torture and technocratic slaughter, all under the cover of opaque public relations techniques, quasi-sophisticated language and his casual demeanor. By choosing continuity and enhancement over clear, straightforward and unambiguous break with Mr. Bush’s catastrophic policies, Mr. Obama codified them into the set of ‘acceptable’ practices of American empire. But much as the context of fear and ignorance temporarily protected Mr. Bush and his administration from the clear language of their acts that will sooner or later condemn them to their ever so deserved fates, Mr. Obama chose the wrong side of history. The claims of real politic, that some innocents must die no matter who leads or follows, occasionally joins the ruin corrupt and criminal leaders meet when their crimes pass the historical context that facilitated and incubated them.

Unstated in the continuity of imperial torture and murder is that they never serve their claimed purposes. It was well understood by the standing bureaucracy in Washington during the ‘Bush years’ that torture doesn’t produce ‘useful’ information and that political murder eliminates the unlucky and the unfortunate, not the purported ‘targets.’ When the Bush administration offered nearly unfathomable wealth to poor Afghanis to turn their neighbors in for ‘crimes’ against America, even they weren’t so stupid as to believe those turned over were guilty of anything but misfortune. The unstated purpose of imperial torture and murder is to provide evidence of imperial power—to produce subservience and acquiescence through random terror. Why else does Mr. Obama randomly murder with drones, did Mr. Bush establish his torture regime and concentration prisons, and did Mr. Clinton create his program of kidnapping and torture?

The practical problem with using imperial / state terror as a strategy of political repression is that random torture and murder don’t force compliance with imperial and / or state interests—their random nature precludes association between their infliction and specific acts. This general principle was understood by the time of the Nuremberg trials—Nazi law couldn’t be followed because it was incoherent. But the point of Nazi law was to force the will of the Nazi leadership onto the German citizenry, not to maintain civil order. What change in behavior can be obtained through Mr. Obama’s drone murders other than to prevent people from being males between the ages of 16 and 50 or from sitting down with their families to share a meal? What interest is served other than to terrorize people? The Bush administration had little interest in determining the guilt or innocence of those imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay because the point of their incarceration wasn’t (isn’t) to punish guilt; it is to demonstrate imperial power.

Americans who see themselves on the ‘lucky’ side of torture and murder are either members of the tiny ruling class at present outside the realm of possible torture and / or murder or aren’t looking at present and recent past circumstance very hard. The purpose of the surveillance state isn’t to solve some ‘crime’ wave because there is none. Persons of the ‘wrong’ skin color and / or economic class aren’t harassed, beaten, fraudulently incarcerated or murdered to reduce ‘crime’ because an entire ruling class of economic and war criminals is hiding in plain sight and available for arrest were it in ‘the state’s’ interest to reduce crime. The rise of solitary confinement (torture) and the revival of debtor’s and for-profit prisons in the U.S. illuminate the political economic interests behind the incarceration state. And as New York City’s police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently articulated, the purpose of harassment of, violence against and incarceration of black and brown youth is to create a level of state terror that precludes ‘crime.’ In other words, terror is the state tactic of repression, not the crime.

Finally, this piece is written in the context of events surrounding the recent bombings in Boston. I lived in Cambridge, a few miles from the bombings, for five years and only recently moved back to New York. I have for decades had family and friends who have run the Boston Marathon, have been an avid runner myself for some twenty-five years, and have been a spectator at the Marathon on several occasions. There is no argument that could be made that any of the victims of the bombings were legitimate political targets. Where I now grieve for those maimed and murdered in Boston, so have I grieved for the innocents, now numbering over one million in Iraq and Afghanistan, who died in illegal wars of aggression, and the many who were also illegally tortured. If what happened in Boston was a crime, and it was, so too is illegitimate war and torture. Mr. Bush and his administration, and now with Mr. Obama joining him, deserve fair trials for their crimes and fitting punishment if found guilty, just as the murderers in Boston do.

The numbers are cooked, and there is no recovery

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

The economic news in the last two weeks points to bad news for the economy and a reason for people to mobilize and demand change. We want to emphasize that as bad as the situation looks, there are solutions and ways to protect ourselves. The time to act is now.

Before we get to the impact of the Obama budget, let’s explode a critical myth: there is no recovery (at least for the 99%). Last month’s unemployment numbers revealed the fraud of the unemployment rate. Even though the country produced less than 90,000 new jobs, when over 120,000 are needed to keep up with growth, the unemployment rate declined. Why? Because hundreds of thousands are giving up on work each month and they don’t get counted.

At present, over 100 million working age Americans do not have a job that is 41.5%. And, for some groups, African Americans and youth in particular, this is a persistent jobs crisis that ensures low incomes and little wealth for the future. And, workers who do have jobs are paid way too little, about half of the value of what they actually produce. There will be no recovery until these fundamentals change.

The combination of poor federal economic policy – which is getting more off-track – and a corrupt economy is bringing on the next crash. In an article in Truthout last week, we point out the deep corruption of the finance system, which dominates the economy. Security fraud expert Bill Black told us that the evidence shows that fraud is “pervasive” among the “most elite financial institutions,” yet the Obama government policy was no prosecution. The Economic Collapse Blog points out there are 11 crashes going on right now: gold, silver, bitcoins, consumer confidence, 401(k) retirement accounts, casino gambling, Greek employment, European financial stocks, Spanish bankruptcies and energy demand; and predicts the bloated US stock market is next.

As we approach the next crash, the government’s across the board sequester is beginning to have big impacts on people’s lives and will lead to further shrinking of the economy. Here are 100 cutbacks that are affecting people as of early April and the pace is picking up. These impacts are very real, thousands of Medicare patients with cancer are being turned away at health clinics because of sequester cut-backs. And, at a time of increasing poverty, Greg Kaufman writes the sequester means: “up to 140,000 fewer low-income families receiving housing vouchers, more children exposed to lead paint, higher rent for people who can’t afford it and a rise in homelessness.”

If either President Obama’s or Paul Ryan’s budget, or some of each, is enacted, and they will since these are what DC is considering, the economy will get even worse. The bipartisans have fully embraced austerity and are being cheered on by the corporate media and wealth-funded think tanks, as Margaret Flowers found when she debated two on the Marc Steiner Show, one from a “liberal” Democrat think tank, the other a conservative Republican – they agreed while Margaret had to correct their false statements.

The president has shown his embrace of austerity by proposing unilateral budget cuts to Social Security and Medicare that will shrink benefits and increase the cost of health care. After four years of seeking to cut these programs, the “Grand Obama Betrayal” has arrived. Economist Jack Rasmus describes this as a “grand collusion” between the bipartisan corporatists and big business interests. The president did not put forward any plans to solve the jobs crisis, shrink the wealth divide, build a new economy – instead he embraced a mistaken mission of austerity.

The embrace of austerity does not apply to the military, whose sequester cuts were restored with the administration even funding a missile defense program that Congress de-funded as the military continues to be well-funded. When it comes to people’s needs, Obama put forward an approach that intentionally ignores the real living costs of the elderly and instead relied on a fake inflation rate that economist Michael Hudson calls “catfood reform.” Obama and the bipartisans want Americans to think these cuts are necessary, but in fact, they aren’t.

Obama is not only hurting the middle class, poor, elderly and veterans with these cuts, but his budget continues to give gifts to big business. Obama’s budget is proposing to sell the Tennessee Valley Authority to big energy interests. This will ensure consumers pay the highest rates possible. As food safety gets worse, Obama’s budget will cut chicken inspectors and let the industry inspect itself. And, Obama, who has always been well-funded by the nuclear industry, revised rules to dramatically raise permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs.

These wins for industry are losses to the health and welfare of Americans. Congress does its job for big business well; research shows big payoffs for members who vote to deregulate the deeply corrupt finance industry. And, agribusiness food giant Monsanto was able to get the Monsanto Protection Act passed, which prevents regulation of GMO’s and even prevents courts from intervening.

The corruption of Congress and the president were on display this week when they repealed the STOCK Act, designed to prevent insider trading by high government officials by requiring them to disclose their financial investments in a searchable format. The Senate passed the repeal in 10 seconds, the House in 14, both by unanimous consent – not one member spoke up to oppose the repeal. President Obama quickly and quietly signed the law. His repeal was accomplished more quietly than when Obama signed the STOCK Act a year ago, saying how important it was for elected officials to live within transparent rule of law. Speaking of corrupt secrecy, the Federal Reserve argues that the widespread corrupt mortgage practices are trade secrets and should not be disclosed. Is this mafia capitalism at work?

It is now clear that Americans who deposited money in big banks could suffer the same result as the people of Cyprus, remember the lessons of the Depression, and have their deposits seized and turned into bank stock. Ellen Brown reports this is part of the “too big to fail” banks plan to withstand the next collapse. In fact, massive and risky derivatives investments, almost as large as the US economy, would receive more protection than depositors. It could happen here in a collapse, and it would be fast and furious, with the banks or the FDIC writing down deposits to save the banks at the expense of consumers. And, if you can’t pay your bills, be wary of debtor’s prison.

Every tax year, we are reminded how unfair the tax system is and how the big banks and wealthy avoid taxes by hiding money off-shore, claiming loses in the US and profits abroad. One report indicates that these off-shore havens cost the average taxpayer $1,000 annually. This year, a cache of 2.5 million files containing the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts that were analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposed hidden dealings of politicians, criminals, business people and the mega-rich the world over totaling up to $32 trillion hidden off-shore.

As we get closer to the full implementation of ObamaCare the legislation is looking more expensive and less beneficial to consumer. Obama met with the insurance industry at the White House to discuss their partnership in implementing the law. The law is getting more costly to implement so Obama is pulling back on its promises. Already rising health care costs are resulting in people cutting back on their prescription drugs to save money – this will not be good for health or for the cost of healthcare. And, Obama is moving to quietly ruin Medicare with cuts while at the same time increasing funding for the more expensive and less efficient private insurance for seniors, Medicare Advantage. This is part of the privatization of the most successful part of US healthcare, Medicare, made worse by the nomination of a former executive for Hospital Corporation of America to run Medicare. Marilyn Tavenner promises to run Medicare as a business, just the opposite of what it should be, a necessary public service.

The political and economic mess of Washington and Wall Street, the foundering economy and threat of another collapse, are leading more and more people to question the viability of big finance capitalism; with criticism ranging beyond its traditional critics. More and more call for breaking up the big banks and tougher enforcement against banksters. But, others are calling for more structural changes. In an article that will be published in Truthout tomorrow, we discuss how to transform the Federal Reserve to make it transparent, democratic and responsive to the economy; the creation of public banks in every state and major cities as well ways to opt-out of the Wall Street economy.

The crisis of the US economy and government are upon us. The only way we will stop the cuts to necessary social services, the continued privatization of public services and government gifts to big business is to mobilize to stop business as usual in Washington, DC. Beyond that, it is important for all of us to envision and begin to create the new economy as the old one collapses. There is more information about the new economy and links to resources at ItsOurEconomy.us.

The future is ours to define. Now is the time to for action!

Unlike cowardly California reps, the junior Senator from Kentucky defends Constitutional rights

Sentinel Editorial

While the simpering lickspittle politicians spend their time sucking up to corporate lobbyists at their endless round of fundraisers, a few brave souls in the United States Senate are actually on the floor of the Senate doing their job.

Bringing back the novel idea that a filibuster actually involves holding the floor and speaking — a spectacle last witnessed when Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vermont) held the floor for nearly a day to hold up Obama’s tax cuts for the wealthy in 2010 — the junior Senator from Kentucky took the floor this morning, and as of press time, has not relinquished it.

Rand Paul (Rep.-Kentucky) is holding up the confirmation vote on John Brennan, who served as a Central Intelligence Agency official during the George W. Bush administration, to be the director of said spy shack. Brennan’s role in the Bush-era launch of indiscriminate rendition and torture of suspects in the never-ending War on Terror is legendary, but Paul is specifically targeting the purported “right” of the Obama regime to used unmanned aerial drones to kill anyone on Earth, without judge, jury or conviction under any due process.

“The idea that you don’t get due process is really repugnant to the American people, and it should be,” Paul said on the Senate floor just minutes ago. “There should be a huge outcry, and the president should come forward and explain his position.”

“There are some rights that are so special that we aren’t willing to give up on these…it’s about principles that are bigger than the people involved. It’s about Constitutional principles.”

We couldn’t agree more. The power to kill at will is the power of a dictator, no matter how much Obama says he isn’t one.

Thankfully, there are a few brave Senators that agree, including Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), Jerry Moran (Kansas), Marco Rubio (Florida), Saxby Chambliss (Georgia) and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania). Oddly enough, all these men are Republicans, and several of them were silent when the Bush Administration promulgated the very Constitution-shredding policies that Obama has expanded.

Paul says he would be doing the same thing even if a Republican were in the White House, and we are grateful that somebody on Capitol Hill puts their oath of office ahead of their political party.

Somebody else up there is acting in a similarly honorable fashion: Ron Wyden (Dem.-Oregon), who has also stood up against the National Defense Authorization Act and various other attacks on civil liberties over the last several years.Nowhere to be seen, naturally, are Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California. Their lack of respect for the Bill of Rights and their disregard for the tyrannical direction of the federal government have been confirmed by their negligence — and in the case of Feinstein, active cheerleading for more police state powers to be concentrated in the Executive Branch.

Tune in to CSPAN-2 and see for yourself what a real American hero looks like. Rand Paul, we salute you, and we salute everyone who stands with the Constitution against its domestic enemies.

