By Manifesto Joe
I put a question mark on that title because I think it's a proposition that may go a bit too far. There are definitely brainy conservatives, and I have had the misfortune of knowing a number of very vapid, ungrounded and ironically intolerant liberals.
But a new study does seem to establish a certain connection among factors of low IQ, social conservatism and prejudice. This story made the rounds on the Internet, but in case you didn't see it, here's a link.
Even before this study, this was not entirely new as a general observation. The English political philosopher John Stuart Mill routinely referred to British Conservatives, the Tories of the 19th century, as "the stupid party." A famous quote from Mill was something to the effect that while not all conservatives are stupid, most stupid people are conservatives.
But after 55, going on 56 years on the planet, I've also seen that advancing age does make many people more "conservative." That's not connected with stupidity, despite the inevitable loss of brain cells with age. One does become more cautious and circumspect. Some 35 years ago, I was a hard-core social libertarian, believing that any human activity in which a direct and arbitrary victim cannot be identified should be quite legal and tolerated.
I can't say I'm there anymore. I've never been to Vegas, but I've been to a few casino spots closer to here. Looking around, it was pretty easy to see the very grave social costs of legal gambling.
As for hookers, I have absolutely no personal experience with them. But I've heard of areas of the city in which I live where families have said their teenage son was approached and propositioned, in the front yard of their home, by a local prostitute. Not cool.
While there's still the argument that people are going to pursue gambling and sex-for-money anyway -- they always have -- I've come to see that it's not a bad idea to give communities the option of at least zoning such activities, so that they are legally restricted to specified areas. Over decades, I suppose I've become what could be described as a social moderate.
So I would hesitate to say that there's an entirely direct link between social conservatism and stupid people. It's characteristic of more liberal types to be cognizant of ambiguity, so I'll be "liberal" here, in that way. It's not nearly that simple, and never has been.
I would go so far as to say that, among people I am now aware of who do things like call the president "Barack Osama" and doggedly allege that he was born in Kenya, they are indeed pretty fucking stupid. I think the study is quite on the mark that there is a connection between prejudice and stupidity. And incidentally, virtually all such people are "social conservatives."
I grew up in a libertarian-style, Goldwater-Republican conservative family, so the grounding I had was much more related to neoliberal capitalist economics and a sort of 19th-century rugged individualist way of thinking about the world.
It has been asserted that people's politics and religion are generally fixed by the time they are, say, 10 years old. That was never true of me at all. To me, public philosophy is a quest that one pursues for a lifetime, and the behavior of forever thinking only what Dad and Mom taught you to think -- well, that is the true hallmark of stupidity. Whether it's a "red diaper baby" rebelling against Marxist ideas as an adult, or a Southern reactionary becoming a liberal after going to college -- that shows that at least the person is actively thinking about the issues, rather than smugly hanging onto family platitudes.
In my case, I noticed that my friends were usually more tolerant, liberal types, and that I didn't get along as well with the small-minded philistines I usually found among conservatives. Later I spent much time dwelling on economic questions -- well into my 30s, when I spent three years editing college economics textbooks. After reading all sides of such questions, I came to view laissez-faire as one undesirable extreme, and Marxism-Leninism as the other. The neo-Keynesian, mixed-economy model was the one that made the most sense to me, both historically and theoretically. It seems to be the one that truly delivers the goods to the many, not just the few.
Since libertarian-type conservatives are usually what could be described as civil libertarians, once my economic view had changed it was a very short walk toward liberalism. But I remain reluctant to wear that label. Liberals believe certain things that I do not, and am unlikely to ever embrace.
But as the American political scene has become so stupifyingly reactionary since around 1980, that simplifies things quite a bit. The bottom line has become that anybody who can't watch Fox News for 15 minutes without telling himself/herself that this is bullshit propaganda -- you become a liberal by default.
I personally prefer the term "progressive." That's a label that differentiates one from the capitalist neoliberalism that has become despised the world over, but also from the more knee-jerk sort of leftism that one sees so often among "conditioned" liberals.
In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk put forth six "canons" of conservatism that can be summarized as follows:
1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
Kirk had no use for libertarian thinking, which he associated with 19th-century classic liberalism. His most enduring book touched very little on economics at all, so what he was describing was the phenomenon of "social conservatism," which has become a powerful force in contemporary U.S. politics.
Let's take these "canons" one at a time. Some of them seem to make good sense, so why would an intelligent person take exception?
1. Muslims also believe in a transcendent order, as do Hindus. There's quite a bit of diversity on this point among Christians, and there appears to be that among other major world religions as well. Who's got the right formula? I have no idea. And I suspect that anyone who claims to have the right one is either delusional or a liar. That's one thing experience has most decidedly taught me.
