August 24, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


MCCAIN THE REACTIONARY

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. You can easily get caught up in the idea that things just aren't the way they used to be, that somehow that past was better. I will grant there are things about the past I like better.

But there are many things about the past we would not want again. We don't want the Cold War back. We don't want racial segregation back. We don't want women forced into back alley abortions. We don't want the Gilded Age, although we've been living through a version of the Gilded Age in the past eight years. John McCain represents all the bad things about the past.

We need a country without a chasm existing between the rich and poor. We need a country that uses diplomacy to solve problems and not military responses. We need a country that cares about the environment and about providing for the needs of all its citizens. This column by Frank Rich is at www.nytimes.com:

How we dig out of this quagmire is the American story that Obama must tell. It is not a story of endless conflicts abroad but a potentially inspiring tale of serious economic, educational, energy and health-care mobilization at home. We don’t have the time or resources to go off on more quixotic military missions or to indulge in culture wars. (In China, they’re too busy exploiting scientific advances for competitive advantage to reopen settled debates about Darwin.) Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind. The Obama campaign actually has plans, however imperfect or provisional, to set us on that path; the McCain campaign offers only disposable Band-Aids typified by the “drill now” mantra that even McCain says will only have a “psychological” effect on gas prices.

Even as it points to America’s future, the Obama campaign also has the duty to fill in its opponent’s past. McCain’s attacks on Obama have worked: in last week’s Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, Obama’s favorable rating declined from 59 to 48 percent and his negative rating rose from 27 to 35. Yet McCain still has a lower positive rating (46 percent) and higher negative rating (38) than Obama. McCain is not nearly as popular among Americans, it turns out, as he is among his journalistic camp followers. Should voters actually get to know him, he has nowhere to go but down.

August 19, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

IF YOU WANT A LOUSY ECONOMY, VOTE MCCAIN

A few days ago a typical right-wing letter to The Fresno Bee claimed that Democrats haven't learned that increasing taxes on the rich is just bad, bad, bad. The writer claimed it's not tax cuts for the rich that drive deficits, but spending. The problem is that constructive spending, things like education, health care, infrastructure, and protecting the environment isn't going on. We have too little spending on the crucial segments of our economy. We spend plenty on weapons and on military bases. History shows that Republican economics are a disaster. They've been a disaster since the days of Herbert Hoover. It's time the richest people in this society and corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. It's also time that money be spent legitimately. This article by Dean Baker is at www.commondreams.org:

Senator McCain now faces a similar situation in this election. He is stuck running on the record of a president who is presiding over an economy that is sinking into recession and is facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. By contrast, Senator Obama can claim the legacy of the strong economy of the Clinton years.

Tarred with the most dismal record of job creation and income growth of any president since the Great Depression, it would be reasonable to expect that Senator McCain would be defensive on the economy; but not in Swift Boat America.

Instead Senator McCain is filling the airwaves with commercials telling the public that Obama’s tax increases will slow growth and cost the economy jobs. It’s pretty scary stuff to anyone who takes it seriously.

Of course, there’s no truth to Senator McCain’s Swift Boat economics. During the eight years of the Clinton administration, when rich people paid the same tax rates proposed by Senator Obama, the private sector added 15.8 million jobs. By contrast, in the seven years and six months of the Bush administration, when rich people paid the Bush-McCain tax rates, the private sector has added just 3.5 million jobs. And, it is losing jobs at the rate of almost 100,000 a month as President Bush prepares for retirement.

August 16, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF STUPIDITY

The United States has a long history of anti-intellectualism. It baffles me that people don't like smart people. Maybe it's some kind of inferiority complex. But stupidity is costing us dearly. It allowed the most stupid man ever to occupy the Oval Office to assume power and proceed to wreck everything: the economy, foreign policy, environmental stewardship, and civil liberties. The war in Iraq has cost thousands upon thousands of innocent lives and disrupted the region. Lack of principle and ethics often go together with stupidity. This interview with Susan Jacoby is at www.alternet.org:

"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." Barack Obama finally said it.
Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right's stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them -- and us -- unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.

American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes "the jury is still out" on evolution.

Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on "The Colbert Report." Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn't actually list the commandments.

August 12, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


REPUBLICANS AND POVERTY

Do you remember the song that said, "Love and marriage go together like a horse a carriage"? It's not quite so romantic with Republicans and poverty, but there is a definite relationship. Under the "trickle down" economics we saw during the Reagan-Bush years and now under George W. Bush poverty has dramatically increased in the United States. This article notes that Fresno has the highest working poverty rate in the country. Fresno, the home of freerepublic.com and an infestation of right-wingers. What a surprise. This article by Tim Jones is at www.chicagotribune.com:

The percentage of working poor in large metropolitan areas soared by 40 percent during the first half of the decade, reversing gains from the 1990s in the fight against poverty, according to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution.


THE OVERVIEW

The study covered 1999 through 2005 and examined 58 metro areas, finding that 34 reported increased rates of "concentrated working poverty," a measurement of low-income workers and families living in high-poverty neighborhoods. Twenty-four areas registered declining rates. Old industrial areas like Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Cleveland recorded some of the highest poverty rates. The Midwest and Northeast recorded higher average rates than the South and significantly higher rates than the West.

The note about Fresno:

Detroit and its suburbs in 2005 had the highest concentrated working poverty rate in the Midwest: 27.5 percent, followed by St. Louis (21.6 percent), Cleveland (21.5 percent) and Chicago—plus its Illinois and Northwest Indiana suburbs—at 17.9 percent. The highest rate in the Northeast was the Philadelphia metropolitan area, at 25.5 percent.

The highest rates were recorded in Fresno, Calif., (30 percent) and Augusta-Richmond County, on the Georgia/South Carolina border (29.3 percent). Among the regions, the Northeast had the highest concentrated poverty rate at 17.6 percent, followed by the Midwest at 14.8 percent, the South at 13.1 percent and the West at 6.7 percent.

PRACTICE YOUR OWN ABORTION BELIEFS

I have not weighed in much on the subject of abortion. For one thing, I think abortion is a decision best left to pregnant women and those closest to them. I also think that people with religious objections to abortion who try to make their religious beliefs a part of secular law are violating the First Amendment provisions that prohibit establishment of a religion. Even people who believe in God and religion are divided on the subject of abortion. Some people object to all abortion; others believe abortion is justified when the woman's life is in danger or the pregnancy results from rape or incest. The Bible, if one wants to cite the Bible, doesn't even have much to say about abortion. The government should stay out of our personal lives, including the right to choice. This article by Caroline Arnold is at www.commondreams.org:

I can’t accept, either as a matter of personal conscience, or of my commitment to my neighbors and the planet we live on, that we should invest scarce resources, argue endlessly and fruitlessly, and punish women, neglect children and forestall medical research in order to keep every fertilized ovum alive.