–Or, How Can a Barrel of Washington Monkeys Throw a Shoe in the Works–

Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel

“Corporate welfare– the enormous and myriad subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, tax loopholes, debt
revocations, loan guarantees, discounted insurance and
other benefits conferred by government on business– is
a function of political corruption.

Corporate welfare programs siphon funds from appropriate public investments, subsidize companies ripping minerals from federal lands, enable pharmaceutical companies to gouge consumers, perpetuate anti-competitive oligopolistic markets, injure our national security, and weaken our democracy.”

~Ralph Nader

So what has happened to our great nation?

Politicians.  545 of them, to be exact.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems– and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, why do we have deficits?  If all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, why do we have inflation and high taxes?  The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Let’s put it all into some perspective unless we’ve forgotten or
resigned ourselves as to how things got this way.

You and I don’t propose a federal budget.  The President does.  You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations.  The House of Representatives does.  You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.  You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.  You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million who are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

Excluded are the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.  In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.  The value of the dollar has lost ground ever since.

Excluded are all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.  They have no legal authority.  They should have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing.  Even if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash, that politician has the power to accept or reject it.  No matter what the lobbyist promises, it’s the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 monkeys spend much of their monkeyshine energy convincing you that what they did isn’t their fault.  They cooperate in this common flimflam con game regardless of their party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.  No normal human being would have the gall of the Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.  The President can only propose a budget; he can’t force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.  Who is the speaker of the House?  John Boehner; he’s the leader of the majority party.  He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want.  If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.  The House has passed a budget, but the Senate hasn’t approved a budget in over three years.  The President’s proposed budgets have gotten almost unanimous rejections in the Senate during that time.

It seems inconceivable that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility.  I can’t think of a single domestic problem that’s not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is because they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.  If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.  If an unregulated Wall Street caused the greatest recession in our collective memory, it’s because they want it unregulated.  If companies send jobs, earnings, and tax-sheltered profits overseas, it’s because they want them sheltered.  If the five largest banks that gambled and lost can’t be allowed to fail while millions lose their jobs, farms, and homes, it’s because they want the gambling.  If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If Congress does not receive Social Security but are on an elite retirement plan
not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate.  What’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?  There should be no insoluble government problems.

Don’t let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; or to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them hustle you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.  They, and they alone, have the power.  They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people– We the People– who are their bosses.

We might note the man with the best job in the country is the Vice-President.  All he has to do is get up every morning and say, “How is the President?”

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees, perhaps it’s time we vote all of the monkeys out of office– and begin cleaning up their mess.

So, what happened to our great nation?  You can spell ‘politicians.’  But can you spell “545 bought and paid for, monkey business-as-usual, beastly-political professional fat cat bureaucrats?”

Not one of the taxes below existed 100 years ago and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.  We had no national debt, we had the largest middle class in the world, and we had Mom who
stayed at home to raise the kids so they’d grow up properly.

The only difference between death and debt is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax 

“Just be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”

~Will Rogers

* * * * * * * * * *

Our appreciation goes out to Arlo Guthrie (Woody’s son), Ralph Nader, Charlie Reese of the Orlando Sentinel, Will Rogers, and to Sue O. of Medford, Oregon, for their contributions to this article.

Feel free to share this with others– or your local monkeyshine reps in Washington.

Send it around 545 times.  We would be honored.  Thank you.

–And Cafeteria Constitutionalists (VIDEO)–

By Bill Maher
HBO Real Time

The key to the new conservative “Constitutionalism” is that they love, love, love every single word of the Constitution… except for the parts that they hate.  And those parts therefore don’t count and have to be changed.

The truth is that “Constitutionalist” has become code for “far-right Teabagger” just like “southern preacher” has become code for “closeted homosexual.”

As much as these people say they adore the Constitution, they’re a little choosey about what they do and don’t like about it:

Second Amendment?  Love it.  Tenth Amendment, which gives un-delegated power to the states?  Gotta have it.  But the “no establishment of religion” part of the First Amendment?  A little wobbly on that one.

The 17th Amendment, which allowed for direct election of senators (by the people; as opposed to legislative appointment), is on their chopping block.  In fact, John Yoo wrote about it a few years ago in the National Review Online, saying that the 17th “undermined federalism.”  John Yoo, of course, earned his Constitutional stripes by shitting all over the 8th Amendment while making room for torture.

The “no unreasonable searches and seizures” in the Fourth Amendment?  They kind of like it, but only for white people.

The 16th Amendment, which allows income tax, well, obviously that’s gotta go as well.  What were we thinking?  The Founding Fathers obviously wanted us to fund our modern military with rainbows and candy.

The 14th Amendment is right there in the Constitution too, but it allows the evil spawn of Mexicans to be citizens, so it clearly needs some tweaking.

And of course there’s all the stuff that’s not in the Constitution that needs to be.

If only our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to foresee the
invention of fire and cloth, we wouldn’t need a flag-burning amendment.  But we do.  And somehow James Madison must have left the “no gay marriage” amendment in his other pants the day he introduced the Bill of Rights, so we’ll have to fix that, too.

If they really loved the Constitution so much, wouldn’t they have more respect for it than that?

The reality is that Conservatives love their Constitution the exact same way they love their Bible — as something to thump, not something to read.

* * * * * * *

This article by Bill Maher, “Cafeteria Constitutionalists,” and others, can be found here. 

More HBO Real Time with Bill Maher can be found here.

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

WHO’S BOMBING HER NOW?

By Bruce Anderson
Anderson Valley Advertiser

Most AVA readers are probably aware, however dimly, that a woman named Judi Bari was nearly killed in Oakland by a car bomb in May of 1990.  The device detonated directly beneath the driver’s seat of the car Bari was driving.

The person with her, Darryl Cherney, her close friend and fellow Earth First! organizer, was only slightly injured. Both Bari and Cherney would have been killed if the bomb had exploded as designed.  A resident of Mendocino County and self-identified Earth First!er, Bari had been foremost in organizing Redwood Summer, a mass protest against corporate timber’s cash-in of the Northcoast’s redwood forests.

The spectacular attempt on Bari’s life was soon eclipsed by the first Iraq war, and Bari, grievously injured in the explosion, died in 1997.

The FBI and the Oakland Police had prematurely arrested Bari and Cherney on the presumption they had knowingly transported the device that almost killed them.  In the few years left to her, Bari, and a handful of acolytes, including Cherney, raised large amounts of money for a winning federal libel lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland Police Department in 2002.  Bari’s daughters, Cherney and several left attorneys walked away with several million dollars, having worked closely with the feds to draft the suit to exclude all mention of whose bomb set the suit in motion.

Within days of the blast, Mike Geniella, a reporter with the New York Times-owned Santa Rosa Press Democrat, had received a letter from a person signing himself The Lord’s Avenger.  Written in thunderous, faux Old Testament prose, the Avenger described the bomb in detail only the bomber could know.  The bombing suspect now became a deranged fundamentalist, and the FBI, always a dependable villain among the left, became the Avenger’s enabler if not co-conspirator.

Bari, Cherney, and their allies well-placed in the Pacifica Network, including Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, have always managed to ignore inconvenient questions about the bombing, especially those raised in a fine but mostly unseen documentary on the case by Steve Talbot, who went on to anchor PBS’s Frontline series.

Talbot’s film was called “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” Talbot answered that question on information supplied by Bari herself — Judi Bari was probably bombed by her ex-husband.  Talbot, without directly identifying Bari’s ex in the film, pointed straight at him.

But after Bari’s death, Talbot appeared on a San Francisco-based television program called “This Week In Northern California” to say that Bari had told him she was certain her ex-husband had bombed her, that the great assassins of the corporate-FBI nexus so beloved by the Pacifica Network had to be moved aside for what was really a fancy case of domestic violence.

Bari’s ex-husband, Mike Sweeney, magically kept off stage all these years as the likeliest suspect, is not the usual estranged husband.  He comes with special qualifications.  He belonged to Professor H. Bruce Franklin’s Maoist posse at Stanford in the late 1960s, and he and Bari met at a labor organizing event, married and moved to Santa Rosa where a hangar on the mostly abandoned airfield next door mysteriously blew up one night prior to their relocation to Redwood Valley in Mendocino County.  The airfield was home to weekend pilots who annoyed the Sweeney-Bari household with their overflights, and Sweeney and Bari had successfully sued Hewlett-Packard to halt development of the tract the airfield rested on.

Police suspected Sweeney and Bari — they had no other suspects — but were unable to make the case against them.  By the time they arrived in Mendocino County where their marriage soon disintegrated, the two radicals had enjoyed, you might say, a uniquely explosive relationship.

In the 22 years since Judi Bari was blown up in Oakland, out there in what’s left of the American left, it’s an article of faith that she was a martyr to the usual malign forces that do the dirty work for our ruling circles.  Tune in Democracy Now or KPFA out of Berkeley and you will hear someone saying that the author of the attack on Judi Bari remains a mystery but we, wink-wink, we in the know, we know the corporations and the FBI got her.

What you won’t hear, because alternative explanations of the case are deliberately excluded from Pacifica’s preciously PC airwaves, is that the mystery of who bombed Judi Bari isn’t a mystery at all, that it can be solved via the known DNA lifted from the Lord’s Avenger Letter.  No one seems interested, but that DNA exists and has been found to be primarily female, placed there in 1990, just before DNA became the slam-dunk investigative tool it has since become.

Judi Bari is still being bombed by persons deliberately obstructing resolution of the case, this time in the form of an hagiographic epic assembled by Cherney that mostly features himself.  It is also called, “Who Bombed Judi Bari?”, a nice piece of cynicism that might make it appear that the honest film of the same title by Steve Talbot didn’t pre-date Cherney’s film by twenty-one years.  Predictably, Cherney’s version of “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” has gotten big play from Amy Goodman and the cringing speakers-of-truth-to-power at places like KPFA.

The even larger mystery of Who Bombed Judi Bari is this: why isn’t what passes for a left media in this country demanding that the Bari case be solved?  Why did Susan Faludi suddenly abandon her book on Bari after getting a large publisher’s advance to write it?  Why has Judi Bari’s famous sister, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, never written about her sister’s sad fate?

And why has Bari’s family never publicly demanded the case be solved?

* * * * * * * * *

We welcome this case being reopened and the DNA evidence tested.  It has never been solved or fully resolved.

We also welcome dissenting opinions.

Should Mr. Cherney, Mr. Sweeney, Ms. Goodman, Mr. Talbot, Ms. Kolata, or any accurate historian with a direct and knowledgeable command of the facts like to respond or rebut to the above, the Humboldt Sentinel gladly looks forward to hearing it.

This article is courtesy of  Bruce Anderson and appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser today, January 3, 2013.

 (Images by the Humboldt Sentinel.  Posted by Skippy Massey)

The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble

Paul Craig Roberts
December 18, 2012

The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes.  In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.

The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy.  Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.

Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

The fiscal cliff requires that the federal government cut spending by $1.3 trillion over ten years.   This can be done by simply taking a three month vacation each year from Washington’s wars.

I pointed out 95% of the $230 trillion in US derivative exposure was held by four US financial institutions:  JP Morgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs.

Prior to financial deregulation, essentially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the non-regulation of derivatives– a joint achievement of the Clinton administration and the Republican Party– Chase, Bank of America, and Citibank were commercial banks that took depositors’ deposits and made loans to businesses and consumers and purchased Treasury bonds with any extra reserves.

With the repeal of Glass-Steagall these honest commercial banks became gambling casinos, like the investment bank, Goldman Sachs, betting not only their own money but also depositors money on uncovered bets on interest rates, currency exchange rates, mortgages, and prices of commodities and equities.

These bets soon exceeded many times not only US GDP but world GDP.  Indeed, the gambling bets of JP Morgan Chase Bank alone are equal to world Gross Domestic Product.

According to the first quarter 2012 report from the Comptroller of the Currency, total derivative exposure of US banks has fallen insignificantly from the previous quarter to $227 trillion.  The exposure of the 4 US banks accounts for almost of all of the exposure and is many multiples of their assets or of their risk capital.

The Derivatives Tsunami is the result of the handful of fools and corrupt public officials who deregulated the US financial system.  Today, merely four US banks have derivative exposure equal to 3.3 times world Gross Domestic Product.  When I was a US Treasury official, such a possibility would have been considered beyond science fiction.

Hopefully, much of the derivative exposure somehow nets out so that the net exposure, while still larger than many countries’ GDPs, is not in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.  Still, the situation is so worrying to the Federal Reserve that after announcing a third round of quantitative easing, that is, printing money to buy bonds– both US Treasuries and the banks’ bad assets– the Fed has just announced that it is doubling its QE 3 purchases.

In other words, the entire economic policy of the United States is dedicated to saving four banks that are too large to fail.  The banks are too large to fail only because deregulation permitted financial concentration, as if the Anti-Trust Act did not exist.

The purpose of QE is to keep the prices of debt, which supports the banks’ bets, high.  The Federal Reserve claims that the purpose of its massive monetization of debt is to help the economy with low interest rates and increased home sales.

But the Fed’s policy is hurting the economy by depriving
savers, especially the retired, of interest income, forcing them to draw down their savings. Real interest rates paid on CDs, money market funds, and bonds are lower than the rate of inflation.

Moreover, the money that the Fed is creating in order to bail out the four banks is making holders of dollars, both at home and abroad, nervous.  If investors desert the dollar and its exchange value falls, the price of the financial instruments that the Fed’s purchases are supporting will also fall, and interest rates will rise.  The only way the Fed could support the dollar would be to raise interest rates.  In that event, bond holders would be wiped out, and the interest charges on the government’s debt would explode.