2. Hard to argue with that one. In fact, it appeals to the liberal habit of seeing the world as an ambiguous and complex place, rather than a simple, structured and absolute one.
3. Ever suffered a stupid and/or foolish boss? With the world being the kind of capricious and dicey place that it is, it's not uncommon to see the most silly kinds of people sitting in exalted positions, lording it over people who are vastly superior to them on many levels. Conservative canon No. 3 has no relationship to merit, that seems certain.
4. What conservatives -- and libertarians -- routinely forget is that property is a purely human construct. It's a legal artifact that exists on paper, and routinely protects weak from strong. That's great, and I'm all for it on that level -- but then don't hypocritically turn around and argue that it exists because of any kind of natural law. It exists in spite of natural law. NATURAL LAW is survival of the fittest. If I can get the drop on you and yours, murder all of you, bury all of you in the back yard, and take all the property -- according to natural law, it's now MINE. Property rights, as enforced by society's laws, are the very rights that prevent me from doing that.
In other words, property rights are not, and have never been, absolute. They are conditional.
5. There are plenty of "customs" and "traditions" in the Roman Catholic Church. Need I say more?
6. This is another one that's hard to argue with at first. But today's conservatives seem totally out of touch with that. They want to take U.S. society back to a time (the first Gilded Age) in which 1 out of 3 Americans lived in poverty -- and that was 1 out of 2 among the elderly, since there was no pension system. In contrast, they seem to demonize the era from 1935 to 1980, in which poverty was greatly reduced and the U.S. saw its global power multiplied with the creation of our great middle class. Exactly what is "conservative" about their current position?
I suppose I've covered enough ground here for one post. Suffice it to say that I see much wisdom in the J.S. Mill quote mentioned earlier. I've known a few brilliant conservatives in my time. But I've known many more imbecilic right-wingers.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Boss Hogg Wins Big In South Carolina!
By Manifesto Joe
Well, shut my mouth! He's popular in the South!!
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who bears a resemblance to actor Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard), didn't merely win the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday. He administered a serious ass-kicking to former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, with about 40 percent of the vote to Romney's distant second at about 28 percent.
It's not that Gingrich winning in South Carolina was surprising. It was the margin of victory that was stunning. With news from Iowa that former Penn. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum was the actual winner of the Iowa caucuses, it's now definitely still a three-person race. (U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will carry a loyal libertarian following all the way to the convention, but he has no real chance at the nomination.)
The GOP dilemma
All of this seems to leave the Republican Party in a quandary -- some conservatives are calling on their peers to unite behind one candidate, namely Romney, if they are to have a good chance of voting President Barack Obama out of office. But the stalwarts on the far right aren't buying that.
They keep bolting to Gingrich and Santorum. There's a sentiment among them of anybody-but-Romney, as Romney is widely perceived as much too "moderate" for them to stomach.
Also, the questions about the money Romney has squirreled away in the Cayman Islands are likely to come back to haunt him for the duration. As one all-too-representative of the 1 percent of the superrich who've been getting ever richer at the expense of the rest of us, he has little appeal to the working-class redneck element in which the GOP has made such powerful inroads since 1980.
Santorum doesn't seem terribly sullied, but that sweetheart real estate deal will come back to haunt him, too. And then there's all the quid he's made as a lobbyist since leaving the Senate. It's not exactly the resume of a Washington outsider.
Gingrich isn't exactly a Washington outsider, either, but his reign as House bad boy began 17 years ago, and he's been out of elective office for over 13 years. His sins may be the most forgivable of the GOP contenders.
The worst of it, for evangelical types, is that he's a serial adulterer. Yes, many Americans forgave Bill Clinton for that, over and over. But there are a few differences. Clinton, for all his indiscretions, has had only one wife for decades. Boss Hogg goes through them like cars, trading in the old one for a new model after 100,000 miles and repair bills.
First he married one of his high school teachers, a woman 7 years his senior, after he graduated and became eligible. There's nothing very unusual about that age difference anymore, but one can expect a woman with a 7-year head start to show some age eventually. Boss Hogg's first wife, I've read, was hospitalized with breast cancer when he served her with divorce papers.
Then he married his second wife, erstwhile his mistress during the first divorce. Years later, he became involved with an aide who is now the current Mrs. Gingrich. Wife No. 2 now alleges publicly that Boss Hogg asked her for an "open marriage" so that he could have both her and the mistress. Eventually he asked her for a divorce -- by telephone.
