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Nothing new to see here

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Just read this, which was a shame as I had been considering writing something to the same effect, but now I feel like a bit of a cheater.

Anyway, I too have been watching the Steve Scalise “controversy” with some amused bemusement, as I really can't see how retaining a racist in a leadership position could possibly have a downside for the Republicans. They have been the party of racism for 50 years now, and, ever since we entered our “post racial” period with the election of a black president, they have been more obvious about their racism than ever before. If there were ever any doubt of that, it should have been dispelled by the Fox coverage of, and Republican reaction to, the killing of unarmed black men by white police officers, not to mention the more politically significant attempts to restrict black voter participation both through the work of a partisan Supreme Court and state legislatures that have enacted voter suppression laws, the entire object of which is to suppress black votes. In the short term, they can only gain by reinforcing their white male base's conviction that the Republican party works for them, instead of the corporate overlords the Republicans really serve. Cue Dylan's Only a Pawn in Their Game, as relevant now as the day it was written.

What is truly laughable are the press reports that say the Scalise incident might interfere with Republican attempts to broaden their appeal to minorities. To which, one must ask: what attempts to broaden their appeal to minorities? No fair counting things that Republicans say that minorities should like. What have they done that actually furthers the interests of minorities in any respect? What have they actually proposed that fits that description? In order to do any such thing, they would have to do something that furthered the interests of the bottom 99% as a whole, and that is something they simply will not do. They can reap those poor white votes and screw those poor white voters only so long as they can convince them that “they've got more than the blacks, don't complain”.

When I was in college I took a sociology class from an excellent professor. Among the things he pointed out was that the groups least likely to be conned by a prevailing ideology are those groups that are on the outs. The Jews were surely the most likely group of Germans to see Hitler for what he was. In this country, minorities, particularly blacks, are far more likely to see through governmental bullshit than whites. They are therefore far less likely to buy into Republican PR aimed at getting their votes than are whites. I mean, how many blacks believe Fox is fair and balanced. Now, how many whites? Far easier to just prevent them from voting.

So, what the Scalise incident demonstrates, above all else, is the fact that racism is gradually becoming more respectable. For a while there, Republicans really felt the need to pretend that they were not racists, while they sent coded racist messages to the electorate. They have found, in recent years, particularly with the election of a black president, that there really is no down side to coming out of the closet. At this point you might say they are where Tim Cook was about six months ago so far as his sexual orientation was concerned. They are not declared racists, but everyone knows they are, and they feel no urgent need to deny it.

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Yet another year

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Off and on I’ve ventured predictions for the New Year in this space. I actually started doing it this year, but sadly, at least in the political realm, there is nothing to be optimistic about, and, even more sadly, the prospect is so depressing that it’s not easy to find anything funny to say. As Randy Newman sang, “The End of an Empire is messy at best”.

On a personal level, the coming year actually bodes well, assuming the bankers don’t find a way to loot us all of every last shred of our money, so I’ve got nothing to complain about. So, I’ve decided not to complain. At least not tonight.

After all, as Eric Idle sang, we should “always look on the bright side of life”, so here’s hoping that a miracle occurs and the world takes a turn for the better. It could happen.

Happy New Year to anyone out there reading this. This blog will return to doom and gloom tomorrow.

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Torture is just alright with them

Sunday, December 28, 2014

This post was written on Christmas Eve, but I've delayed posting it, since even to me posting something anti-religious on Christmas seems a bit tacky. Or is it residual Catholic guilt? Anyway…

I came across this post at Pharyngula, in which we learn that our Christian brethren are far less likely to oppose torture than we secularists, atheists and agnostics. In fact, we are alone in being more likely to oppose torture than support it. This is hardly surprising, inasmuch as nowadays (and it has likely always been thus) religion is used as a way of justifying what we find convenient to do anyway. When racists needed a place to send their kids after their schools were integrated, the first thing they did was found religious schools in which it was an article of faith that the races should not mix, because apparently Jesus wanted it that way.