I believe we have more important things to do — making sure children already born have enough to eat, medical care and education, and learning to live together without killing each other and consuming the planet we live on.

I don’t think the abortion question is about religion, except insofar as most religious people think that God doesn’t like it because it destroys a human life. What kind of a god worries about the destruction of some unviable human tissue but designs human reproductive systems with a 50 percent attrition rate? What kind of god gives males the choice to conceive a baby but doesn’t give females the choice to reject it? What kind of god allows older children to starve so that younger ones may be born, or permits babies to be born to a life of want, violence and fear? Not one I want to have anything to do with. And I won’t accept the “It was ever thus” argument about human frailty. Just because we humans have always done badly doesn’t excuse us from trying to do better, for ourselves, because we are all one family.

That said, however, I have to retreat a step. I do have a kind of religious faith, pretty much defined by what it is not. The Skeptic in me demands that the utilitarian condition must be satisfied — God cannot be less than as source of Goodness — love, grace, fulfillment — that is available to all creatures and living systems. But my Resident Mystic keeps insisting that a God worthy of human experience must be more than a bearded old man obsessed with sex and virgins, strewing goodness about while withholding it from sinners and showering wealth on entrepreneurial men, handing down Ten Immutable Rules for human behavior, torturing the wicked, and advising George W. Bush on how to conduct his war on terror. I believe we are called to imagine a God of Truth and Uncertainty, Beauty and Disorder, Joy and Loss, while we are challenged to love our neighbors and seek to live with them in peace.

August 11, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

IT DOES TAKE A VILLAGE

Right-wingers argue that the society that works best is with government that works least. You can't have those nasty regulations. You can't have any social safety net because, you know, it makes people "dependent." Everything works best if it's privatized and it's every man for himself (women aren't much of a consideration in right-wing land). But the truth is that government has a vital role in providing and maintaining infrastructure, in providing a regulatory framework, and insuring that predators don't get free rein. This article by Joseph Stiglitz is at www.alternet.org:

Failures to promote social solidarity can have other costs, not the least of which are the social and private expenditures required to protect property and incarcerate criminals. It is estimated that within a few years, America will have more people working in the security business than in education. A year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard. The cost of incarcerating two million Americans -- one of the highest per capita rates (pdf) in the world -- should be viewed as a subtraction from GDP, yet it is added on.

A second major difference between left and right concerns the role of the state in promoting development. The left understands that the government's role in providing infrastructure and education, developing technology, and even acting as an entrepreneur is vital. Government laid the foundations of the internet and the modern biotechnology revolutions. In the 19th century, research at America's government-supported universities provided the basis for the agricultural revolution. Government then brought these advances to millions of American farmers. Small business loans have been pivotal in creating not only new businesses, but whole new industries.

August 04, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

CONSERVATISM IS A DISASTER

If you like jobs going offshore, if you like tainted food and medicine, if you like gargantuan government deficits, if you like the housing crisis, if you like roasting due to global climate change, if you like the government spying on you, if you like getting involved in bloody and unnecessary wars, and if you think that torture represents us at our best, you must be a conservative. This article by Greg Anrig is at www.washingtonpost.com:

The single theme that most animated the modern conservative movement was the conviction that government was the problem and market forces the solution. It was a simple, elegant, politically attractive idea, and the right applied it to virtually every major domestic challenge -- retirement security, health care, education, jobs, the environment and so on. Whatever the issue, conservatives proposed substituting market forces for government -- pushing the bureaucrats aside and letting private-sector competition work to everyone's benefit.

So they advocated creating health savings accounts, handing out school vouchers, privatizing Social Security, shifting government functions to private contractors, and curtailing regulations on public health, safety, the environment and more. And, of course, they pushed to cut taxes to further weaken the public sector by "starving the beast." President Bush has followed this playbook more closely than any previous president, including Reagan, notwithstanding today's desperate efforts by the right to distance itself from the deeply unpopular chief executive.
But in practice, those ideas have all failed to deliver on the promises the conservatives made, and in many instances, the dogma has actually created new problems. Particularly after Hurricane Katrina, when Americans saw how hapless the Federal Emergency Management Agency was, the public has begun to realize that the right's hostility toward government has produced only ineffective government.

August 03, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

IF YOU CAN'T WIN, SMEAR

John McCain isn't such a maverick after all. He's following in the "grand" Republican tradition of smearing his opponent rather than running honestly on issues. Of course, McCain hasn't got many issues to run on. Everything the Bush administration has touched has been a disaster, and McCain only promises more of the same. So McCain has turned to the Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, and Karl Rove playbook of running on non-issues. Attack your opponent and distract attention and maybe you can fool enough people to get elected. This article by By John Heilemann is at nymag.com:

For those not keeping score, a quick review of the McCain campaign’s lunge for Obama’s jugular. First, its new slogan: "Country first," with its inverse insinuation that Obama puts something else (i.e., his own ambition) ahead of the nation. Second, McCain’s accusation that Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." Third, the McCain ad "Troops," which claims that Obama, while in Germany, "made time to go the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops—seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras." And, finally, the ad "Celeb," with its intercut images of Obama in Berlin, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears.

The strategy behind all this isn’t hard to discern: Drive up Obama’s negatives and render him unacceptable to pivotal voting blocs. Thus the depiction of him as too young, too feckless, and too pampered to be president. (In almost every shot in the McCain ads, Obama is smiling flashily, whereas McCain is pictured as weathered, sober, staring hard into the distance—a clever bit of jujitsu, using Obama’s pretty mug against him.) Thus the portrayal of him as precious, self-infatuated, and effete: "Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew—Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula," wrote campaign manager Rick Davis in an e-mail announcing "Celeb." And thus the emphasis on Obama’s rock-star persona, designed to engender envy and contempt among the swath of Middle America for which hipness is no virtue but a sign of pretension.

July 29, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE MARCH OF STUPIDITY

I remember a quote from an Isaac Asimov novel: "Against stupidity even the gods themselves must contend." The gods would be very disappointed in the contemporary United States. It seems sometimes that stupidity is an epidemic. It's not just the abuse of the English language. It's the absolute inability to relate the past to the present, to separate the absolute nonsense we get from so many pundits and politicians from reality, or the taste in television shows that almost make stupidity a virtue. This article by Leonard Pitts Jr. is at www.commondreams.org:

I am not talking about ignorance. Ignorance is a lack of information; we’re all ignorant in one way or another. Nor am I talking about people prone to punctuation or spelling errors; we all make mistakes.

No, I’m talking about stupidity, which I define as an inability to analyze, draw conclusions from, or otherwise use information even when one has it. And stupidity is often characterized by smug indifference. When a CNN anchor drew Rinehart’s attention to his spelling errors, his reply was, ”I don’t necessarily care.” This is, I feel constrained to remind you, the elected representative of 220,000 people.