With such a catastrophe following the previous stock and real estate collapses, the remains of people’s wealth would be wiped out.  Investors have been deserting equities for “safe” US Treasuries.  This is why the Fed can keep bond prices so high that the real interest rate is negative.

The hyped threat of the fiscal cliff is immaterial compared to the threat of the derivatives overhang and the threat to the US dollar and bond market of the Federal Reserve’s commitment to save four US banks.

Once again, the media and its master, the US government,
hide the real issues behind a fake one.  The fiscal cliff has become the way for the Republicans to save the country from bankruptcy by destroying the social safety net put in place during the 1930s, supplemented by Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” in the mid-1960s.

Now that there are no jobs, now that real family incomes have been stagnant or declining for decades, and now that wealth and income have been concentrated in few hands is the time, Republicans say, to destroy the social safety net so that we don’t fall over the fiscal cliff.

In human history, such a policy usually produces revolt and revolution, which is what the US so desperately needs.

Perhaps our stupid and corrupt policymakers are doing us a favor after all.

* * * * * * *

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts knows what he speak of.

Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy (under President Reagan) and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Roberts is a columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate.

Along with his many university appointments and publications as an economist, his internet columns regarding the state of our economy have a worldwide following.

Dr. Roberts brings us the news you won’t find in the local Times-Standard.

(This article has been slightly abridged.  Images by the Humboldt Sentinel.  Posted by Skippy Massey)

All in Good Humor, Of Course

Staff Report
Humboldt Sentinel

We cover most of the local websites bringing you the pearls of wisdom or touching on a relevant topic that we find interesting every once in awhile.

Occasionally we come across a rare comment, a good one,
a reader’s opinion with pith and punch and humor capturing
the flavor of the moment and worthy of reposting.

The following is from Mike Dronker’s piece,
“Special Supes Report; ‘Hey, What Now?‘” by a guest commenter
calling himself (or herself) ’Unnamed Source:’

“This just in. 

Humboldt County residents hoping to see the end to the GPU (General Plan Update) process shouldn’t hold their breaths unless they enjoy recreational unconsciousness.

Once again, at their most recent hearing on Dec. 17, 2012 the Supes turned the process over to an ad hoc group theoretically representing every possible viewpoint in the county in the hope that this coalition of previously warring factions would reach consensus, thereby relieving the elected officials of the responsibility of making any decision that might annoy any one or more of their potential or ostensible supporters in the next election cycle.

Fifth District Supervisor Ryan Sundberg, deeply confused by conflicting comments from his constituents, reiterated that he doesn’t want to vote until the working group presents him with a checklist of what to vote for and what to vote against.

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn, on the other hand, pointed out that since all kinds of development projects have already been done all over the county there’s absolutely no need for the supervisors to have to make any GPU decisions — everyone already knows what everyone wants, so why waste time deliberating and listening to a lot of boring comment when we could
be playing ball?

Fourth District Supervisor and Board Chair Virginia Bass agreed that everyone has a very good point, really a lot of great ideas out there, and maybe we just all need a little more time to think things over.

Second District Supervisor Clif Clendenen lost his re-election bid and will be off the board at the end of the year, so whatever he said could be safely ignored.

Even the normally feisty Third District Supervisor Mark Lovelace mellowed out somewhat, enough to seek a way to move the need to make a decision to one of those five-year General Plan Update updates recommended by the 1984 Framework Plan under which the county still operates. 
By that time, an asteroid may have destroyed the earth, eliminating
the need for land use planning.

Considering how difficult, time-consuming, and just plain irritating the whole thing is, the Supervisors made a courageous decision to put off deciding anything this year, which marks the 10th or the 12th year, or depending on whether you use the Mayan, Hebrew, Buddhist, Gregorian, or Sumerian calendar, the 8,937th year of the GPU.

But, as Supervisor Bohn so wisely said, it’s better to do it right than to do it quickly — or at all.  I mean, what the hell anyway?”

* * * * * * *

The GPU process has gone on forever being a laborious, contentious, arduous, contrary and controversial test of patience and wills on all sides as different groups of stakeholders hammer home opposing points of view.

Yeah, this about captures the flavor all right.  Thank you, Unnamed Source.

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

“Won’t Back Down” Has Controversial Ties and Agenda

Marvin Gentz
Humboldt Sentinel

To the Editor:

The Walden Media film “Won’t Back Down,” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, opens in theaters today.

The film dramatizes a parent fighting to improve her child’s school, but it’s actually a dishonest Hollywood portrayal of the problems in our educational system-funded by the very people who want to privatize and profit from our schools.

“Won’t Back Down” promotes an ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)-model bill.  The film promotes the “parent trigger” law, an ALEC-created policy proposal that turns public schools into privately run charter schools. 

ALEC also brought you Arizona’s draconian immigration law, Pennsylvania’s disenfranchising voter ID law, and Wisconsin’s union-busting Act 10.

“Won’t Back Down” promotes horrible (and untrue) stereotypes about teachers.  The film shows public school teachers as listless and uncaring. One teacher is even shown locking a girl in a closet.  As Randi Weingarten writes in The Washington Post:

“I don’t recognize the teachers portrayed in this movie. The teachers I know are women and men who have devoted their lives to helping children learn and grow and reach their full potential. These women and men come in early, stay late to mentor and tutor students, coach sports teams, advise the student council, work through lunch breaks, purchase school supplies using money from their own pockets and spend their evenings planning lessons, grading papers and talking to parents.”

“Won’t Back Down” helps fund anti-union causes.  Walden Media, which produced the film, is owned by Philip Anschutz, whose foundation has donated $210,000 to the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

“Won’t Back Down” is being heavily promoted by the right-wing.  Groups promoting the film include the Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works and the Chamber of Commerce, who are also lending support to right-wing candidates.

“Won’t Back Down” scapegoats teachers and their unions, but ignores all other factors.  As Liza Featherstone writes in Dissent: “Never mind those wonky details. The problem, we’re repeatedly led to believe, is the teachers’ union.  But if unions were to blame for failing schools, wouldn’t unionized public schools in Princeton or Scarsdale also suck?”

Hollywood hasn’t been known to let logic get
in the way of a good story, and neither do education
reformers.

Reasonable citizens should avoid this movie like the plague.

~Marvin Gentz

* * * * * * * * * * *

Privatizing the school system, as well as other aspects of the state and federal government– like health care, prisons, mail delivery, and social security– have long been on the radar of the far right.  One official shockingly suggested the University of California system should be sold to the private University of Phoenix corporation.

One can argue such measures are necessary for  improving performance and efficiency while lessening the burden on taxpayers.  On the other hand, one can also say it’s a blatant money grab for the few lucrative public money pots left to plunder.

And you thought school bonds were a problem. 

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

By Gerald Olesen
for the Humboldt Sentinel

I pray each day for the homeless, the aimless, the mentally ill, the laid-off and the evicted, the overworked, the underpaid, the undereducated and the prisoners, all of whom I have met at some time in my life.

I am a Humboldt County native who lived in Eureka from 1943-1950.  For the years 1949 and 1950, I worked for Eureka
Newspapers, selling the evening paper (The Standard) on the
streets.

In those days, no one EVER warned us (there were around 20 street sellers) of any dangers in any of the areas we worked, which included the “north of fourth” area, including every bar and card room in the area.  I do not recall any of us boys (yes, kids were doing that work in those days), who were usually 10-13 years old, ever being troubled by anyone on those “mean streets.”  Yes, there were some men who were drunken derelicts around, but they did no harm, except to themselves.

What has happened to Eureka?  As I see it, the advent of available drugs, the aftermaths of the Vietnam and later wars we have been involved in, and the closing of mental facilities, have changed our society and left us with many mentally ill and drug-laced people who are seen all over town.  Some of these have self-inflicted problems and others are simply victims of circumstances their minds would not tolerate, who were turned out upon the streets to live as best they could.  Whatever the cause of their troubles, they are REAL and are simply not going away and we who are unaffected should do what we can to ease their pain.

I have been retired for many years and have worked at the St. Joseph Pantry Shelf in Fortuna for a long time and have seen many of folks who, for whatever reason, are in need and we do what we can to give them a bit of food.  In our sort of business, judgments are best left to others (preferably God).  If one becomes too judgmental, one would probably not help.  I think the situation is pretty well summed up by this:  If you have two shirts, one belongs to you and the other to the person who has none.

This is a thorny issue and any of us will, at times, wonder if we are enabling such people to continue their lifestyle.  No doubt there are abusers, as there are in any human endeavor.  It is said that we should teach a man to fish, instead of merely giving him a fish.  That makes sense, as far as it goes, but if the man is hungry today, we need to, first, give him something to eat and then think about fishing lessons.  We who do this work will be called “do-gooders” by some and that is o.k., because that is exactly what we are attempting to do, some good.

In the recent article regarding the homeless day center that has been proposed by Betty Chinn and Catholic Charities (”Opening a door for those in need,” Times-Standard, Oct. 26, Page A1), those who are complaining would seem to be folks who have been fortunate to have received a rather large slice of the “stuff” of this life.

I do not doubt that they worked very hard to amass whatever they have, but to withhold aid from our brothers who have fallen upon hard times, regardless of the cause, comes off as a bit selfish.

Yes, some folks can be very thoughtless and destructive and we certainly wish they would do better, but they are still members of our imperfect human race and we should do whatever we can to help them and, if possible, change the course of their lives.  I think Betty Chinn and Catholic Charities are trying to do just that in the best way they know how.  We should support their efforts.

I believe in this, from Luke 12:48: Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required.

* * * * * * * *

Gerald Olesen resides in Fortuna. He kindly gave us his permission to reprint his letter which first appeared in the Times-Standard news on November 4, 2012.

We read much material and many letters in the course of our day.  This one hit both the mark and struck home.

Thank you, Mr. Olesen.

(Images by the Humboldt Sentinel.  Posted by Skippy Massey)

Buckle Up, It’s Gonna Be a Bumpy Ride

Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel

The term “fiscal cliff” was first coined by Ben Bernanke in early 2012.

It refers to the roughly $718 billion that many believe will be
withdrawn in some way, shape or form from the economy in 2013 in
the form of tax increases and federal spending cuts.

If nothing is done and all the scheduled tax increases and spending cuts go into effect on January 1, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the economy will contract slightly in 2013.  Other estimates show a much deeper recession is likely—and we’ll be plunging headlong over that Fiscal Cliff.

Investors in the stock market are also holding increasing concerns and jitteriness over the European sovereign debt, the effects of quantitative easing, and the overall rigged manipulation of the once ‘free’ markets.

Then there’s our gargantuan deficit and debts, the bailouts, two wars that are unpaid for, and whether or not China wants its money back.

There’s also debate over whether our economy is having an ‘inflation vacation’ or a ‘deflation gestation’ that will be let loose at some point after the willy-nilly printing of our diluted dollars comes to a head.
Some naysayers have gone so far as referring to the dollar as ‘scrip’ because the
greenback isn’t tied to anything of solid value except full faith and credit. We just
print more. That’s the faith and credit part.

The dollar is, quite simply, getting battered as the standard world reserve currency.

A minority few believe some of the global markets will have to implode– leading to a ‘resetting’ of currencies and debt throughout the globe.

And those excessive bonuses paid to investment firms (think Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Bank of America, and a host of others) whose failed and unregulated policies– and people– infiltrate both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and collapsed the economy in 2008, do nothing to ease worries that the savvy and rich get richer
while the poor and unsophisticated get… well, you know how the punchline goes.

Economists’ guesses and half baked theories abound all over the map.  Either way you cut the pie or paint the picture, it’s not looking pretty.  Doom, gloom, boom and bust.  So, what’s in your wallet?

Not to worry.  Is belt tightening in order?  Nah.  We’ll do what we’ve always done:  kick the can down the road.

Web Crackdown on the Way?

Staff Report
Humboldt Sentinel

Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak feels– no, fears– that freedom of information is under attack and the internet is increasingly controlled and regulated by governments*  in unnecessary and harmful ways.

An amusing character and freethinking person, his logic is halfway convincing if not beguiling.

RT’s Abby Martin talks to the Woz on a range of topics, from Wikileaks to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to net neutrality in an interview recorded in Aug. of 2012.

This comes from the quirkily entertaining guy who not only helped bring the personal computing internet revolution into our households and social lives, but humorously prints and spends his own bogus $2 bills along with high quality fake ID’s.

* Take this example:  Google was censored and stuffed behind China’s Great FireWall– again– as the country prepares for the election of its new leader, Xi Jinping.  Anyone trying to access Google, Gmail, Maps, or many of the company’s other services found themselves with a whole lot of nothing today.  In addition, overall Internet speeds were low throughout the country, Salon reported. 

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

–VIDEO– 

Staff Report
Humboldt Sentinel

We don’t always agree with Representative Ron Paul, but we appreciate the lone, contrary and different voice he brings single-handedly to the table.  Tirelessly speaking out on issues with a moral conscience and compass firmly in hand, he often goes it alone.

And this guy’s a great pumpkin carver, too, even if the music is a bit on the schmaltzy side.

A Recap of Where We Came From and Where We’re Going– Lest We Forgot

By The Editors
The New Yorker Magazine

Obama succeeded George W. Bush, a two-term President whose misbegotten legacy, measured in the money it squandered and the misery it inflicted, has become only
more evident with time.

Bush left behind an America in dire condition and with a degraded reputation. On Inauguration Day, the United States was in a downward financial spiral brought on by predatory lending, legally sanctioned greed and pyramid schemes, an economic policy geared to the priorities and the comforts of what soon came to be called “the one per cent,” and deregulation that began before the Bush Presidency.