The torture issue is richly ironic, given that said Jesus, the man who they all claim to love and worship, was tortured and then executed in brutal fashion. I've read the New Testament several times, and I don't recall any hint that Jesus approved of the treatment he was getting. But from the point of view of today's Christians, maybe they just figure that if it was good enough for Jesus it ought to be good enough for those Arab ragheads.

Perhaps the difference in perspective is a result of differing takes on the role of reason in decision making. Non-religious types may, indeed do, use their noggins more than “faith based” people. That term, after all, is simply another way of saying that one is comfortable with being told what to think by people who, more often than not, have good reason to want one to think things they themselves know are untrue. Thinking people know that torture doesn't work. As the folks at Consortium News point out :

It has long been known that torture does not work. One can go back to the Age of Enlightenment. In 1764, Cesare Beccaria published his groundbreaking work, On Crimes and Punishments, in which he examined all the evidence available at that time and concluded that individuals under torture will tell their interrogators anything they want to hear, true or not, just to get the pain to stop. Beccaria’s book led to a temporary waning of the state-ordered torture.

It is hard to believe that you would need to examine any evidence at all to conclude that people being tortured will say what their torturers want to hear. I would, wouldn't you? Nonetheless, it apparently needed saying.

Of course this begs the larger question. Torture is wrong, pure and simple. Somehow, Christians have talked themselves into believing that the god of love doesn't agree.

Our sainted Founding Fathers, products of the Enlightenment all, even the slave owners among them, also had a thing about not torturing people. Great discussion here and I should add that George Washington strictly forbade the mistreatment of prisoners, despite the fact that it was well known that the British were treating their own prisoners horribly. You see, to a certain extent, despite the evident contradiction of slavery, they were ..ummm…“Enlightened”. Their political descendants, see, e.g., the entire Republican Party and a good share of the Democratic Party, can only be described as “benighted”.

So, add torture to the list of evils that the religious find compatible with the Christian creed. It joins racism, sexism and homophobia, just to name a few items on the list.

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Step into that frame

Monday, December 22, 2014

Something there is about liberals, progressives, or whatever we want to call ourselves, that seems to compel us to allow others to frame the terms of our debate. This is a somewhat trivial example, but because it is so blatant, I have to point it out.

This mostly excellent post at Naked Capitalism argues that our current military adventurism and policy of endless war has its somewhat obscure origin in George Bush the First's invasion of Panama. This invasion, which cost an uncertain number of innocent Panamanian lives, was undertaken for the ostensible purpose of arresting Manuel Noriega, for drug running. In actuality Bush was probably just pissed at him for yanking Bush's chain, since it was entirely predictable, and I'm sure it's happened, that another drug runner, ignored to date by the U.S., took over where Noriega left off (if, indeed, he was ever that important a drug runner).

This invasion was given the propagandistic name of Operation Just Cause by Bush and his cronies. It is hard to imagine a name for an invasion that is more obviously propagandistic. Every time one uses it, one validates the “cause”, whether one wishes to or not. It seems to this humble observer that one could call it the Panamanian Invasion, or if one wants to be more specific, the 1989 Panamanian Invasion. This is a fairly neutral phrasing, much like “World War II”. Now, how does the blogger at Naked Capitalism refer to the invasion. Need you ask? The use of the term itself tends to undercut his argument. There is no law that requires us to accede to government propaganda, just as there is none that requires us to call people opposed to abortion “pro-life” (which they most assuredly are not). Yet we do it. Can you imagine the right agreeing to call Obamacare (which itself started as a derisive right wing term) the Healthy Outcomes Act, had the administration tried to hang that moniker on it? But we on the left (present company excepted) fall for it every time.

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Sony Baloney

Friday, December 19, 2014

Okay, I agree that a foreign government shouldn't be hacking corporations, which as the Supreme Court tells us, are people too.