For as much as we obsess over black vs. white and red vs. blue, I suspect the defining division of this technology-driven era will be between those who have and can exploit information and those who do not and cannot. Between intelligence and its opposite. One wonders how long we can continue to equate stupidity with ”keeping it real,” being a regular Joe or Jane, and hope to continue leading the world.

TOBY KEITH AND LYNCHING

In right-wing mythology you can get rich in this country if you have talent and work hard. I have a two word answer to rebut that: Toby Keith. I love country music, but I loathe Toby Keith and other fakes who pose as country music artists. Keith's talent is sparse, at best, but what is worse is that the hate message he consistently puts out in what he calls "music." Now Keith is putting lynching to a beat. This article by Max Blumenthal is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Those who doubt the presence of racist undertones in Keith's "Beer For My Horses" should see the song's video. (The embed link to the video's Youtube version was disabled by Keith's record label so you have to click here to watch it). Cue ahead to 3:00 and watch as Keith intones, "We got too many gangsters doin' dirty deeds." The singer's words are not-so-subtly accompanied by the image of a swaggering black man sporting short dreads and baggy clothes. Thus the profile of Keith's ideal lynching candidate is revealed.

Keith's whirlwind publicity tour continues on July 30 with his appearance on CBS's Early Show, then sit-down interviews with Esquire Magazine and Us Weekly. The following week, Jay Leno will play host to another raucous rendition of "Beer For My Horses." Thanks to Keith and his unsuspecting hosts, lynching is becoming cool again.
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July 28, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE RELIGION RACKET

I don't understand why people turn off their reasoning ability when they are involved with religion. It must be a strong desire to believe in magic. "Intelligent design" theorists try to put an intellectual gloss on religion, but it doesn't stand up. A belief that has been around a long time, but is even more prominent now, is "prosperity" theology. The snake oil salesmen will tell you that God wants you to be rich. Just pray enough, believe enough, and tithe enough and you too will be rich. Conversely, if you're poor, it must mean that God doesn't favor you. This article by Meg White is at http://www.buzzflash.com/:

There are two things that just shouldn't mix with religion: politics and money. But with President George W. Bush's reliance upon the evangelical Christian vote to get elected and some pastors' promises to believers that worshiping and giving to the church will bring them personal wealth, there's no shortage of examples of people who benefit greatly by combining twisted views of God and economics.

The Bible doesn't seem to square with either the evangelical notion of "prosperity theology" or Republican economic theory. Jesus tells his followers to give everything to the needy. He also says that we should pay our taxes, rendering unto Caesar (i.e., the government) what is his.

What would Jesus do? Well, none of us can say for sure, but I have a feeling he wouldn't advocate slashing social services for the poor and cutting taxes for the wealthy. And as much as he advocated helping the downtrodden, he wasn't passing around the collection plate himself.

July 22, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

HEALTH CARE COSTS ARE PROBLEM, NOT SOCIAL SECURITY

A few months ago I had an "interview" with a guy representing the World Financial Group. They sell investment plans that are supposed to give you a good retirement fund. Somewhere along the way, of course, there was an attack on Social Security. According to the propaganda, we of the Baby Boom generation will bankrupt Social Security, or put an insufferable burden on younger workers who pay into the system. When you examine all the data you see that the claims are nonsense. Social Security is one of the best programs ever devised by the federal government and the only source of survival for many people. This article by economist Dean Baker looks at a right-wing ideologue named Peter Peterson who would like to destroy Social Security. The article is at www.commondreams.org:

Peterson has not been shy about using slippery logic to advance his agenda. For example, back in the 90’s he argued for cutting the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security, which is tied to the consumer price index (CPI), based on the claim that the CPI substantially overstates the true rate of inflation. If Peterson’s claim about a CPI overstatement were true, then it would imply that incomes are rising far more rapidly than our projections show. Peterson’s CPI adjustment would mean that our children and grandchildren will be far richer than we could possibly imagine, because incomes are rising so rapidly. Similarly, the retirees for whom he wanted to cut benefits actually spent much of their lives in poverty. If incomes have been rising more rapidly than the official data show, then we must have been far poorer in the past than the data show.

In the same vein, Peterson supported the partial privatization of Social Security, based on assumptions on stock returns that were inconsistent with the profit growth projections of the Social Security trustees, and the price-to-earnings ratios that existed in the stock market at the time. In the push to cut Social Security and Medicare, Peterson does not feel the need to be bound by the truths of logic and arithmetic.

There is a fundamental point on which Peterson is correct. The long-term budget projections do show a horror story of enormous deficits. But these projections are not driven by aging and overly generous retirement programs. They are driven by projections that our private health care system, which already costs twice as much per person as the average for other rich countries, will get ever more inefficient through time. If we never fix our health care system, then we will face an economic disaster, which will include serious budget problems, since half of our health care is paid for through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

This reality would suggest the importance of reforming the health care system. Health care reform would mean confronting the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the doctors’ lobbies. These groups have serious power. That’s why Mr. Peterson prefers to stick with granny bashing.

July 21, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

JUST WHAT ARE MCCAIN'S QUALIFICATIONS AGAIN?

John McCain has been in the Senate a long time. If you used that as a qualification for anything, then certain types of fungi would be qualified to be president. He got shot down in Vietnam and was a POW. How does that remotely qualify him for the presidency? Every time he opens his mouth McCain just proves we shouldn't let him anywhere near the Oval Office. In this column Frank Rich looks at the McCain campaign. The column is at www.nytimes.com:

Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated by whining about "a nation of whiners." The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings , no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.

Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America’s "mental recession," Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as "almost certainly" the McCain choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Gramm said that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was "probably the most exploited worker in American history" since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the "billions" he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.

July 17, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE STRATEGY OF CAPTURED AGENCIES

Conservatives love to fulminate against "big government." But they have no problem with government that acts as a tool for their friends. For instance, you appoint people who are anti-environment to head up agencies charged with enforcing environmental regulations. Or you put a corporate lackey like Elaine Chao in charge of the Labor Department. The agency has dragged its feet repeatedly during Bush's term in investigating abuses against working people. This editorial is from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:

President Bush has filled top posts across his administration with people who do not agree with the missions of their organizations. His Environmental Protection Agency has failed to protect the environment; his Justice Department has promoted injustice.

To lead the Department of Labor, Mr. Bush appointed Elaine Chao, who took office in 2001 arguing that states should be able to opt out of the federal minimum wage — a terrible idea that would drive down wages for the lowest-paid employees. For more than seven years, Ms. Chao has run a department that has tilted toward employers and failed to properly enforce labor laws.

"RANDOM" JURY SERVICE

Today I got my fourth jury summons from Fresno County in just eight years. Fresno County has a fairly sizable population. Granted, some of those people wouldn't be eligible for jury service due to age, physical handicaps, being too young, etc. But this is still astonishing, especially since most people I know have never gotten a jury summons.