In 2008 alone, more than two and a half million jobs were lost—up to three-quarters of a million jobs a month.  The gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of nine per cent.  Housing prices collapsed.  Credit markets collapsed.  The stock market collapsed—and, with it, the retirement prospects of millions.  Foreclosures and evictions were ubiquitous; whole neighborhoods and towns emptied.  The automobile industry appeared to be headed for bankruptcy.

Banks as large as Lehman Brothers were dead, and other banks were foundering.  It was a crisis of historic dimensions and global ramifications.

However skillful the management in Washington, the slump was bound to last longer than any since the Great Depression.

At the same time, the United States was in the midst of the grinding and unnecessary war in Iraq, which killed a hundred thousand Iraqis and four thousand Americans, and depleted the federal coffers.

The political and moral damage of Bush’s duplicitous rush to war rivaled the conflict’s price in blood and treasure.  America’s standing in the world was further compromised by the torture of prisoners and by illegal surveillance at home.  Al Qaeda, which, on September 11, 2001, killed three thousand people on American soil, was still strong.  Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was, despite a global manhunt, living securely in Abbottabad, a verdant retreat near Islamabad.

…The satirical paper The Onion came up with a painfully apt inaugural headline: “BLACK MAN GIVEN NATION’S WORST JOB.”

Perhaps inevitably, the President has disappointed some of his most ardent supporters.  Part of their disappointment is a reflection of the fantastical expectations that attached to him… 

A visitor to the F.D.R. Memorial, in Washington, is confronted by these words from Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address, etched in stone:

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”

Romney and the leaders of the contemporary G.O.P. would consider this a call to class warfare.  Their effort to disenfranchise poor, black, Hispanic, and student voters in many states deepens the impression that Romney’s remarks about the “forty-seven per cent” were a matter not of “inelegant” expression, as he later protested, but of genuine conviction.

Romney’s conviction is that the broad swath of citizens who do not pay federal income tax—a category that includes pensioners, soldiers, low-income workers, and those who have lost their jobs—are parasites, too far gone in sloth and dependency to be worth the breath one might spend asking for their votes…

But what is most disquieting is Romney’s larger political vision.  The Republicans continue to insist on the “Atlas Shrugged” fantasy of the solitary entrepreneurial genius who creates jobs and wealth
with no assistance at all from government or society…

The choice is clear.  The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: the privatization of the public good.  In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama… takes to heart the old civil-rights motto “Lifting as we climb.”

That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades.  But we’ve already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn’t work…

 ~Continue reading the full article at The New Yorker

 (Posted by Skippy Massey.  Images by the Humboldt Sentinel.  Full appreciation goes to the The New Yorker magazine for their abridged article here.)

Staff Report
Humboldt Sentinel

Poor Stanley.  Today was not a good day for Wall Street.  It was the worst day in four months.  Poof!  Annnd it’s gone.

On the 25th anniversary of the Black Monday crash of 1987, the markets tanked.  Poor earnings reports from three companies in the Dow Jones industrial average — Microsoft, General Electric and McDonalds — sent indexes down
sharply Friday, marking a sour end to an otherwise strong week
in the stock market.

One analyst summed it up by saying,  ”The global economy is growing too slowly right now to sustain anything more.  Shall we say the slowdown in the emerging markets in China and also in Europe, is starting to affect these multi-national tech companies?”  

The Dow closed down 205 points at 13,343.  The Nasdaq lost 67, a 2.2 percent loss, and closed at 3,006.  The S&P gave up 24 points, closing at 1,433.

The good news, though, is that after the Big Bailout, Wall Street and the banks are still making and taking the money from you– and doing fine.  Wanda Sykes, however, came up a different kind of bailout program here.

Deficit, schmeficit.  Full steam ahead.  The government didn’t find it hard spending $1.5 trillion on some things we really needed.

It’s not all that bad.  These will be remembered as the good times.  Be glad you don’t have 9 million percent inflation and live in Zimbabwe.

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

Manipulated statistics conceal stagflation reality

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

Today’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 114,000 new jobs in September and a drop in the rate of unemployment from 8.1% to 7.8%. As 114,000 new jobs are not sufficient to stay even with population growth, the drop in the unemployment rate is the result of not counting discouraged workers who are defined away as “not in the labor force.”

According to the BLS, “In September, 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force.” These individuals “wanted and were available for work,” but “they were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.”

In other words, 2.5 million unemployed Americans were not counted as unemployed.

The stock market rose on the phony good news. Bloomberg’s headline: “U.S. Stocks Rise as Unemployment Rate Unexpectedly Drops,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-05/u-s-stock-futures-little-changed-before-payrolls-report.html.

A truer picture of the dire employment situation is provided by the 600,000 rise over the previous month in involuntary part-time workers. According to the BLS, “These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.”

Turning to the 114,000 new jobs, once again the jobs are concentrated in lowly paid domestic service jobs that cannot be offshored. Manufacturing jobs declined by 16,000.

As has been the case for a decade, two categories–health care and social assistance (primarily ambulatory health care services) and waitresses and bartenders account for 53% of the new jobs. The BLS never ceases to find ever growing employment of people in restaurants and bars despite the rising dependence of the US population on food stamps. The elderly are rising as a percentage of the American population, but I sometimes wonder if employment in ambulatory health care services is rising faster than the elderly population. Whether these reported jobs are real, I do not know.

The rest of the new jobs were accounted for by retail trade, transportation and warehousing, financial activities (primarily credit intermediation), professional and business services (primarily administrative and waste services), and state government education, where the 13,600 reported new jobs seem odd in light of the teacher layoffs and rise in classroom size.

The high-tech jobs that economists promised would be our reward for offshoring American manufacturing jobs and tradeable professional services, such as software engineering and IT, have never materialized. “The New Economy” was just another hoax, like “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” and “Iranian nukes.”

While employment falters, the consumer price index (CPI-U) in August increased 0.6 percent, the largest since June 2009. If the August rate is annualized, it means bad news on the inflation front. Instead of bringing us high tech jobs, is “the New Economy” bringing back the stagflation of the late 1970s? Time will tell.

*************

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Pathetic mainstream press fails to ask the real questions

By Ralph Nader
Nader.org

The three upcoming so-called presidential debates (actually parallel interviews) between Obama and Romney show the pathetic mainstream campaign press for what it is – a mass of dittoheads desperately awaiting gaffes or
some visual irregularity by any of the candidates. The press certainly does not demand elementary material from the candidates such as the secret debate contract negotiated by the Obama and Romney campaigns that controls the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the campaigns’ corporate offspring.

A similar secret contract between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004, obtained by George Farah, executive director of Open Debates (www.opendebates.org) showed just how the two Parties rig the debate process. Both Parties agreed that they would: (1) not request any additional debates, (2) not appear at any other debate or adversarial forum with any other presidential or vice presidential candidate, and (3) not accept any television or radio air time offers that involve a debate format. Were this deal to be between two corporations, they could be prosecuted for criminal violation of the antitrust laws.

This year voters are not allowed to know about the current backroom fix between Obama and Romney.

Farah revealed more. The Bush/Kerry closeout of the voters and the media extended to their agreeing not to ask each other direct questions but only rhetorical questions, and to clear any questions from the audience by their chosen moderator prior to the debates. Of course third party candidates are excluded. In 2000 and 2004, national polls showed majorities wanting me in the debates – the only way non-billionaires could reach tens of millions of voters – but the captive CPD and their compliant director, Janet Brown, created other exclusionary barriers.

Nothing seems to motivate the mainstream campaign press into challenging the two Party duopoly, its definition of important questions, or the rancid corporate sponsorship of the debates down to the hospitality parties the corporatists hold at the debate locations in Colorado, New York and Florida this October. The reporters must like the free wine and food.

Nor did the supine press inform the voters of recent written requests by numerous organizations in the Pittsburgh, District of Columbia and Portland, Oregon regions inviting the presidential candidates to debate in these areas (http://nader.org/2012/09/18/ralph-nader-dc-organizations-call-for-presidential-debate/). Heaven forbid that the people strive to shape the presidential debate process and weaken the duopoly’s grip. Imagine a democratic process.

Substantively, the supine press applies its own rules. Rule One is to avoid pressing questions that extend the public’s agenda beyond what the two major candidates are wrangling over. So if they don’t debate pulling back from unauthorized wars, invasions, incursions or other important foreign policy moves they are not asked. Rule Two is to ignore what major civic groups or groups with credible track records propose for the candidates to address. So Obama and Romney are not pressed by the press to expressly respond to many important issues including: what they would do on law enforcement against corporate crime, fraud and abuse, whether they favor a $10 minimum wage that catches up to 1968, inflation adjusted, for thirty million workers, or on their positions on either a Wall Street speculation tax that can raise big money or even a carbon tax.

Union organizing rights, workers’ health and safety, and a variety of important consumer protections are scarcely on the press table even when their own colleagues often report on these timely subjects.

When a matter is super-timely and they can interview the nation’s foremost expert on the politics of presidential debates – George Farah, author of No Debate – the major media is not interested. They have rejected his op-eds. Apart from local radio shows, he cannot get on national public radio, public TV or the commercial networks. It is not for lack of space and time being devoted to the Presidential campaigns.

I know Farah. He worked for me over a decade ago, right out of Princeton before going to Harvard Law School. He is an interviewers’ dream –speaks crisply, cogently and convincingly.

Maybe reporters should be given “curiosity training sessions” about what the public needs and wants to know but that the candidates are not interested in discussing.

Maybe columnists should work with the people on the ground instead of just working off clips and dealing with political flaks who restrict access to the candidates. Some columnists could benefit from a sabbatical for self-renewal.

Maybe editors and producers should expand beyond the usual “talking heads” and give the many important outside voices and movements some deserved coverage.

Our country needs a better performance by the major media that is stuck in routines, ruts and stagnant self-censorship from the national to the local levels. This is especially true of the concentrated television industry that uses our public airwaves, free of charge.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Humboldt Sentinel greatly appreciates Mr. Nader allowing us to share his column with our readers.

His biography is extensive.  Mr. Nader is a political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney.  Areas of particular concern to him include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.

Ralph Nader has been called one of America’s most effective social critics.  His documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power galvanizing a population of consumer advocates, citizen activists, and public interest lawyers who in turn have established their own organizations throughout the country.

Since 1966, Nader has been responsible for: at least eight major federal consumer protection laws such as the motor vehicle safety laws, Safe Drinking Water Act;  the launching of federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environment Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Administration; the recall of millions of defective motor vehicles; access to government through the Freedom of Information Act of 1974; and for many lives saved.

In his career as consumer advocate he founded many organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, the Project for Corporate Responsibility and The Multinational Monitor (a monthly magazine).

Mr. Nader’s articles can be seen at his website, Nader.Org.

A matrix of lies acts as emotional crutches for majority of Americans

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

A writer’s greatest disappointments are readers who have knee-jerk responses.  Not all readers, of course.  Some readers are thoughtful and supportive.  Others express thanks for opening their eyes.  But the majority are happy when a writer tells them what they want to hear and are unhappy when he writes what they don’t want to hear.

*************

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Li’l Winking Herby Hippy is cool.
Not only is he a real hippy,
Herby came ‘Fully Jointed,’ too.

Who Thinks of These Things?

Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel

Well, we thought we’d run something a little more light-hearted.  Something like the Sunday funnies.

So we thought of vintage toys– you know, a blast from the childhood past.

Then we came across these epic toy fails.  Crass humor beat out innocent nostalgia today.

Good parents said get out and play.  Bad parents said play in the freeway.

Now they say, “Go play video games.”  We can see why.  Video games are wholesome:

Erwin, The Little Patient has all the plushy little eviscerated organs a child needs for a dynamic Show and Tell at school.

The Gilbert Molten Lead Casting Kit allowed the adventurous you to scoop up molten metal and cast an army of glorious minions while ingesting your RDA of toxic poisoning.  And you thought Easy-Bake ovens and Creepy Crawlers and lead-based paints were hazardous.  We say ‘no’ far too often to kids.  They just wanna have fun without all the hassles.

The Atomic Energy Lab was for budding Lex Luthors everywhere.  It came with real samples of radioactive uranium– and radium, which was a million times more radioactive than uranium.  Because the mere presence of radioactive material in a children’s product clearly wasn’t insane enough, some of the experiments detailed in the manual required kids to handle blocks of dry ice which has a temperature of minus 109.3 degrees.  They did recommend that it only be handled while wearing gloves– but none were included in the kit.

Believe it or not, Gilbert actually introduced a little Geiger counter later that kids could use to measure the amount of radiation left in their bodies after each play session.  These were the same folks that brought you the molten lead kit above, the molten glassblowing kit, and the chemistry kit that really did blow stuff up.  Those Gilbert guys sure were a lot of fun.

Coming from China, Happy Little Masters is a sewing machine and steam press playtoy.  The box reads:  “Improve children’s performing ability.  Develop children’s intelligence.  Culticate children’s interest and confidence.  It’s function is very special.  Children will help know how to do the housework and form the habbit of hardworking.  It’s the best gift for mothers to sent the children.  From now on your children will keep house happily.” 

Thank goodness, someone’s gotta do it.

Crary Chicken– Now how can you joke about a chicken you choke?  Oh, never mind.

A BB gun with a kick?  This isn’t your parent’s Daisy Red Ryder anymore, son.  Say hello to your little friend.  The Echo 134 Minigun has a 7,000 round magazine and powered by a 12 volt motorcycle battery the beast can spit out 3,000 to 6,000 BBs per minute, the manufacturer claims.  Yeah, it tears up anything in its path from squirrels to neighboring kids in trees.  Watch those bullies scatter.  At $3,500, it’s probably the most expensive BB gun on the planet, too.

Earthquakes and falling towers and victims are fun?  Who knew.