But it strikes me that a movie whose plot revolves around a plan to kill an actual, non-fictional human being, is, to say the least, somewhat tacky. Imagine the response by this country's right wing (the sector most exorcised about free speech rights in this case) had North Korea, for example, put out a movie about killing W while the boy-king was still in office. It would have been a strange situation, because for once the right would have been right.

So, North Korea bad, but the movie bad too. Kim Jong- Il is a miserable excuse for a human being, but he is still a human being. Mock him by all means, but don't make a movie about killing him.

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A Mystery

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Tom Coburn, the poster child for the merits of repeal of the seventeenth amendment, is currently holding up funding for a suicide prevention program for vets:

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn continues to single-handedly block the Clay Hunt SAV Act, otherwise known as the Suicide Prevention for America’s Veterans Act. His reason: it will cost $22 million, and that's $22 million he doesn't want to spend.

via Daily Kos

I don't have Dean Baker's handy calculator, so I can only guess what percentage of the budget $22 million represents, but it's way below .01 percent.

It certainly is a mystery why Coburn is doing this, but it's not really a mystery that interests me. Here's the mystery that interests me: People like Coburn, Cruz and their ilk are constantly doing this, and constantly getting away with it. The people running the Senate can't ever seem to find a way to get around them. Yet when a Democrat, particularly a liberal, tries to do something similar, it seems there's always a way. I recall years ago Chris Dodd tried to stop FISA legislation. Harry Reid swatted him aside like a fly. Just another of life's little mysteries.

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A capitalist explains things

Monday, December 15, 2014

This is hard to summarize, so all I can do is urge you to read this article by Nick Hanauer, who is a very rich person who is also, apparently, an honest man. A very rare mix these days.

I confess I was totally unaware of the overtime rules he writes about, or of the fact that they have been used as yet another means of screwing the middle class. It is also extremely disheartening to know that Obama could single handedly take action that would go a fair distance toward reversing inequality in this country and to also know that, when all is said and done, he'll do next to nothing.

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Joe Courtney does us proud

Saturday, December 13, 2014

I've met a lot of politicians, and, truth to tell, most of them, even the ones with whom I agree, are self centered assholes. Joe Courtney is an extremely honorable exception; I've rarely heard him discussed without someone saying what a “nice guy” he is. Of course, being a nice guy would do us little good, if he weren't also a great Congressman. He's made his mistakes, but he was definitely on the right side of the recent budget vote, and for all the right reasons:

Explaining his decision, Courtney cited his strong objections to provisions in the spending bill that roll back portions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and undermine campaign finance contribution limits.

In a statement sent to The Day late Friday, Courtney said, “House Republicans' insistence on adding special interest giveaways to an otherwise-fair spending bill is deeply disappointing. Congress came very close to passing a bipartisan, bicameral spending agreement, and I would have been willing to support it without the policy riders that benefit Wall Street banks and super-rich political donors above the middle class.”

via The New London Day

Dodd-Frank was pretty weak tea; a return to Glass-Steagall would be far more simple and effective. Still, it did make some positive improvements, and one of the few has now been repealed. Once again, we taxpayers will be providing a financial backstop the next time the banks blow up the economy using credit default swaps. I'm one constituent who is really glad Joe stuck with the majority of Democrats and voted against this bill. It should be noted in passing that while the Obama people claimed to be against this provision, they did virtually nothing to try to get it removed from the bill. More importantly, it should be noted that Hillary Clinton, alone among those nosed about as potential Democratic presidential candidates, refused to take a position on the bill.

But I digress. Once again, thanks Joe. It's nice to be able to say you are proud of your Congressman.