I know we're supposed to feel "privileged" by jury service. I wonder, then, why you get threatened with jail if you don't follow their orders. Some privilege. I wonder why juries will slave away on lawsuits, only to have some elitist judge reduce or throw out the judgment. We saw that recently in a case involving a female basketball coach who sued California State University, Fresno, for sexual discrimination. And I wonder why employers are not required to pay your salary when you get shanghaied into jury service. You're magically supposed to make it on $15.00 a day.

This is just another example of why Fresno County wouldn't my first choice of places to live.

July 17, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE INEQUALITY GAP

When George W. Bush sauntered off the stage at the latest summit he arrogantly crowed, "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." The United States is number one in too many bad categories. We do lead the world in contributing to greenhouse gases. We lead the world in military expenditures. We have an astonishing infant mortality rate for such a rich country. We rate well down the list for life expectancy, especially for African-Americans. There is something very wrong here. You can attribute much of it to our rotten free market economic system. This article by Leonard Doyle is at http://www.commondreams.org/:

The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.

The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being - more familiar to observers of the Third World - with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world’s prisoners.

Despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities.

July 16, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

FREE MARKET ONLY WORKS FOR SOME

Right-wingers idolize the "free market." To hear them speak, you would think we lived in a virtual Garden of Eden before there was regulation of markets. Read a little history and you find out differently, of course, but history and reading are not trademarks of right-wing "thought." You really only have to go back to the Great Depression to see what a miserable failure free markets are. It took the interventions and innovations of the New Deal to save the United States economy. Right-wingers would rather spit about "socialism" than look at the real world. We're seeing the poison fruit of free market orthodoxy now: the bank crisis, the home mortgage crisis, the health care crisis, rocketing gasoline and food costs, and the incestuous relationship between big corporations and the federal government. This column by Peter G. Gosselin is at www.latimes.com:

Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society.

"We're at a hinge point," said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who helped craft President Clinton's market-friendly agenda during the 1990s. "The strong presumption in favor of markets, which has dominated public policy since the late 1970s, has been thrown very much into question."

Now, to a degree not seen in years, politicians and outside experts are looking with favor at more, not less, government involvement in the economy.

REGULATION IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

Imagine, if you will, driving your car on roads and freeways with no rules. Everyone would do what they wanted. It would be survival of the fittest. There would be no pesky rules about speed limits and merging and stopping at lights or signs. It would be horrifying. But that is essentially what right-wingers want in the economy. We're supposed to believe that big corporations will police themselves and that the "market' will make them toe the line. It's absolute nonsense. What's more, it's a prescription for disaster. This column by Cenk Uygur is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Complete deregulation is an intellectually indefensible position. It is also the current Republican platform. We have been trained, and yes even brainwashed, into believing that the government is a bad thing and the less you have of it, the better. That is until of course your house is burning down, then all of a sudden government help -- in the form of the fire department -- seems like a pretty good idea.

The reason we have government is because it serves a role that we need in society. Police, fire department, public education, common defense and financial regulation of the markets. If you don't have a check on insider trading, the rich get richer and the average guy gets screwed. So, you need the cops of Wall Street. But this isn't just the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is every regulatory agency that watches over the financial industry to protect the interests of all of us.

Even Adam Smith realized the need for government regulation. And it is a perverse situation we find ourselves in that I even have to make the case for such fundamental and obvious points. But yet, here is the campaign for one of the major party candidates for president hiring as their top economic adviser the man who embodies this bloodlust for limitless deregulation. This is probably the one person who best represents all that is wrong with radical deregulation. His name is Phil Gramm.

July 13, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

SEE HOW THEY WHINE

Today's Fresno Bee letters section had yet another whiny, poor pitiful me letter from a right-winger who thinks the country should be partitioned by county. He claims, without any sourcing, of course, that Bush won over 2,000 counties in the 2000 election, whereas Al Gore allegedly won 600 counties or so. Of course, Al Gore actually won more votes. The counties that supported Bush are mostly inhabited by prairie dogs and tumbleweeds.

The right-wing meme of late is that they are just terribly put upon. They can't practice their "Christian" beliefs. The gays are coming and abortion is legal, oh my! Heaven forbid they should pay any taxes that might possibly benefit someone else, especially if the someone else is disadvantaged somehow. How does that jibe with the basic tenet of Christianity called the Golden Rule? Oh, never mind.

The world would be a far better place without the selfish, me first, ignorant and bigoted philosophy called conservatism.

July 10, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

ANOTHER RIGHT WING HISSY FIT

Yesterday I read a letter in The Fresno Bee by another anal-retentive right-winger upset that anyone would suggest banning fireworks. As anyone around here knows, fires have been blazing throughout California. The smoke from those fires has made bad air even worse. For people with asthma and other respiratory ailments, it has to be sheer misery.

You can always tell the prototypical nut job right-winger because they manage to slip in the word "liberal" somewhere and go on a rant about liberals denying them their freedoms. According to Mr. Brilliant, we want to ban guns and ban drilling and ban nuclear power plants and, now, even ban fireworks. Oh, the humanity!

If this guy represents right-wingers, I guess we can believe that right-wingers like dirty air, people getting slaughtered by guns, the oceans getting filled with toxic oil and other wastes from drilling, the despoliation of ANWR for oil that won't help us much at all, and nuclear plants, which are really like nuclear bombs ready to explode, in our very own neighborhoods. What visionaries they are!

On the other hand, they have no problem with interfering in people's personal lives, ripping up civil liberties, bankrupting the government, and starting immoral wars.

THE WORKING CLASS DESERVES A BREAK

A trend I've noticed over the past several years is that employers want you to possess world class skills, but they don't want to pay even decent wages and benefits. No matter how hard or well you work it's never quite enough. They find excuses to deny raises, take away benefits, or even outsource jobs. In the meantime, the richest people in the country are rolling in money. They whine about government regulation or about taxes while they live like kings. This commentary by Steven Greenhouse is at tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com:

In talking with workers--be they software engineers or hotel housekeepers, factory workers or freelancers--I often sensed a frustration, even an anger, that unfairness has muscled aside fairness in America in recent decades and especially in recent years, and it goes far beyond stratospheric C.E.O. salaries. Many workers are upset that their families have been sinking economically--median income for working-age households fell $2,375 from 2000 to 2006 (after accounting for inflation). For the typical worker, wages have inched up less than 1 percent since the most recent economic expansion began in November 2001, even as corporate profits have soared and productivity per worker has jumped more than 15 percent. And there's also widespread resentment that while middle-class and low-wage workers have been treading water, average income for the top 1 percent of households, averaging $1.1 million in annual income, has more than tripled over the past quarter century. The top 1 percent of household has more after-tax income than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.

And I hardly need to point out that for the great majority of workers, the pain has grown only worse in recent months as fuel prices, food prices and foreclosures have soared.