Meet The Sunshine Family:  Stephie, Steve, and Baby Sweets.  No, we’re not making that up.  A marriage made in Humboldt, the (Hippie?  New Age?  Yuppie?  Trustafarian?  Scientologist?) family comes complete with their own back-to-the land craft store, spinning loom, pottery wheel, turtleneck sweaters, and spooky eyes.  Dank plants optional.

The question is, can you ride it?

Jobs, debates, SuperPACs and voter disenfranchisement

The promised land, bought by the 1%

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

Today the Western peoples are experiencing the destruction of their well being that is comparable to what the one percent in Rome imposed on Roman citizens and conquered peoples. Here is how John Williams (shadowstats.com, 9-12-12) phrases the wipeout of Americans’ hopes:

“Consumers simply cannot make ends meet. Inflation-adjusted, or real, median household income declined for the fourth-straight year, plunging to its lowest level since 1995. Deflated by the CPI-U, the 2011 reading actually stood below levels seen in the late-1960s and early-1970s.”

“At the same time, despite the ongoing nature of the economic and systemic-solvency crises, and the effects of the 2008 financial panic, income dispersion—the movement of income away from the middle towards both high- and low-level extremes—has hit a record high, instead of moderating, as might be expected during periods of financial distress. Extremes in income dispersion usually foreshadow financial-market and economic calamities. With the current circumstance at a record extreme, and well above levels estimated to have prevailed before the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression, increasingly difficult times are likely for the next several years.”

This chart shows where the median household income of the US Superpower, the “indispensable people,” stands at the culmination of 2011. Americans are as well off as they were in 1967-68. Most americans cannot pay for fighting multi-trillion dollar wars for 11 years, bailout trillions of dollars in uncovered casino bets by Wall Street, have their middle class jobs sent abroad by corporations, and still expect to have higher personal incomes.

Apparently, Americans are the first people in history who are so idealistic, or so thoroughly brainwashed, that they prefer to pay for wars and bail out banks than to make their mortgage payments and help their children with student loan debt.

The federal court in Germany has ruled that Germans are to be just as idealistic as Americans. The federal court has produced a ruling that it is OK for the EU to require German citizens to provide $190 billion to pay off the private banks who lent too much money to Greece.

In exchange for paying off the banks for Greece, the Greek people are to be driven into poverty and hopelessness. Pensions are cut, taxes are raised, employment is cut, social services are curtailed, prices of utilities are raised. The Greek people are to be destroyed in order that the private European banks do not lose money on their bad loans.

In the West the Revolution From Above has succeeded. The peoples are re-enserfed. The promised land is a promised land for the one percent.

*************

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

It’s Inequality, Stupid

By Robert Reich
RobertReich.org

The most troubling economic trend facing America this Labor Day is the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the very top – among a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people – and
the steady decline of the great American middle class.

Inequality in America is at record levels.  The 400 richest Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together.

Republicans claim the rich are job creators.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In order to create jobs, businesses need customers.  But the rich spend only a small fraction of what they earn.  They park most of it wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

The real job creators are the vast middle class, whose spending drives the economy and creates jobs.

But as the middle class’s share of total income continues to drop, it cannot spend as much as before.  Nor can most Americans borrow as they did before the crash of 2008 — borrowing that temporarily masked their declining purchasing power.

As a result, businesses are reluctant to hire.  This is the main reason why the recovery has been so anemic.

As wealth and income rise to the top, moreover, so does political power.  The rich are able to entrench themselves by lowering their taxes, gaining special tax breaks (such as the “carried interest” loophole allowing private equity and hedge fund managers to treat their incomes as capital gains), and ensuring a steady flow of corporate welfare to their businesses (special breaks for oil and gas, big agriculture, big insurance, Big Pharma, and, of course, Wall Street).

All of this squeezes public budgets, corrupts government, and undermines our democracy.  The issue isn’t the size of our government; it’s who our government is for.  It has become less responsive to the needs of most citizens and more to the demands of a comparative few.

The Republican response – as we saw dramatically articulated this past week in Tampa – is to further reduce taxes on the rich, defund programs for the poor, fight unions, allow the median wage to continue to fall, and oppose any limits on campaign contributions or spending.

It does not take a great deal of brainpower to understand this strategy will lead to an even more lopsided economy, more entrenched wealth, and more corrupt democracy. 

The question of the moment is whether next week President Obama will make a bold and powerful rejoinder.  If he and the Democratic Party stand for anything, it must be to reverse this disastrous trend.

The Jobs Report and the Election

President Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention was long on uplifting rhetoric but short on specifics for what he’ll do if reelected to reignite the American economy. 

Yet today’s jobs report provides a troubling reminder that the economy is still in bad shape.  Employers added only 96,000 nonfarm jobs in August.  True, the unemployment rate fell to 8.1% from July’s 8.3%, but the size of the workforce continued to drop according to a Labor Department report Friday.

Unfortunately for the President — and the rest of us — jobs gains have averaged only 94,000 over the last three months.  That’s down from an average of 95,000 in the second quarter.  And well below the average gain of 225,000 in the first quarter of the year.  And compared to last year, the trend is still in the wrong direction: a monthly average gain of 139,000 this year compared to last year’s average monthly gain of 153,000. 

Look, I desperately want Obama to win.  But the one thing his speech lacked was the one thing that was the most important for him to offer — a plan for how to get the economy out of the doldrums.

Last week Mitt Romney offered only the standard Republican bromides: cut taxes on the rich, cut spending on programs everyone else depends on, and deregulate.  They didn’t work for George W. Bush and there’s no reason to expect they’ll work again.

But the President could have offered more than the rejoinder he did — suggesting, even in broad strokes, what he’ll do in his second term to get the economy moving again.  At least he might have identified the scourge of inequality as a culprit, for example, pointing out, as he did last December, that the economy can’t advance when so much income and wealth are concentrated at the top that the vast middle class doesn’t have the purchasing power to get it back on track. 

Undeniably, we have more jobs today than we did at the trough of the Great Recession in 2009.  But the recovery has been anemic — and it appears to be slowing.  We’re better off than we were then, but we’re not as well off as we need to be by a long shot.

* * * * * * * * *

The Humboldt Sentinel greatly appreciates Mr. Reich allowing us to share his column with our readers.  His previous column can be found here.

Mr. Reich is a political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University.

He has been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He is chairman of Common Cause.

Time Magazine named Mr. Reich one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.”

His latest e-book, “Beyond Outrage” is now available in paperback.

Please visit Mr. Reich at RobertReich.org to see his other outstanding essays and videos concerning the nation’s economy and politics.

(Images by the Humboldt Sentinel.  Posted by Skippy Massey)

With no political party to represent the people, America is doomed

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

Does anyone remember when National Public Radio was an independent voice?

During the 1980s NPR was continually on the case of the Reagan administration. NPR certainly had a Democratic slant, and a lot of its reporting about the Reagan administration was one-sided. Yet, NPR was an independent voice, and it sometimes got things correct.

In the 21st century that voice has disappeared, which was the intention of the George W. Bush regime. Bush put a Republican woman in charge who made it clear to NPR producers and show hosts that the federal part of their funding was at risk.

Money often over-rules principle, and when corporations added their really big money NPR collapsed. Today the local stations still pretend to be funded by listeners, but if you have noticed, as I have, there are now a large number of corporate advertisements, disguised in the traditional terms “with support from . . .”  If you are not listening to classical music, you are listening to corporate advertisements.

Today the entire “mainstream media” is closed to truth-tellers. The US media is Washington’s propaganda ministry. The US media has only one function–to lie for Washington.

What reminded me of NPR’s surrender was NPR’s August 31 report with its two regular talking voice political pundits discussing the Republican Convention and Romney’s speech. After witnessing the Republicans at their nominating convention at Tampa violate all their own rules and ride roughshod over the Ron Paul delegates, one expected some discussion of the Republican Party’s refusal to allow Ron Paul to be placed in nomination or his delegate account to be announced.

The operative question was obvious: How can the American people trust the Republicans with the awesome power of the executive branch when the Republican Party just finished demonstrating for all to see its Stalinist qualities by crushing the anti-war, anti-police state wing of its party?

The authoritarianism was gratuitous. Romney had a sufficient number of delegates to be nominated. It would have cost Romney nothing to follow the rules and allow Ron Paul to be placed in nomination and his delegate numbers to be reported. Instead, Romney wrote off the liberty contingent of the Republican Party. The Brownshirts demonstrated their power.

The last Republican who wrote off a chunk of his own party was Barry Goldwater, and he went down to crushing defeat. Makes one wonder if the Republicans are relying on those electronic voting machines programed with proprietary Republican software that leave no paper trail. The Democrats have acquiesced to Republican election theft. There have been numerous cases where exit polls indicate that voters chose a different candidate than the one chosen by the Republican programmed voting machines.

One would have thought that NPR and its pundits would have found the parallel with Goldwater worth comment, but the suppression of the Ron Paul delegates was already down the memory hole.

One would also have thought that NPR and its pundits would have found Clint Eastwood’s speech a fascinating topic of discussion. Eastwood had a Republican National Committee approved speech, but discarded it. Instead, Eastwood stood beside an empty chair and pretended to be talking to Obama, but it could just as well have been Romney in the chair. By pretending to be talking to Obama, Eastwood made his points without eliciting boos from the Republican audience.

Not many in the Republican audience caught on, but there were some stony faces when Eastwood said “I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there are 23 million unemployed people in this country.”  More stony Republican faces when Eastwood showed his opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars and asks the chair, “why don’t you just bring them [the troops] home tomorrow morning?”  Those who thought he was digging at Obama cheered; those who realized he was criticizing hardline Republican positions were displeased.

But NPR and the US media in general are uncomfortable with such real news as a political party being told off by one of its heroes and a political party sufficiently stupid to repeat Barry Goldwater’s mistake. The establishment might complain. The money might dry up or employees be fired for permitting such a story to be aired. The Democrats lost their independent financing when jobs offshoring destroyed the unions. There are no longer countervailing powers to Wall Street and the corporations, which have been endowed by the Republican US Supreme Court with First Amendment rights to purchase US elections and placed in charge of the US Treasury, the regulatory agencies and the Federal Reserve.

In Tampa the Republicans wrote off the Ron Paul vote, because they are enamored of power and its gratuitous demonstration. Can people so desirous of power and the thrill of its use be trusted to let go of power when they lose the next election? There are enough presidential executive orders and national security orders, even some signed by the Democrat Obama, that any president can assert them and refuse to face election.

Once Rome accepted Julius Caesar’s coup, the Roman Republic was gone. Those who tried to save the Roman Republic by assassinating Caesar failed, because the majority of the legions had gone over to the dictatorship, which promised them more money than the Republic had. Caesar’s name became the title for Rome’s dictators.

In the US, even your friendly local police have gone over to dictatorship.  And they are armed with its tools. A friend, a competitive shooter for accuracy, told me that as he left his gun club on August 27, a local sheriff department entered in a military armored vehicle, something one would expect to see on a battlefield, followed by a large sheriff’s department truck full of military equipment. He says that the gun club allows local police to use the club’s facilities so that club members are not stopped and harassed about their firearms as they go to and from the club. He reports that the police will line up 30 abreast, with automatic weapons, not allowed to club members, and fire at one target, with 30 police emptying 30-round magazines at the same target.

He once asked our protectors if they were practicing for some competition. The answer was, “No, we are preparing to control the outcome when there is trouble.”

Control is the operative word.  We have seen for a number of years now that the Republican Party is power-addicted. Remember when the Bush administration fired the US Attorneys who refused the order to indict only Democrats? Remember the Republican Party’s transparent frame-up of popular Alabama Democratic governor Don Siegelman?  Evidence indicates that the Republican operative Karl Rove took advantage of a Republican federal judge, vulnerable according to news reports to corruption charges, and a compliant Republican US attorney in Alabama to railroad Governor Siegelman.  The message to Democrats was: if you get elected in our Southern Territory, we will get you.

But never fear, we have “freedom and democracy.” George W. Bush told us so himself.

The weak, chicken-hearted Obama administration has not commuted Siegelman’s outrageous sentence. The inability of the Democrats to stand up for their own members and their own principles is the best indication we have that Republican tyranny will prevail.

It didn’t take Caesar George W. Bush 10 minutes to wipe out the prison sentence of vice president Dick Cheney’s chief aid for revealing the identity of a CIA operative, a felony under US law. But the Obama Justice (sic) Department supports Karl Rove’s destruction of one of its most popular governors.

It was the German left-wing’s weak opposition to the National Socialists that gave the world Hitler.

The Republican Party has become the Party of Hate. Decades of frustration have made Republicans mean. They object to everything that has happened since the Great Depression in the 1930s to make the US a more just and humane society.

The Republican Party wants power so that it can smash all vestiges of regulation and welfare and all those of whom Republicans disapprove:  the poor, the minorities, liberals,  the imagined “foreign enemies,” war protestors and others who challenge authority, those American weaklings who have compassion for the unfortunate, the US Constitution, that pinko-liberal-commie document that coddles criminals, illegal aliens, and terrorists, and all dissenters from the policy of enriching the one percent at the expense of the 99 percent.

Above all else, the Republicans want to turn Social Security and Medicare into profit centers for private corporations.

Would the world be surprised if Republicans donned brown shirts?  America has declared itself to be “the indispensable nation,” justifying its hegemony over the world.  Any country that does not submit to Washington is “a foe.” The neoconservative propaganda that America is the indispensable nation with a right to world hegemony sounds a lot like “Deutschland uber alles.”