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Doomed to repeat

Friday, December 12, 2014

Paul Krugman once again warns about the very real possibility that Europe’s democracies may crumble due to the economic woes being visited upon them by the banker class:

The important point here is that it’s not just the Greeks who are mad as Hellas (their own name for their country) and aren’t going to take it anymore. Look at France, where Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigrant National Front, outpolls mainstream candidates of both right and left. Look at Italy, where about half of voters support radical parties like the Northern League and the Five-Star Movement. Look at Britain, where both anti-immigrant politicians and Scottish separatists are threatening the political order.

It would be a terrible thing if any of these groups — with the exception, surprisingly, of Syriza, which seems relatively benign — were to come to power. But there’s a reason they’re on the rise. This is what happens when an elite claims the right to rule based on its supposed expertise, its understanding of what must be done — then demonstrates both that it does not, in fact, know what it is doing, and that it is too ideologically rigid to learn from its mistakes.

via The New York Times

Most likely there are other voices (besides mine)  that have raised these concerns, but if there are others, they must be speaking to audiences even smaller than mine. If there are those within the councils of government, either here or in the European capitals, who are not totally oblivious of the danger, they have managed to hide their concerns magnificently. We have convinced ourselves that democratic institutions can withstand any shock, but if history teaches us anything, it’s that all things must pass, and when they do, they often pass quickly, accompanied by much destruction. I still believe this country will preserve at least the facade of a representative democratic form of government, and while the facade exists, there is always the possibility that we can recover the reality. That is not necessarily the case in Europe. We could easily see one or more of those countries turn to dictatorships.Time for another chapter in The March of Folly. 

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Charter School madness

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

I read a lot of blogs about economics, so I've become educated about “rent seekers”; individuals or corporations that find ways of diverting public money into their own coffers without providing any significant service in return. Pro Publica has exposed a prime example in the charter school industry:

“A couple of years ago, auditors looked at the books of a charter school in Buffalo, New York, and were taken aback by what they found. Like all charter schools, Buffalo United Charter School is funded with taxpayer dollars. The school is also a nonprofit. But as the New York State auditors wrote, Buffalo United was sending “ virtually all of the School's revenues” directly to a for-profit company hired to handle its day-to-day operations.

Charter schools often hire companies to handle their accounting and management functions. Sometimes the companies even take the lead in hiring teachers, finding a school building, and handling school finances.

In the case of Buffalo United, the auditors found that the school board had little idea about exactly how the company – a large management firm called National Heritage Academies – was spending the school's money. The school's board still had to approve overall budgets, but it appeared to accept the company's numbers with few questions. The signoff was “essentially meaningless,” the auditors wrote.

In the charter-school sector, this arrangement is known as a “sweeps” contract because nearly all of a school's public dollars – anywhere from 95 to 100 percent – is “swept” into a charter-management company.”

via Pro Publica.

The charter school industry is an example of rent seeking extraordinaire, with our kids being the prime victims. The “sweep contracts” scam will, if allowed to fester, reduce the already dismal quality of charter schools to even lower levels. In those places where a non-profit facade is legally required, we will surely see non-profits arising that are initiated and wholly controlled by for-profit companies, assuming this hasn't happened already. The Pro Publica article points out that once these private companies get involved it becomes impossible to find out how public money is being spent, as they refuse to provide the information, arguing that it is “proprietary” information. But even that state of affairs is likely to be only a phase. As ALEC and its ilk take control on the state level, we will hear more and more that only for-profit corporations can deliver quality education, for, after all, the government is, by definition, incapable of doing anything right. (Oddly enough, the people pushing this line also assert that they and they alone truly love this country, which they assert is the greatest in the world). So, our education dollars will be openly shunted to for-profit corporations that will be unaccountable to anyone. Our educational system will be a pathetic shambles, but almost no one will realize that, because we'll be fed a constant drumbeat of propaganda designed to convince us that an educational system producing excessive profits, underpaid and disempowered teachers, and powerless local communities is somehow superior to what we have now. It's a win-win for the Koch types: yet another way to transfer money from the masses to the rich, and a sure fire guarantee that the population will become even more stupid and docile than it already is.

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