July 08, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

CARTER WAS RIGHT ABOUT ENERGY

It became popular in right-wing circles to suggest that the Carter administration was a massive failure and it took the "savior" Ronald Reagan to restore us to greatness. I know that I did better economically during the Carter administration. Reagan's supposed great economy wasn't all that great. One area where Jimmy Carter stands out is his vision about energy policy. The United States experienced its first oil shock in the 1970's. It should have been a wakeup call, but Ronald Reagan and right-wingers never liked to face a reality that means inconvenience or sacrifice. This article by Stephen Pizzo is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Have you forgotten what real leadership and real straight talk look and sound like? No wonder.

Well here's a refreshing refresher course. Back in 1977 the much maligned, President Jimmy Carter, showed genuine leadership and political courage, two traits almost entirely missing from today's "leaders." Following the Arab oil boycott of 1973, Carter took a cold, hard look at world oil supplies and declared them a national security threat just waiting to happen. He laid out a vision of what must be done, and done quickly to avoid just such a threat to America's robust, but excessive, lifestyle. Carter, as was his wonkish wont, laid out both his vision and his solutions in painstaking detail in a prime-time television address.

It was filled with hard truths and bitter pills, neither of which pampered Americans had (and still have) no use for and conservatives scorn as "defeatism" and "surrender." On a ship of fools it's always "full speed ahead -- and stop with the iceberg business! Yahooooooo."

July 02, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH'S TOXIC WASTE

George W. Bush, as far we know, will shuffle off the stage next January and it will be a temporary moment of celebration around the world. But the harm Bush has wrought will live after him. I'm hoping a President Obama can take us in a new progressive direction that will do something about global climate change, end this filthy war in Iraq, do something about restoring the middle class, take action on health care, and make the federal government responsive to the needs of the majority, not just a tiny elite. But Obama won't be able to work miracles. It is far easier to destroy the way Bush has than it is to build. This article by Mark Morford is at www.sfgate.com:

Let us be reminded, the Bush virus will be with us for years, generations. Aside from the shambles of Iraq and the Middle East, aside from handguns and the decided mixed blessing of the Supreme Court's recent spate of decisions, there are maneuvers and decisions we don't even know about, nefarious arrangements, a corruption so deep that normally staid historians are behaving more like alarmed climate-change scientists: We know it's going to be bad, but we just don't know how bad.

There are destroyed nations, mauled infrastructures, horribly compromised federal agencies from FEMA to the EPA, the CIA to the FCC. There is a rogue outsourced military, citizens who can no longer sue gun manufacturers, six straight years of increased poverty, untold numbers of homophobic, misogynistic judicial appointees, devastating environmental policies the consequences of which could take generations to comprehend, much less repair.

July 01, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

OH THE OUTRAGE!

On a Sunday talk show General Wesley Clark said that John McCain riding in a fighter jet didn't necessarily qualify McCain to be commander-in-chief. You would think Clark had burned the flag on national TV. McCain likes to make a big deal of his military record, which frankly isn't that distinguished. I'm sorry he was a POW and I'm definitely sorry he was tortured. No human being should be tortured. But the people displaying such outrage at General Clark's remarks seem to conveniently forget the "swift boating" of John Kerry in 2004. Attacks against Kerry were smears; General Clark's comments about McCain were simply the truth. This commentary by Zachary Roth is from the Columbia Journalism Review at http://www.cjr.org/:

So: The latest round of mock outrage—in a presidential race that has turned the tactic into an art form—now comes in response to comments made by General Wesley Clark. Appearing as a surrogate for Barack Obama on CBS’s "Face the Nation", Clark, in reference to John McCain, said

I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war…But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded—that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall.
When moderator Bob Schieffer interjected that "Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down", Clark responded: "Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had "attacked John McCain’s military service record." Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain’s combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you’d expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp.

REPUBLICAN ROLE IN HIGH GAS PRICES

The right-wing bluster these days is that Democrats and environmentalists are responsible for record high gas prices. Those Democrats and pesky environmentalists just won't allow drilling, we're told. The fact is that offshore drilling or drilling in ANWR would do little to alleviate our problem. Oil companies already have federal land leases they are not using. Even if we drilled all our offshore oil and all the oil in ANWR it would take years, and the supply would be exhausted pretty quickly. When Jimmy Carter was president we had our first oil shock and President Carter talked about conservation. People didn't want to hear it. Ronald Reagan said we didn't have to worry. If we had taken steps back then to improve fuel efficiency and break our dependence on oil, we would be in a far better position today. This commentary is from Richard H. Serlin at richardserlin.blogspot.com:

For decades Republicans have constantly blocked Democratic attempts to increase fuel mileage and many other efficiency and conservation measures. They've also constantly blocked or cut spending on alternative energy, all the while mindlessly chanting "Free market". The economics community had proven long ago that there are many situations and ways where a government role can add greatly to efficiency, wealth, and welfare, but this is a party that long ago refused to think beyond slogans. They acted as though not being simple-minded was a vice, liberal and un-American, when in fact, thinking, and believing in science, evidence, and logic is one of the things that made this country great, and the richest and strongest in the world.

Now we're paying a big price for Republican ideology in energy and so many other things. Had the Democrats not been outvoted, filibustered, and vetoed from enacting their "big government" mileage, conservation, research, and other energy measures over the last almost three decades, gasoline might be less than half its price today, and mileage more than twice as high, making the gas cost per mile less than a quarter of what it is now.

June 28, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

MISSING CARLIN

In the past few years I've seen several people I grew up with pass away. I think of people like Johnny Carson, Buck Owens, Don Knotts, Harvey Korman, Norman Mailer, and now George Carlin. I didn't know the full extent of Carlin's ideas until now, unfortunately, but it makes me admire him even more. This article by Joyce Marcel is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Carlin, bless him, was dangerous. Yes, it was Lenny Bruce who set him free, and yes, at the same time Richard Pryor was doing the same thing in a different area. But these three giants told giant truths to an America that didn't really want to hear them.

"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it," he said.

Carlin was fearless about religion.

On God: "Something is wrong. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty. crime, torture, corruption and the ice capades. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. This is not what you expect to find on the resume of a Supreme Being. It's what you expect from an office temp with a bad attitude."

BETTER USES FOR MILITARY EXPENDITURES

The fall of the Soviet Union should have ushered in a new era. We went from decades of the Cold War to suddenly being the only super power left on the planet. We heard talk then of a "peace dividend." Instead, military spending has only continued to increase. The terrorist attacks on 9/11gave the military-industrial complex another excuse to ramp up military expenditures, even though the terrorists used the most low tech weapons imaginable. The end of the petroleum age gives us another opportunity to reevaluate defense spending. True defense spending takes into account the health and wellbeing of our citizens. It takes into account the life of our planet. What we wastefully spend on weapons, military bases, and war could be redirected to developing new energy technologies, to education, to housing, and to health care. This article by David Korten is at www.alternet.org:

The United States is well positioned to take the lead among nations in renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and dismantling the means of conducting war. We account for roughly half of world military expenditures and our military expenditures account for more than half of the U.S. federal discretionary budget to the neglect of major education, health, infrastructure, and environmental needs.