A decade ago the Bush regime demonstrated that it could over-ride US statutory law, the US Constitution, and the constitutional separation of powers in order to concentrate unaccountable power in the office of the president.

The Democrats, when they gained control of Congress in the mid-term elections, did nothing about the unprecedented legal and constitutional crimes of George W. Bush. The Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives, who could easily have impeached George W. Bush for his obvious crimes against US law and the US Constitution, announced that “impeachment is off the table.” Money was more important to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi than the rule of law.

When a people have no political party that represents them, they are doomed to tyranny.

And to war.

Russia and China are in the way of Washington’s hegemony.  Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, has declared Russia to be “our number one geopolitical foe” for opposing Washington’s plans to overthrow by violence the Syrian government. Why is overthrowing the Syrian government so advantageous to Washington that Romney in a fit of pique recklessly brought the United States into direct confrontation with Russia?

Arrogance and hubris lead to wars. Do Americans really want a person as president who is so reckless as to gratuitously declare a large nuclear-armed country to be our number one enemy? The American and Israeli trained Georgian army did not last an hour when the former Soviet republic foolishly, on Washington’s encouragement, provoked the Russian bear.

Meanwhile the Obama regime, concerned with China’s rapid economic rise, has indicated that it thinks China is the number one enemy. The Obama regime has forgot that China, when a primitive, backward country, fought the US to a stalemate in Korea more than a half century ago.

The Obama regime has announced that the US Navy is being repositioned to the Eastern Pacific, that the US regards the South China Sea as America’s national interest, and that new naval, air, and troop bases are being established in the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere in the region. The purpose of these bases is to block China’s access to energy and raw materials, which is what Washington did to Japan in the 1930s.

Are Americans aware that the hubris and idiocy of their political leaders have now saddled Americans with the burden of two number one enemies, both well equipped with armies and nuclear weapons?  Only Iran can be happy about this as it moves Iran off the front burner.

Washington is putting its forward military bases in place, and the propaganda war is being cranked up. The subservient British press was quick to fall in line with Washington. A British reader of my column reports that the Guardian/Observer and New Statesman are at Putin’s throat:  “Every day this week we’ve had Russia/Putin hate stories. Headlines such as ‘medieval dictatorship’ as we saw in last Sunday’s Observer [August 26] are common. In this week’s New Statesman we have a front page picture of Putin with the headline ‘Putin’s reign of terror.’ They’ve got Putin with a crown on his head and dressed as a Tsar-like figure. It’s a relentless information battlefield assault on Russia.”

Another line of Washington’s attack on Russia is Washington’s covert backing of Chechnya terrorist groups in the Caucasus and funding of front groups in Russia for protest and terrorist organizations. Allegations of corruption and stolen elections come primarily from Washington-funded groups operating in Russia. See http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaeda-blitzkrieg-wests-terror-battalions-eye-russia-next/  and  http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/08/bombshell-us-neo-cons-state-department.html  Through these methods, Washington hopes to destabilize the Russian government and to isolate it internationally in order to remove a barrier to Washington’s hegemony.

Two of Romney’s right-wing neoconservative advisors said that Romney as president would “confront Moscow on its poor record on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”  The western media will not comment on the irony of these propagandistic allegations against Russia issuing from the US, the country that has destroyed habeas corpus and due process protections of the accused, tortured detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and its own statutory law, kidnaps, tortures, and assassinates foreign nationals as well as its own citizens, supports terrorism against Libya, Syria, Iran, and Russia, runs roughshod over international law, never submitting to law itself but using law as a weapon against governments that it has demonized, while it carries on military operations against seven Muslim countries without a declaration of war.

The Nuremberg Trials of Germans after World War II established that naked aggression is a war crime. Naked aggression, renamed by Washington, “preemptive war,” has become the operative principle of US foreign policy.

As Putin remarked, Washington is guilty of the crimes of which it accuses others, but Washington permits all things to “the indispensable nation.”

Amerika uber alles!

*************

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Where Social Darwinism Meets Theocracy

Dr. Joseph A. Palermo

Joseph A. Palermo.com

At the 1988 Republican National Convention, Vice President George H.W. Bush talked about a “kinder and gentler” America. 

Four years later Patrick Buchanan scared the hell out of the country by declaring a “culture war.”  In 2000 George W. Bush gave us “compassionate conservatism.” 

The Bush stratagems were cunning responses to focus groups and public opinion polls that show beating up on the poor and the weakest among us can make people feel uncomfortable.  In 2012 we can expect more culture war rhetoric, but it will be clouded by the soothing sounds of reasonableness and moderation.

The trick thus far for the Romney-Ryan ticket has been to pretend to want to “save” Medicare even while putting forth Ryan’s “voucher” plan that would end Medicare, not only “as we know it,” but end Medicare PERIOD.  The lies and distortions about their schemes for privatizing Medicare (which have been swirling around Republican circles for decades) are the 2012 election’s equivalent of “kinder and gentler” and “compassionate conservatism”: empty slogans designed to beguile voters.

What we’ll hear all week at the RNC are expressions of an ideological witch’s brew, a fusion of Ayn Rand’s Social Darwinism with the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s vision of an American Theocracy.  Rand glorified sociopaths.  Falwell believed the Bible foretold a nuclear Armageddon.  They’ve got no choice but to pander to their Christian evangelical base as well as to their corporate overlords; a bone goes to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council while a juicier chunk of meat will go to the Koch brothers.

The Romney-Ryan Republicans are giving us Rand’s Social Darwinist economic prescriptions, which hold that if an individual lacks the wherewithal to thrive in a “free” capitalist society that person deserves to die in a gutter somewhere, merged with Falwell’s social diktats banning abortion (even in cases of rape and incest), gay bashing, a militarized foreign policy, and a continuation of the “War on Drugs.”

If they advocated only the Randian side of the equation there at least would be no restrictions on abortion, gays could go their merry way, and everybody could smoke weed.  Things like school prayer, the 10 Commandments in public buildings, abstinence-only sex “education” would be laughed out of court.  Conversely, if they gave us a truly “Christian” set of governing principles, (as opposed to the Falwell strain), omitting the Randian Social Darwinism, we’d at least get a government that cared a little bit about the poor, took care of the weak, and might not be so quick to go to war.

As it stands, we get the Social Darwinism without the libertarianism, and the religious strictures on individual behavior without the compassion for the poor and the valuing of peace. In other words, we get the worst of both ideologies.

This epistemological schizophrenia is secular yet religious, amoral yet moralizing.

And lo and behold!  The Republicans’ idée fixe just happens to serve perfectly the interests of the ruling corporate elite in American society!  It’s a menu of ideas that give the 1 percent everything it wants. (The Supreme Court’s ruling that money equals speech and corporations deserve stronger Constitutional safeguards than people codify this worldview.)

It’s as though with every minute of right-wing talk radio, every 24-hour news cycle at Fox, and every spittle of words strung together by Romney, Huckabee, Priebus, Ryan, and the rest of them at the convention, they have set out to prove to the world that power equals knowledge, and the ideas that are the most widely disseminated in any society are those that best serve the narrow class interests of its ruling elite.

It’s kind of funny that a tropical storm is heading toward Tampa right when the GOP is kicking off its lovefest.  Since about 1900 the American people have looked to the federal government for help when their locales are hit with natural disasters — you know, the government we’re all supposed to despise.

* * * * * * * * *

The Humboldt Sentinel appreciates Dr. Palermo kindly sharing his article with our readers.  Images were added by the Sentinel staff.

Before earning a Master’s degree and Doctorate in History from Cornell University, Professor Palermo completed Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master’s degree in History from San Jose State University.  He is an Associate Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento.

Professor Palermo’s most recent book is The Eighties (Pearson 2012).  He has also written two other books: In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Columbia, 2001); and Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism (Pearson, 2008).

 

His expertise includes the 1980s; political history; presidential politics and war powers; social movements of the 20th century; the 1960s; and the history of American foreign policy. Professor Palermo has also written articles for anthologies on the life of Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. in The Human Tradition in America Since 1945 (Scholarly Resources Press, 2003); and on the Watergate scandal in Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon (CQ Press, 2004).

 

Dr. Palermo currently writes for the Huffington Post, LA Progressive, and other publications.  His previous column for the Humboldt Sentinel was Welcome to the New Normal.

 

If you’d like to see more articles by Joseph Palermo, please visit Dr. Palermo’s website.

 

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

Pussy Riot used as propaganda tools by US-funded front groups

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

My heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law.

You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington’s intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran.

By intentionally offending religious worshipers–which would be a hate crime in the US and its European, Canadian, and British puppet states–the women violated a statutory Russian law.

Prior to the women’s trial, Russian President Putin expressed his opinion that the women should not be harshly punished. Taking the cue from Putin, the judge gave the women, deceived and betrayed by the amerikan-financed NGOs, two years instead of seven years.

The women were not waterboarded, raped, or forced to sign false confessions, all well-established practices of amerikan “justice.”

The chances were good that after six months Putin would see that the women are released. But, of course, that would not serve the propaganda of the Amerikan Empire. The instructions to the Washington-financed fifth column in Russia will be to make any government leniency for Pussy Riot impossible.

Washington-organized protests, riots, property damage, assaults on state and religious images by Washington’s Russian dupes can make it impossible for Putin to stand up to nationalist opinion and commute the sentences of the Pussy Riot women.

Distrust of the Russian government and dissension within Russia are what Washington wants. As Washington continues to murder vast numbers of people around the globe, Washington will point its finger at the fate of Pussy Riot. The western bought-and-paid-for presstitute media will focus on Russia’s evil, not on the evil of Washington, London, and the EU puppet states who are slaughtering Muslims by the bucket-full.

The disparity between human rights in the west and in the east is astonishing. When a Chinese trouble-maker sought protection from Washington, the Chinese “authoritarian” government allowed the person to leave for America. But when Julian Assange, who, unlike the presstitute western media, actually provides truthful information for the western peoples, was granted political asylum by Ecuador, Great (sic) Britain, bowing to the country’s amerikan master, refused the obligatory free passage from the UK.

The UK government, unlike the Chinese government, doesn’t mind violating international law, because it will be paid buckets of money by Washington for being a pariah state.

As Karl Marx said, money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold: government, honor, morality, the writing of history, legality. Nothing is immune to purchase. This development of capitalism has reached the highest stage in the US and its puppet states, the governments of which sell out the interest of their peoples in order to please Washington and be made rich, like Tony Blair’s $35 million. Sending their citizens to fight for Washington’s empire in distant parts of the world is the service for which the utterly corrupt European politicians are paid. Despite the wondrous entity known as European Democracy, the European and British peoples are unable to do anything about their misuse in Washington’s interest. This is a new form of slavery. If a country is an amerikan ally, its people are amerikan slaves.

The international attention focused on Pussy Riot, an obscure rock group which apparently has no recordings on the market, demonstrates the complicity of the Western media in US propaganda. Pussy Riot is not the Beatles of the 1960s. I doubt that most of the young people demonstrating in favor of Pussy Riot had ever before heard of the group or have any understanding of how they are being manipulated.

There are so many more important issues on which media attention should be focused. There is Bradley Manning’s illegal detention and torture by the US government. Manning has already been in prison without trial for longer than Pussy Riot’s sentence!

What is Manning’s “crime.” No one knows. Washington accuses him of doing his duty under the US Military Code and revealing the war crime of the “thrill killing” of civilians by US military personnel and of releasing documents to WikiLeaks revealing the mendacity of the US government. In other words, Manning is a hero, and so off he is dragged to the torture chamber.

WikiLeaks Julian Assange, accused of posting on the Internet the leaked documents, is confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London. The British “human rights” regime refuses to abide by international law and allow Assange, who has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, safe passage. Everyone familiar with international law knows that asylum takes precedence over the other legal claims, especially specious ones.

Washington has armed and financed outsiders to destroy Syria and to break the country up into warring factions. Instead of protesting this heinous act by Washington, the world protests the Syrian government for resisting its overthrow by Washington. I don’t think that even George Orwell imagined that the peoples of the world were this utterly stupid.

In “freedom and democracy” amerika, President Obama refuses to obey a federal court order to cease and desist from violating the clear, unambiguous Constitutional rights of US citizens. Instead, the President of the United States defies the court’s order and continues to hold US citizens in indefinite detention, and there is no movement to impeach this tyrant. To the contrary, amerika is presented as the example of democracy to the world.

Where are the protests?

*************

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Is Washington deaf as well as criminal?

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

The morons who rule the American sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the American “superpower” only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply.

Israel is a tiny insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid Americans. It has no power except what its american protector provides. Yet, despite Israel’s insignificance, it rules Washington.

When a resolution introduced by the Israel Lobby is delivered to Congress, it passes unanimously. If Israel wants war, Israel gets its wish. When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanon and is damned by the hundred plus UN resolutions passed against Israel’s criminal actions, the US bails Israel out of trouble with its veto.

The power that tiny Israel exercises over the “worlds’s only superpower” is unique in history. Tens of millions of “christians” bow down to this power, reinforcing it, moved by the exhortations of their “christian” ministers.

Netanyahu lusts for war against Iran. He strikes out against all who oppose his war lust. Recently, he called Israel’s top generals “pussies” for warning against a war with Iran. He regards former Israeli prime ministers and former heads of the Israeli intelligence service as traitors for opposing his determination to attack Iran. He has denounced America’s servile President Obama and America’s top military leader for being “soft on Iran.” The latest poll in Israel shows that a solid majority of the Israelis are opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran. But Netanyahu is uninterested in the opinion of Israeli citizens. He has Washington watching his back, so he is war mad. It is a mystery why Israelis put Netanyahu in public office instead of in an insane asylum.