Yet the only military threat to our domestic security is from a handful of terrorists armed with box cutters and a willingness to die for their cause. We face a greater danger from our own children brandishing guns in our schools than from any opposing army. If a band of terrorists were to attack us with an atomic weapon, it would likely be delivered in a suitcase or packing crate. Such threats share in common the simple fact that even the mightiest military force in the world offers no protection. The solutions depend more on strengthening our families and communities, than on increasing military budgets.

June 27, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

OFFSHORE DRILLING WON'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM

George W. Bush, John McCain, and others of the right-wing crowd are engaging in pandering of the worst sort when they advocate offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR as a solution to our energy woes. It would take years for any oil drilled offshore to have any effect. The amount of oil offshore is limited. Based on our current consumption, it's a supply that would last just a few years. The dangers to the environment are incalculable. Instead of pursuing a technology that is quickly becoming antiquated, we should devote our resources to new and clean technology. This article is from:http://southernstudies.org/

Furthermore, the problem of drilling-related pollution is not limited to the aftermath of natural disasters. Offshore oil production also brings with it the risk of spills from tanker accidents, which are devastating to ocean and shore life as well as seaside tourist economies. Then there's the chronic pollution from drilling operations. The Rainforest Action Network that over its lifetime one normally operating oil drilling rig will:* dump more than 90,000 metric tons of toxic drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the ocean;* drill between 50 and 100 wells, each of which will dump as much as 25,000 pounds of toxic metals including lead, chromium and mercury, and potent carcinogens like toluene, benzene, and xylene into the ocean; and* pollute the air as much as 7,000 cars driving 50 miles a day.

THE CASE FOR NATIONALIZATION

The Fresno Bee is a good barometer of right-wing talking points. If you read the letters page of The Bee, you can pretty much find out what Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and their ilk are bellowing out on the talk shows every day. And The Bee also features Victor Davis Hanson, an "intellectual" guru of the far right. Lately, the talking points have been calling Barack Obama a "socialist." One horrified right-winger is aghast that some members of Congress have suggested that oil should be nationalized. It's better for most of us to live without essentials like food and energy than to have any hint of "socialism," according to these fruitcakes. Capitalism hasn't been all that good to me or to countless others. Maybe a little socialism could be a welcome change. This article by Ted Rall is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The problem isn't the weak dollar or the non-existent housing market. It's capitalism. A sane government doesn't leave essential goods and services--food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education--to the vicissitudes of "magic" markets. Non-discretionary economic sectors should be strictly controlled by--indeed, owned by--the government.

Consider, on the one hand, snail mail and public education. The Postal Service and public schools both have their flaws. But what if they were privatized? It would cost a lot more than 42 cents to mail a letter from Tampa to Maui. And poor children wouldn't get an education.

Privatization, particularly of essential services, has always proven disastrous. From California's Enron-driven rotating blackouts to for-profit healthcare that has left 47 million Americans uninsured to predatory lenders pimping the housing bubble to Blackwater's atrocities in Iraq, market-based corporations' fiduciary obligation to maximize profits that is inherently incompatible with a stable economy whose goal is to provide people with a decent quality of life.

June 24, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE ENERGY PERFECT STORM

We have arrived at an important juncture in the history of the human race and our use of energy. We used fossil fuels in the 20th century and on into the 21st century. But the end of the petro age is upon us. First, the supply of oil is finite and in a few decades there will be no more oil. Second, the use of fossil fuels is not compatible with life on this planet. The evidence for human caused global climate change, mostly due to the use of fossil fuels, is everywhere around us. And yet we have the political dinosaurs on the right who believe the Good Oil Fairy will continue to deliver oil forever and that global climate change is just a nasty liberal plot. This article by Harvey Wasserman is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Contrived or otherwise, today's soaring gas prices are a tangible bonanza for Bush/McCain. Off-shore drilling would put billions in their cronies' pockets, but would not lower gas prices a single cent. Nuke power could mean billions more in radioactive lucre for reactor builders who may never deliver a single electron of electricity.

It's no accident that what Bush/McCain are NOT advocating is a massive shift to increased efficiency and renewable energy.

Prior to the Enron disaster, green power advocates proposed that some 600 megawatts of renewables and efficiency be installed in California. They said this "floor" was needed to protect the state from precisely the kind of gouging Enron then did.

But Southern California Edison's John Bryson helped kill the green power proposal. Bryson now likes to be photographed in front of photovoltaic arrays. But he used a deregulation package promising a "free market in energy" to help pay off failed reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. Then he stepped back while Enron cashed in.

June 22, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE JOHN MCCAIN SHOW

The image the media gives us of John McCain is that he's a war hero, a straight talker, and a maverick who has frequently broken from Republican party orthodoxy. They don't mention that McCain has flip-flopped on countless issues, or that he has voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time, or that he's an extremist who would outlaw abortion, or that he's a war-monger who wants to attack Iran. I don't even accept that McCain is a war hero. He even once described himself as a "war criminal" for dropping bombs on innocent people. This article by Paul Harris is at www.guardian.co.uk:

Welcome to the John McCain show 2008. It's powerful stuff, portraying McCain as the decent patriot of the middle ground and a steady hand for difficult times. For a lot of Americans - including many Democrats - it is a beguiling vision. They see a war hero whose courage was forged in a North Vietnamese POW camp. They see a maverick who spoke against the tortures of Abu Ghraib. They see a reformer who acts against lobbyists and political favours. They see a politician who has spent a lifetime serving his country and won a place in the hearts of the nation.

Now McCain is also trying to win the White House. He has taken his campaign to places far from the projected Republican road map to victory. He has spoken in the 'black belt' of rural Alabama. He has toured Appalachian coal country to talk about poverty. He has gone to the hippy enclave of Oregon to lecture on global warming. In short, he is a Republican that even liberals can love. And many do. McCain's appeal to America's vital middle ground could easily propel him to the Oval Office.

But there is another, very different side to John McCain. Away from the headlines and the stirring speeches, a less familiar figure lurks. It is a McCain who plans to fight on in Iraq for years to come and who might launch military action against Iran. This is the McCain whose campaign and career has been riddled with lobbyists and special interests. It is a McCain who has sided with religious and political extremists who believe Islam is evil and gays are immoral. It is a McCain who wants to appoint extreme conservatives to the Supreme Court and see abortion banned. This McCain has a notoriously volatile temper that has scared some senior members of his own party. If McCain becomes the most powerful man in the world it would be wise to know what lies behind his public mask, to look at the dark side of John McCain.

June 19, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

NO COASTAL DRILLING

Right-wingers frequently remind me of vultures. Use any opportunity to advance the "free market" and gouge the rest of us. George W. Bush was spouting off yesterday that we need to lift restrictions on coastal drilling. The idea is that we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil if we drill off our coasts, in protected lands, and in ANWR. It's absolute nonsense. Like so many other of Bush's proposals, it's another gift to corporate America. We are at another turning point in our history. Humans have gone from hunter gatherers to agriculturally-based economies to industrialization largely powered by fossil fuels. Now is the time to move on to a new and environmentally cleaner age. This editorial is from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:

It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas, public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the latest instance being President Bush’s decision to ask Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America’s continental shelf.

This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.

There is no doubt that a lot of people have been discomfited and genuinely hurt by $4-a-gallon gas. But their suffering will not be relieved by drilling in restricted areas off the coasts of New Jersey or Virginia or California. The Energy Information Administration says that even if both coasts were opened, prices would not begin to drop until 2030. The only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before their friends in power — Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney — exit the political stage.

BEWARE OF NUCLEAR POWER "SOLUTION"

A few decades ago nuclear power was thought to be the answer to our dreams. It was "clean" energy. We know now that nuclear power is not clean and not safe. Nuclear waste is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Even the mining of uranium to produce nuclear power is a very nasty and toxic process. John McCain, of course, is advocating nuclear power. We also shouldn't forget that nuclear plants are, in essence, ticking time bombs. If there is a meltdown toxic nuclear material can get spewed into the atmosphere. Nuclear plants would also be prime targets for terrorists. This article by Chip Ward is at www.truthout.org:

Nuclear power is now offered as an alternative to coal power. But, in actuality, Big Nuke is Big Carbon's mad-scientist cousin. Both externalize their costs: to the land, to the atmosphere, to miners, to consumers, to communities near the mines and refining facilities, and especially to future generations who will live with the long-term consequences of our short-term gains. The damage that both do is, of course, justified as necessary and unavoidable.

In addition to the ecological devastation they cause, their most compelling similarity is that both can get under your skin and make you sick. Westerners who live near uranium mines and mills will tell you that those activities can be as dirty and noxious as coal mines, coal-fired power plants, tar sand pits, and oil refineries. Cancer from inhaling coal dust feels the same as cancer from uranium dust. In the age of carbon and fission, what we refer to as "environmentalism" could just as well be called "embodimentalism," since the decisions we make about what we allow into our air, water, and soil get translated into flesh, blood, bone, nerve, and experience.

Perhaps those iconic cooling towers we picture when we think about a nuclear power plant are like industrial cathedrals, monuments to our hubris and the unsustainable materialism it generates. Our fervent faith in economic growth makes us blind to natural processes, ecological relationships, the long scales of time, and ultimate consequences.

June 18, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCAIN HAS ZERO INTEGRITY

In the 2000 presidential campaign the George W. Bush campaign did "push polling" to suggest that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. They did this in the South, where racism is a very significant factor. Even after that, McCain essentially embraced Bush. Opportunism trumped principle. The behavior has continued. McCain denounced Bush's tax cuts for the rich back in the day, but now wants his own version of tax cuts that go even beyond Bush. McCain was tortured in Vietnam, but has not supported legislation to stop torture of alleged terrorists. This column by Joe Conason is at www.observer.com:

By the time Mr. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, he had established a strong position against their regressive effects. That stance marked him as a true maverick in his own party and a straight talker who spoke for the national interest against his own personal interests. Running against George W. Bush in the 2000 G.O.P. primary, he mocked the Texas governor’s "misplaced" bonanza for the affluent.

"Sixty percent of the benefits from his tax cuts go to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans—and that’s not the kind of tax relief that Americans need," he said. Despite his wife’s inherited wealth, he criticized proposals to repeal the estate tax for the same reason, noting that such legislation "would provide massive benefits solely to the wealthiest and highest-income taxpayers in the country."

As the chance to run for president again drew closer, however, Mr. McCain shifted toward conservative orthodoxy. In 2005 he voted for cuts in capital-gains taxes that he had previously opposed, and in 2006 voted for essentially the same estate-tax repeal he had once denounced. And today, his economic platform extends to the Bush tax cuts and renders them still more regressive—and more expensive.

THE OIL BUBBLE

Today George W. Bush was pontificating that we need to drill, drill, drill to solve our gasoline price crisis. Right-wingers have their greedy little hearts set on offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR, neither of which will solve our energy problems. We are nearing the end of the fossil fuel age, and it's time to go in a new direction. But it's interesting that lack of supply is not driving this huge inflation in gasoline prices. As the author points out, if supply was the problem we would have rationing and other drastic measures. This article by Michael Fox is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

According to Rep Peter DeFazio (D-Or), the entity that owns the most oil in the United States right now is not ExxonMobil or Chevron or Valero: it’s Morgan Stanley. So what’s Morgan Stanley doing with all that oil? Speculating on the petrofraud bonanza.

The problems with the short-sightedness of this utterly stupid investment pattern are many:

1. The faster they ratchet up the cost of oil, and, in turn, the gasoline that comes from it, the faster the public will change its patterns of consumption, the demand will go down, and the bottom will fall out of the market. That is the most logical supply-and-demand scenario, which ends in Morgan Stanley left holding billions of dollars of lost equity on the oil futures contracts. Note that Ford, GM. and Toyota – so far – have shuttered factories building large SUVs and trucks (the behemoth Toyota Tundra got axed today), thus, even the opportunity to continue buying these gas guzzlers has begun to be eliminated. GM has already hybridized the most ostentatious gas sucker of them all – the Cadillac Escalade – thus more than doubling the city mileage of that vehicle.

June 15, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


WAR IS A GREAT EVIL

We often like to describe battles and wars in heroic terms. We use terms like "glory" and "honor" and "sacrifice." But the reality is that war is a great evil. It should be avoided if possible. There have been times, I believe, that war was necessary. The war against Hitler and the Axis powers is the best example. War has often been used as a geopolitical tool, though. It has been used to make money for war profiteers. It has sacrificed life unnecessarily and perhaps deprived us of people who might have made great advances in human progress. The war in Iraq is an example of war that is purely evil. It was not necessary. Its destructive effects will endure for generations. This article by Chris Hedges at www.alternet.org:

American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed within the confines of this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal tragically clash when soldiers and Marines return home. These combat veterans are often alienated from the world around them, a world that still believes in the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.

June 12, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


THE RICH ARE A BURDEN ON US

It's very well documented that over the past few decades there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to a small global elite. You tend to think of inequality mostly in terms of money. But it's so much more than that. Inequality even affects the places we can visit for recreation. Sports have been taken over by corporations and the very rich. The rich buy their "sky boxes" and other amenities and drive up prices for everyone else. The rich move into scenic areas and drive up house prices to unaffordable levels for everyone else. This article by Barbara Ehrenreich is at www.thenation.com:

Of all the crimes of the rich, the aesthetic deprivation of the rest of us may seem to be the merest misdemeanor. Many of them owe their wealth to the usual tricks: squeezing their employees, overcharging their customers and polluting any land they're not going to need for their third or fourth homes. Once they've made (or inherited) their fortunes, the rich can bid up the price of goods that ordinary people also need--housing, for example. Gentrification is dispersing the urban poor into overcrowded suburban ranch houses, while billionaires' horse farms displace rural Americans into trailer homes. Similarly, the rich can easily fork over annual tuitions of $50,000 and up, which has helped make college education a privilege of the upper classes.