Netanyahu is not alone. He has the American neoconservatives in his corner. The american neoconservatives are as crazed as Netanyahu. They believe in nuclear war and are itching to nuke some Muslim country and then get on to nuking Russia and China. It is amazing that no more than two or three dozen people have the fate of the entire world in their hands.

The Democratic Party is helpless before them.

The Republican Party is their vehicle.

The Russians, watching Netanyahu push Washington toward dangerous confrontations keep raising their voices about the danger of nuclear war.

On May 17 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned the West against launching “hasty wars,” which could result “although I do not want to scare anyone” in “the use of a nuclear weapon.”

On November 30 of last year the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia warned of nuclear war with NATO. General Nikolai Makarov said that NATO’s eastward expansion meant that the risk of Russia coming into conflict with NATO had “risen sharply.” General Makarov said, “I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.”

Here is Russian president Medvedev (currently the prime minister) describing the steps toward nuclear war that Russia has taken pushed by the crazed warmongers in Washington wallowing in their insane hubris:

With regard to the american missile bases on Russia’s borders, “I have made the following decisions. First, I am instructing the Defense Ministry to immediately put the missile attack early warning radar station in Kaliningrad on combat alert.

Second, protective cover of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons will be reinforced as a priority measure under the program to develop our air and space defenses.

Third, the new strategic ballistic missiles commissioned by the Strategic Missile Forces and the Navy will be equipped with advanced missile defense penetration systems and new highly-effective warheads.

Fourth, I have instructed the Armed Forces to draw up measures for disabling missile defense system data and guidance systems. These measures will be adequate, effective, and low-cost.

Fifth, if the above measures prove insufficient, the Russian Federation will deploy modern offensive weapon systems in the west and south of the country, ensuring our ability to take out any part of the US missile defense system in Europe. One step in this process will be to deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad Region.

Other measures to counter the European missile defense system will be drawn up and implemented as necessary. Furthermore, if the situation continues to develop not to Russia’s favor, we reserve the right to discontinue further disarmament and arms control measures.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said, as politely as possible, that the US seeks to enslave the world, that the US seeks vassals, not allies, that the US seeks to rule the world and that the US is a parasite on the world economy. It would be difficult for an informed person to take exception with Putin’s statements.

Putin told the politicians in Washington and Western and Eastern European capitals that surrounding Russia with anti-ballistic missiles “raises the specter of nuclear war in Europe.” Putin said that the Russian response is to point nuclear armed cruise missiles, which cannot be intercepted by anti-ballistic missiles, at the US missile bases and at European capitals. The American move, Putin said, “could trigger nuclear war.”

Putin has been trying to wake up the American puppet states in Europe at least since February 13, 2007. At the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin said that the unipolar world that Washington was striving to achieve under its banner, “is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.”

That has certainly happened to the US which now has a police state as thorough-going as Nazi Germany. And even better armed: http://rt.com/usa/news/dhs-ammo-rounds-security-560/print/

Putin went on to tell his European audience that in Russia, “we are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.” Instead, Putin said, “we are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basis principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, Who likes this? Who is happy about this?”

People are not happy, Putin said, because they don’t feel safe. Not to feel safe “is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this–no one feels safe!” The result, Putin said, is “an arms race.”

Putin politely unbraided the Italian defense minister, a person owned by Washington, for suggesting that NATO or the EU could take the place of the UN in justifying the use of force against sovereign countries. Putin took exception to the idea that Washington could use its puppet organization or its puppet states to legitimize an act of US aggression. Putin stated flatly: “The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN.”

Putin went on to discuss the forked tongue of Washington. Reagan and Gorbachev had firm agreements, but Reagan’s successors put “frontline forces on our borders. . . . The stones and concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall have long been distributed as souvenirs. But we should not forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice – one that was also made by our people, the people of Russia – a choice in favor of democracy, freedom, openness and a sincere partnership with all the members of the big European family. And now they are trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us – these walls may be virtual but they are nevertheless dividing ones that cut through our continent. And is it possible that we will once again require many years and decades, as well as several generations of politicians, to dissemble and dismantle these new walls.”

Putin’s speech of more than 6 years ago shows that he has Washington’s number. Washington is The Great Pretender, pretending to respect human rights while Washington slaughters Muslims in seven countries on the basis of lies and fabricated intelligence. The american people, “the indispensable people,” support this murderous policy. Washington uses the status of the dollar as reserve currency to exclude countries that do not do Washington’s bidding from the international clearing system.

Washington, awash in hubris like Napoleon and Hitler before they marched off into Russia, has turned a deaf, dumb, and blind ear to Putin during the entirety of the 21st century. Speaking on May 10, 2006, Putin said: “We are aware of what is gong on in the world. Comrade wolf [the US] knows whom to eat, he eats without listening, and he’s clearly not going to listen to anyone.”

“Where,” Putin asked, is Washington’s “pathos about protecting human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue its own interests?” For Washington, “everything is allowed, there are no restrictions whatsoever.”

China also has caught on. Now the hubris that drives Washington toward world hegemony confronts two massive nuclear powers. Will the criminal gang in Washington drive the world to nuclear extinction?

Washington, thinking that it owns the world, has imposed more unilateral sanctions on Iran without any basis in any recognized law. The imposed sanctions are nothing but Washington’s assertion that its might is right.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Washington could stick its sanctions up its ass. “We consider efforts to impose internal American legislation on the entire world completely unacceptable.”

Washington will do what it can to assassinate Putin and effect regime change through the Russian “opposition” that Washington funds. Failing that, Washington’s pursuit of world hegemony has run up against a brick wall. If the fools in Washington with their hubris-inflated egos don’t back off, that mushroom cloud they have been warning about will indeed blossom over Washington.

*************

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

By Ralph Nader

If you would like to read other articles by Ralph Nader, please visit Nader.Org

If the Democrats in Congress were all drinking water from the same faucet, there might be a clue to their chronic fear of the craven and cruel corporatist Republicans who dominate them.

But they don’t, so we have to ask why their fear, defeatism, and cowering behavior continues in the face of the outrageous GOP actions as the November election approaches.

The explanations go back some years.  The Democrats have long receded from the Harry Truman days of “give ‘em hell, Harry”.  But their political castration occurred in the late seventies when the Democrats were persuaded by one of their own, Congressman Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), to start aggressively bidding for corporate campaign cash.

Victory in politics often goes to those who have the most energy and decisiveness, however wrongheaded.  The Republicans have won these races for years.  To paraphrase author and lapsed Republican, Kevin Phillips, the Republicans go for the jugular, while the Democrats go for the capillaries.

The Democrats are tortured daily by Republican leaders, Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor but they do not go into these politicians’ backyards in Virginia and Ohio to expose the unpopular agendas pitched by these Wall Street puppets.

One would think that politicians who side with big corporations would be politically vulnerable for endangering both America and the American people.  These corrupt politicians promote corporate tax loopholes and side with insurance and drug companies on costly health care proposals.  They defend the corporate polluters on their unsafe workplaces, dirty air, water and contaminated food, push for more deficit spending in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, neglect Main Street based public works-repair-America-jobs programs, support high-interest student loans, cover for oil industry greed at the pump, and are hell-bent on taking the federal cops off the corporate crime beats.

Instead, Democrats let Boehner and Cantor peddle their unrebutted torrents of falsehoods to the voters in their districts.  I’ll bet their constituents would not like their representatives regularly kowtowing to harmful fat cat lobbyists.

The Democrats should be landsliding the worst Republican Party in history.  Talk about extremists.  There are virtually no moderate or liberal Republicans left in Congress after being driven out by their own party hard-liners.  So this Republican Party, united over their extremism, should be very easy to challenge.

It is not happening.  Though rolling in promotional capability, the Democrats still have not come up with a clear list of the hundreds of Republican disastrous proposals – passed in the House or proposed.  These wrongful Republican initiatives should be boiled down to their vicious essence for public diffusion.  Instead, the blue dog Democrats are constantly, and with impunity, giving Republicans cover –recently 17 Democrats supported a rash political move by Representatives Boehner, Cantor and Issa in citing Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress.

It is also remarkable how the Democrats keep letting the Senate Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell intone, day after day, the “American people” want, do not want, demand, oppose this and that, to camouflage his plutocratic programs.

In December 2010, with 99 senators agreeing to unanimous consent to pass the auto safety legislation, the Democrats let one Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) sink it. President Obama, ready to sign this life-saving bill, declined to use his powers of persuasion on Coburn, his avowed close friend in the Senate.

It is the Democrats’ defeatism that is the most self-corrosive.  Veteran Democratic legislators openly tell those who ask that they don’t think the party will regain control of the House in the November election though, they add, the Republicans have a terrible anti-people record.

Politics are about credibly answering the question “whose side are you on and whose side is your opponent on?”  That means drawing a bright line between the two parties.  Unfortunately, on military and foreign policy there isn’t much of a difference.  So the bright line will have to be on domestic issues.

Here the president, the omnipresent political consulting firms looking for their 15 percent cut on insipid political television spots, and the frenzied focus on raising evermore money contingent on quid pro quo understandings with avaricious donors, combine to form a lethal mix of strategic stupor, message staleness (“to restore the middle class”) and time-wasting paralysis.

Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. and two dozen progressive co-sponsors are behind a bill called “Catching Up To 1968 Act of 2012” (H.R. 5901).  This would raise the federal minimum wage, depleted by inflation over the years, from $7.25 to $10.00, thereby helping thirty million workers and boosting the recessionary economy.  Neither the Democratic leadership nor President Obama have come out in support of such popular (70 percent in the polls) legislation that historically has been identified with the Democratic Party since the first minimum wage law in 1938.

Senior staffers in the House complain on behalf of their bosses that the President does not communicate with them.  “Boehner will give us nothing,” was one staffer’s inadvertent summing up of the party’s defeatism.  Imagine Gingrich talking in that supplicant manner when he was in the House minority.  He toppled House Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.) and took control of the House of Representatives in 1994.

Most of the elected Democrats seem interested in themselves and less so with their party’s victory and mission for America.  Attendance at the regular meetings of the House Democratic Caucus is way down.  President Obama operates as if he cares only about numero uno, even though not regaining the House and keeping the Senate will freeze a second term into acrimony and inaction.

There are plenty of bright-line issues for the Democrats.  Get tough on Wall Street and corporate crime, protect pensions, end the wars, tax the corporate and wealthy tax-escapees, launch community-based public works programs, provide full Medicare for all, expand health and safety programs, to name a few.

Perhaps one story is most telling: President Obama has been more reticent in his nomination of federal judges than his predecessors.  In meetings between outside support groups and White House-Justice Department staff, the nominees hailing from the ranks of labor and public interest lawyers, as well as law professors, are received coolly.  The Obama staff want what they call “stealth candidates,” – that is corporate lawyers with some enlightened pro bono tendencies.  Why directly take on the Republicans for the future of the federal judiciary when you can settle for the corporate status quo?

Who’s fooling whom? The coming days await a new and open jolting push by prominent outside Democrats who fervently want to wrench their party back from the abyss, from its own self-imposed sense of dread before a devastating, self-inflicted November defeat.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Humboldt Sentinel greatly appreciates Mr. Nader allowing us to share his column with our readers.

His biography is extensive.  Mr. Nader is a political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney.  Areas of particular concern to him include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.

Ralph Nader has been called one of America’s most effective social critics.  His documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power galvanizing a population of consumer advocates, citizen activists, and public interest lawyers who in turn have established their own organizations throughout the country.

Since 1966, Nader has been responsible for: at least eight major federal consumer protection laws such as the motor vehicle safety laws, Safe Drinking Water Act;  the launching of federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environment Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Administration; the recall of millions of defective motor vehicles; access to government through the Freedom of Information Act of 1974; and for many lives saved.

In his career as consumer advocate he founded many organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, the Project for Corporate Responsibility and The Multinational Monitor (a monthly magazine).

Mr. Nader’s articles can be seen at his website, Nader.Org.

(Images added by the Humboldt Sentinel.  Posted by Skippy Massey)

It’s that the Prosperity of Big Business Has Become Disconnected from the Well-Being of Most Americans

By Robert Reich
RobertReich.org

President Obama is slamming Mitt Romney for heading companies that were “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs,” while Romney is accusing Obama of being “the real outsourcer-in-chief.”

These are the dog days of summer and the silly season of presidential campaigns.  But can we get real, please?

The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad or even “in-sourcing.”  Most big companies headquartered in America don’t send jobs overseas and don’t bring jobs here from abroad.

That’s because most are no longer really “American” companies.  They’ve become global networks that design, make, buy, and sell things wherever around the world it’s most profitable for them to do so.

As an Apple executive told the New York Times, “we don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”  He might have added “and showing profits big enough to continually increase our share price.”

Forget the debate over outsourcing.  The real question is how to make Americans so competitive that all global companies — whether or not headquartered in the United States — will create good jobs in America.

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States but contracts with over 700,000 workers overseas.  It assembles iPhones in China both because wages are low there and because Apple’s Chinese contractors can quickly mobilize workers from company dorms at almost any hour of the day or night.

But low wages aren’t the major force driving Apple or any other American-based corporate network abroad. The components Apple’s Chinese contractors assemble come from many places around the world with wages as high if not higher than in the United States.

More than a third of what you pay for an iPhone ends up in Japan, because that’s where some of its most advanced components are made. Seventeen percent goes to Germany, whose precision manufacturers pay wages higher than those paid to American manufacturing workers, on average, because German workers are more highly skilled.  Thirteen percent comes from South Korea, whose median wage isn’t far from our own.

Workers in the United States get only about 6 percent of what you pay for an iPhone.  It goes to American designers, lawyers, and financiers, as well as Apple’s top executives.