There are other ways, too, that the rich are robbing the rest of us of beauty and pleasure. As the bleachers in stadiums and arenas are cleared to make way for skybox "suites" costing more than $100,000 for a season, going out to a ballgame has become prohibitively expensive for the average family. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, superrich collectors have driven up the price of artworks, leading museums to charge ever rising prices for admission.

June 09, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCAIN NO FRIEND TO VETERANS

Republicans love to use the military to further their own political ambitions. George W. Bush has used the military as a backdrop constantly, even though he has been busily slashing veterans benefits. John McCain is no better. He loves to talk about his Vietnam service and take his tough military stance on the war in Iraq, but his record is consistently anti-veteran. This article by Edward Humes is at www.madison.com:

From 2004 to 2006, the Disabled Veterans of America gave him annual scores ranging from 50 percent to 20 percent on supporting the group's legislative priorities. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave him a grade of D in its most recent analysis of voting records. The American Legion says he is dead wrong on the GI Bill, as does the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

When Sen. Barack Obama (who has averaged an 86 percent rating from the Disabled Veterans of America) criticized McCain on the GI Bill, the Arizona senator angrily suggested that Obama's status as a nonveteran rendered his opinions on military matters worthless (this standard would also discount the opinions of 85 percent of American men, 98.8 percent of American women and two-thirds of Congress). Then he invited a look at his own record by asserting, "I take a back seat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans."

THE IMMORAL LEVEL OF INEQUALITY

Thanks to the policies of people like George W. Bush the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is at the levels that existed during the infamous Gilded Age. This is no small matter. Money or the lack of money dictates almost everything about your life in this society. The kind of food you eat, the kind of housing you can afford, your transportation needs, your medical care, and the kind of education that is affordable all come down to money. We have seen policies put in place that reward the already wealthy while taking from working class Americans. This column by
Katrina Vanden Heuvel is at www.thenation.com:

The good news is that Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, quickly spoke out against the decision by Democrats not to take on the loophole after more than twenty lobbying firms worked to preserve it. At the time the campaign issued a statement saying, "If there was ever a doubt that Washington lobbyists don't actually represent real Americans, it's the fact that they stopped leaders of both parties from requiring elite investment firms to pay their fair share of taxes, even as middle-class families struggle to pay theirs. When I'm President, the American people won't have to spend record amounts on lobbying to get their voice heard in Washington. I will close tax loopholes for big corporations...."

But it will take a lot more than closing an obscene tax loophole to reverse thirty years of tax cuts for the rich, union-busting, and deregulation that promoted corporate interests at the expense of consumers--all of this bankrolled by conservatives and corporations to instill blind faith in the market as a magic elixir that can solve any problem.

The result is that we now live in a Second Gilded Age. (And The Nation will hold a name Name Our Epoch! contest starting next week. The winner will be selected by our all-star progressive panel of judges--historian Howard Zinn, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich and novelist Walter Mosley.) The richest 1 percent of Americans currently hold wealth worth nearly $16.8 trillion, $2 trillion more than the bottom 90 percent. According to the Center for American Progress , since 1979 the average income for the bottom half of American households has grown by 6 percent. In contrast, the top 1 percent of earners have seen their incomes rise by 229 percent during that same period.

June 08, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCAIN IS BUSH VERSION 2.0

John McCain advertises himself as a "straight talker" and a "maverick" who has broken from the Republican party numerous times. In fact, McCain has consistently supported Bush's policies. Mr. "Straight Talk" is in the hip pocket of Washington lobbyists. They have even ridden on his campaign bus! This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:

Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing differences over military tactics used in Iraq.

But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush’s "preemptive war" theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful "unitary executive" at home.

From McCain’s pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign’s recent embrace of Bush’s imperial presidency, American voters should realize that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the Founders’ vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.

THE POSITIVES OF HILLARY'S CAMPAIGN

My first choice for the Democratic nomination was John Edwards. When Edwards dropped out my allegiance shifted to Hillary Clinton. There were things about her campaign that irritated me. Some of what occurred will be used against Barack Obama by the Republicans. But she's intelligent, strong, and dedicated to the things she believes in. Even though she won't get the nomination, she has assumed an important place in history. She has proved that a woman should be judged on her individual accomplishments and policies and not on her gender. Women of future generations should thank her. This column by Gail Collins is at www.nytimes.com:

Over the past months, Clinton has seemed haunted by the image of the "nice girl" who gives up the fight because she’s afraid the boys will be angry if they don’t get their way. She told people she would never, ever say: "I’m the girl, I give up." She would never let her daughter, or anybody else’s daughter, think that she quit because things got too tough.

And she never did. Nobody is ever again going to question whether it’s possible for a woman to go toe-to-toe with the toughest male candidate in a race for president of the United States. Or whether a woman could be strong enough to serve as commander in chief.

Her campaign didn’t resolve whether a woman who seems tough enough to run the military can also seem likable enough to get elected. But she helped pave the way. So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before. By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

June 01, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCLELLAN DIDN'T TELL US ANYTHING NEW

From all the commotion, you'd think former White House spokesman Scott McClellan's "tell all" book gave us stunning new revelations. All McClellan really did was verify what many of us already knew, that Bush and company took us into an unnecessary war. Despite the hideous immorality of that war, McClellan claims he still feels an affection for Bush. In this column Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel look at the craven media and its failure to hold Bush accountable as Bush took us into this war. The column is at washingtonbureau.typepad.com:

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

BLEEDING OURSELVES DRY

The United States is addicted to military spending. We have bases all around the world. We have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over. We are looking at militarizing space. We have aircraft carriers and bombers and fighter planes and attack drones. There's no real enemy now except for ragtag bands of terrorists armed with low tech weapons. But military spending continues to increase. This commentary by Robert Scheer is at www.latimes.com:

The Soviets had developed the most modern arsenals, and the 9/11 hijackers were armed with box cutters, so how could we justify spending more to defeat Al Qaeda than we ever did to combat the communist enemy? That is the third-rail issue that politicians and the media dread touching because of the national security hysteria generated after the 9/11 attacks. Yet no presidential candidate can be serious about cutting the federal debt, improving education, holding down taxes or paying for any of the other things that the candidates of both parties promise without cutting military spending.


Without slashing the inflated military budget, the next president, who will inherit at least a $400-billion current-accounts deficit along with debt service on seven years of profligate military spending, will not be able to finance any of the domestic reforms that both the surviving Republican candidate and his two Democratic opponents advocate.