American-based companies are also doing more of their research and development abroad.  The share of R&D spending going to the foreign subsidiaries of American-based companies rose from 9 percent in 1989 to almost 16 percent in 2009, according to the National Science Foundation.

What’s going on?  Put simply, America isn’t educating enough of our people well enough to get American-based companies to do more of their high-value added work here.

Our K-12 school system isn’t nearly up to what it should be.  American students continue to do poorly in math and science relative to students in other advanced countries.  Japan, Germany, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, and France all top us.

American universities continue to rank high but many are being starved of government funds and are having trouble keeping up.  More and more young Americans and their families can’t afford a college education. China, by contrast, is investing like mad in world-class universities and research centers.

Transportation and communication systems abroad are also becoming better and more reliable.  In case you hadn’t noticed, American roads are congested, our bridges are in disrepair, and our ports are becoming outmoded.

So forget the debate over outsourcing.  The way we get good jobs back is with a national strategy to make Americans more competitive — retooling our schools, getting more of our young people through college or giving them a first-class technical education, remaking our infrastructure, and thereby guaranteeing a large share of Americans add significant value to the global economy.

But big American-based companies aren’t pushing this agenda, despite their huge clout in Washington. They don’t care about making Americans more competitive.  They say they have no obligation to solve America’s problems.

They want lower corporate taxes, lower taxes for their executives, fewer regulations, and less public spending.  And to achieve these goals they maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns.  The Supreme Court even says they’re “people” under the First Amendment, and can contribute as much as they want to political campaigns – even in secret.

The core problem isn’t outsourcing.  It’s that the prosperity of America’s big businesses – which are really global networks that happen to be headquartered here – has become disconnected from the well-being of most Americans.

Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital is no different from any other global corporation — which is exactly why Romney’s so-called “business experience” is irrelevant to the real problems facing most Americans.

Without a government that’s focused on more and better jobs, we’re left with global corporations that don’t give a damn.

* * * * * * * *

The Humboldt Sentinel greatly appreciates Mr. Reich allowing us to share his column with our readers.

Mr. Reich is a political economist, professor, author, and political commentator.  He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.  He was formerly a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University.

He has been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.  He is chairman of Common Cause.

Time Magazine named Mr. Reich one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century.  He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.”  His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.”

Please visit Mr. Reich at RobertReich.org and see his outstanding essays and videos concerning the nation’s economy and politics.

(Posted by Skippy Massey)

Dr. Joseph A Palermo

The measly 69,000 private-sector jobs added last month and the shrinking job count over the past few months illustrate our “new normal.”  At this snail’s pace it will take a couple of decades (assuming there are no new crises) before we get back to the “good old days” of the 2005 unemployment rate.

Combine this with the bipartisan denuding of the public sector in the form of cutbacks and layoffs (mostly of school teachers), and it’s no surprise that we’re in store for a long period of economic insecurity and malaise.

Like Bill Clinton, who normalized Ronald Reagan’s trade, deregulation, anti-trust, and welfare policies, giving them the bipartisan sheen of Washington orthodoxy, Barack Obama has normalized George W. Bush’s Wall Street, education, and “anti-terrorism” policies (among others).

A common narrative circulating among progressives today is that President Obama moved steadily away from our positions because we didn’t stay organized to press him to engage in more bold reforms.  Obama didn’t betray us; we betrayed him by “going home” after the election of 2008 and, in effect, demobilizing the social movement that attempted to counter the authoritarian right-wing surge of the George W. Bush years.

But this argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.  Progressives were ready to fight alongside Obama on all the key policy choices of his first year in office: holding Wall Street banks accountable for fraud; winning a “public option” in the health-care bill; enacting the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would bolster labor unions’ organizing ability; swiftly ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; reasserting the rule of law in anti-terrorism cases; closing Guantanamo; even ridding the U.S. Senate of the filibuster rule that cornered Obama into the absurd position of having to line up supermajorities to get anything passed.

It was unconscionable that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his fellow Senate Republicans abused the filibuster in a time of crisis on purely partisan and ideological grounds to prevent the federal government from working.  But President Obama chose not to deploy his rhetorical skills and use the “bully pulpit” to rally his foot soldiers to beat his opponents in the Senate.  Did he go on television and ask his progressive supporters to hit the streets and demand that Wall Street be held accountable?  Or call for a bigger “stimulus bill”?  Or a “public option”?  Or EFCA?  Or to change the filibuster rule?  Did he travel
to obstructionist senators’ states and make a show of it?

Progressives didn’t expect Obama to do the heavy lifting in Washington without the power of a social movement behind him.  But it was Obama’s many “compromises” with the same people whose policies ruined the economy and destroyed the United States’ reputation that reached a point where his base was no longer “Fired Up and Ready to Go.”  In 2010 the Democrats got walloped largely because Obama failed to keep his base mobilized going into the first midterm election he faced as president.

During his first year in office, Obama’s single biggest catastrophic error was to lose the handle on the Wall Street criminality narrative.  The Obama “brand” was irredeemably tarnished when he coddled and conspired with Wall Street at a time when the electorate wanted justice.  He also botched the narratives on the “stimulus” and health-care bills.  (Now, Bill Clinton is criticizing the Obama campaign for using Romney’s days as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital against him.  According to many big-shot Democrats, Obama’s embrace of Wall Street wasn’t strong enough!)

But another failure that gets little attention was Obama’s education policy.  By allowing his basketball buddy from Chicago, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to continue the George W. Bush education policies under a new name, he showed continuity between his administration and Bush’s that was devastating to a significant part of the Democratic base.  Secretary Duncan kept up the Bush-era teacher bashing even when about 300,000 of them were being handed pink slips.  Not only is teaching a highly feminized public-sector profession but teachers and their unions comprise a vital component of the Democratic base.

Midterm elections are base elections.  Obama and his political geniuses should have known that by denigrating teachers, they were beating down people who walk precincts, phone bank, and lick envelopes for Democratic politicians at the local level.  Their demobilization helped cause the shellacking of 2010 and Obama being reduced to a lame duck.  Organized money defeated organized people in 2010 because so many of the people whom Democrats needed to win had gotten fucked for two years.  Now the president has a much more difficult task to get reelected, because Speaker of the House John Boehner and the House Republicans have been killing him politically ever since.

And then there’s the abject betrayal of Obama’s supporters among civil libertarians who value the rule of law in the nation’s anti-terrorism policies.  Obama has normalized or expanded some of the worst excesses of executive power from the Bush-Cheney years.

It’s now “normal” for a president to assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner against any person deemed a “threat” to the realm: foreign nationals living anywhere in the world; U.S. citizens, their friends and relatives, passers-by, and associates; people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (like at an Afghan wedding party) — all are considered “legitimate” targets for liquidation by the state at the Chief Executive’s whim.  The “kill lists,” the crackdown on whistleblowers like Pfc. Bradley Manning, a flourishing Guantanamo prison, and the National Defense Authorization Act‘s sanctioning of the throwing of U.S. citizens into the federal pen without due process are now normal fixtures of American life.

This new normal, where Wall Street criminals go free and whistleblowers are prosecuted, has been brought to us by a Chief Executive whose political enemies call him the most radical left-wing socialist president in our history.

Before earning a Master’s degree and Doctorate in History from Cornell University, Professor Palermo completed Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master’s degree in History from San Jose State University.  He is an Associate Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento.

Of all people, Newt Gingrich exposes infotainment-orientation of mainstream media

Guest Column
By Mitch Trachtenberg

It’s finally happened.  An American politician has finally said something so laughable that a Sabbath gasbag from the mainstream media, well, laughed at him.

No, it wasn’t the charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  Not Ron Paul’s bigoted newsletters, or Newt Gingrich’s family-values-except-for-me platform, or Mitt Romney’s attacks on what is essentially his own health care program.

No.  The media laughed because Newt Gingrich, having previously said that Mitt Romney had lied, agreed that Mitt Romney was a liar.  It was the shock of someone going off-script.

Here’s Newt Gingrich quoted on ABC yesterday: “[Romney] set the tone of the campaign … by going after me negatively and dishonestly.”

Now that’s the proper way for a candidate to call a fellow candidate a liar.  But CBS “reporter” Norah O’Donnell knew the script for American presidential campaign “interviews.”  O’Donnell knew that she was to ask whether Gingrich would call Romney a liar, and that Gingrich would not answer, instead pointing out some of Romney’s lies.  Following the script, O’Donnell gamely asked the following ‘question:’ “You said of Mitt Romney, ‘somebody who will lie to you to be President will lie to you when they are President.  I have to ask you, are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?”

Before we go back to the conversation, let’s pause and ponder this.  Someone who goes after a competitor for running ads that are “negative” and “dishonest” is saying they are lying.  Politicians are always suggesting that their competitors’ negative ads are lying.  I really can’t recall a campaign in which politicians haven’t generally said things like “I think that’s disingenuous” or “that’s just not true.”  True, the GOP has ramped it up, what with their people shouting “You lie!” (boy) at shindigs like the State of the Union.

I’d go so far as to suggest, based just on my conversations with people here in California, that some people think many politicians lie pretty often, about a wide variety of things.  Perhaps even you have suspected that some politician somewhere might be a liar.  I confess the thought has crossed my mind.

So, back to CBS. Newt Gingrich had just suggested that Mitt Romney was lying about his negative ads.  The CBS reporter read him his statement saying as much, and asked if he were calling Mitt Romney a liar.  Now, presumably, O’Donnell understood English enough to realize that Newt Gingrich had, in fact, called Mitt Romney a liar.  But, being a well-trained “reporter”, er, spokesmodel, she was aware that according to the script Gingrich would turn the conversation back to Romney’s lies, talking about his campaign ads.

Gingrich tossed away the script.  Asked, “Are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?” Gingrich said something that, for a moment, was the pure, simple, unvarnished truth.  He said “Yes.”

Back on the reporters’ side of the split-screen, we observe a moment of shocked silence.  O’Donnell says, in a tone of disbelief, “You’re calling Mitt Romney a liar?”  Then, in a petulant whine, “why are you calling him a liar?”

Gingrich responds with about a minute of, as far as I can tell, straightforward enough facts establishing that Romney, like perhaps every politician ever to be born, has said untruthful things; that is, that he’s a liar.  CBS has a gasbag on hand for those who want more gravitas than O’Donnell can deliver, and Bob Schieffer rises from his slumber to ask if Gingrich could support Romney if Romney won the nomination.  When Gingrich says, “yes,” Schieffer gets a tiny smile on his face.  That grows to shaking-head-laughter as Schieffer points out that Gingrich is saying he’d vote for a liar before he’d vote for Obama.

Gingrich, for all I can’t stand him, was speaking truth to power.  To his credit, here are his words: “Which part of what I said to you is false?  Why is it that if I’m candid in person and I wanted to be honest in person, that’s shocking?  If his PAC buys millions of dollars of attack ads to say things that are false that’s somehow part of the way Washington plays the game?  Isn’t that exactly what’s sick about this country right now?  Isn’t that what the American people are tired of?”

(Yes, Mr. Gingrich.  We’d like the press to call liars on their lies.  That would be a treat.)

More shocked petulance from O’Donnell.  This man is staying off script!  You can see the “reporters” listening to their earpieces.  Wow!  An exclusive!  Big news!

Gingrich calls Schieffer a “professional reporter,” tells Schieffer he can check for himself, and outlines the various ways in which Romney has been lying.  So Schieffer agrees, right?  No?  Schieffer disagrees?  No, not that either.  Give it a moment’s thought, and you can guess what’s on the script.  That’s right, the segment’s time is just about up.  ”Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker,” Schieffer starts.  But he can’t resist slyly thanking Gingrich for coming on and (changed tone) “answering the questions.”

And then it’s time for some ads, to tell us how much better our lives are because of the efforts of one of CBS’ corporate sponsors.

I could never vote for Gingrich, and I realize that all he’s doing is twisting a knife into a fellow Republican by accusing him of nothing more than what Gingrich and just about every other politician alive is guilty of.  But, for just a minute or so, I could hear truth on network television.  No wonder the spokesmodel was offended.  No wonder Schieffer was amused.

The United States supposedly cherishes freedom of the press.  Indeed,in some hypothetical country, a free press is capable of rooting out corruption and exposing lies from the powerful.  But in our country in recent years, the professional press is no less captured by the corporations than the government.  We are fed scripted infotainment as news.

No, I’m not some conspiracy theorist who thinks people like O’Donnell and Schieffer are told what to say.  But I am able to see that the mainstream media no longer shows any inclination to really explore policy alternatives, examine things that have worked or failed in other countries, look at serious approaches to problems.  The media is interested in the horse race, and in political strategy.  The campaign, for the media, is inexpensive entertainment that will bring in an audience.  The last thing anyone in the professional press wants to do is lose access to a candidate by actually challenging them.

It’s rare these days for things to go off script.  When they do, as with the Gingrich interview, it’s an opportunity to see exactly how worthless the mainstream media has become.  Imagine, for example, if Schieffer had chosen to acknowledge the truth of what Gingrich was saying, and asked Gingrich if he’d ever lied himself, perhaps in a campaign.  A reporter interested in such things would surely have a book-sized list of Gingrich’s lies to fall back upon.  Imagine if O’Donnell had asked Gingrich whether lying was necessary in today’s campaigns.  Gingrich was already off-script, bent more on a mission of destruction than on any campaign.  Who knows what he might have said?  Maybe the honesty would have continued.

Mitch Trachtenberg os a software developer and freelance writer living in the village of Trinidad in Humboldt County. He can be reached at mitchtrachtenberg.com.