It turned out that Wife No. 2 came down with some nasty illness like multiple sclerosis, which she says was exacerbated by the stress of the divorce. Seems like Boss Hogg dumps 'em just as soon as there's a problem like that.
It's the big head that's the problem, not the little one
As cold-blooded as Boss Hogg's behavior has been, that's not what personally bothers me most about him. Having a philanderer for a president doesn't disturb me much -- a few presidents regarded as "good" or "great," namely JFK and FDR, are now almost as well-known for their extramarital affairs as for their performance in office.
It's the schmuck stuff that comes out of Boss Hogg's mouth, like wanting to replace union school janitors with part-time underage kids, that I find far more disturbing. As president, I suspect that he would try to get batshit insanity like that written into law.
There's also the hypocrisy problem. Boss Hogg was going around the country giving speeches on traditional morality and family values at the time he was alleged to be pursuing an open marriage and/or divorce from Wife No. 2. And, after leading the charge to chase House Speaker Jim Wright out of office on an ethics rap over some petty book deal, Boss Hogg later gets hit with a monumental ethics judgment over -- guess what, a much bigger book deal!
In any case, Boss Hogg seems to be largely forgiven and very much back in the fray. But it's looking like anybody that the Republicans are looking over now will have a tough time taking out Obama. They've all got baggage that the president simply doesn't have.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas
Well, shut my mouth! He's popular in the South!!
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who bears a resemblance to actor Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard), didn't merely win the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday. He administered a serious ass-kicking to former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, with about 40 percent of the vote to Romney's distant second at about 28 percent.
It's not that Gingrich winning in South Carolina was surprising. It was the margin of victory that was stunning. With news from Iowa that former Penn. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum was the actual winner of the Iowa caucuses, it's now definitely still a three-person race. (U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will carry a loyal libertarian following all the way to the convention, but he has no real chance at the nomination.)
The GOP dilemma
All of this seems to leave the Republican Party in a quandary -- some conservatives are calling on their peers to unite behind one candidate, namely Romney, if they are to have a good chance of voting President Barack Obama out of office. But the stalwarts on the far right aren't buying that.
They keep bolting to Gingrich and Santorum. There's a sentiment among them of anybody-but-Romney, as Romney is widely perceived as much too "moderate" for them to stomach.
Also, the questions about the money Romney has squirreled away in the Cayman Islands are likely to come back to haunt him for the duration. As one all-too-representative of the 1 percent of the superrich who've been getting ever richer at the expense of the rest of us, he has little appeal to the working-class redneck element in which the GOP has made such powerful inroads since 1980.
Santorum doesn't seem terribly sullied, but that sweetheart real estate deal will come back to haunt him, too. And then there's all the quid he's made as a lobbyist since leaving the Senate. It's not exactly the resume of a Washington outsider.
Gingrich isn't exactly a Washington outsider, either, but his reign as House bad boy began 17 years ago, and he's been out of elective office for over 13 years. His sins may be the most forgivable of the GOP contenders.
The worst of it, for evangelical types, is that he's a serial adulterer. Yes, many Americans forgave Bill Clinton for that, over and over. But there are a few differences. Clinton, for all his indiscretions, has had only one wife for decades. Boss Hogg goes through them like cars, trading in the old one for a new model after 100,000 miles and repair bills.
First he married one of his high school teachers, a woman 7 years his senior, after he graduated and became eligible. There's nothing very unusual about that age difference anymore, but one can expect a woman with a 7-year head start to show some age eventually. Boss Hogg's first wife, I've read, was hospitalized with breast cancer when he served her with divorce papers.
Then he married his second wife, erstwhile his mistress during the first divorce. Years later, he became involved with an aide who is now the current Mrs. Gingrich. Wife No. 2 now alleges publicly that Boss Hogg asked her for an "open marriage" so that he could have both her and the mistress. Eventually he asked her for a divorce -- by telephone.
It turned out that Wife No. 2 came down with some nasty illness like multiple sclerosis, which she says was exacerbated by the stress of the divorce. Seems like Boss Hogg dumps 'em just as soon as there's a problem like that.
It's the big head that's the problem, not the little one
As cold-blooded as Boss Hogg's behavior has been, that's not what personally bothers me most about him. Having a philanderer for a president doesn't disturb me much -- a few presidents regarded as "good" or "great," namely JFK and FDR, are now almost as well-known for their extramarital affairs as for their performance in office.
It's the schmuck stuff that comes out of Boss Hogg's mouth, like wanting to replace union school janitors with part-time underage kids, that I find far more disturbing. As president, I suspect that he would try to get batshit insanity like that written into law.
There's also the hypocrisy problem. Boss Hogg was going around the country giving speeches on traditional morality and family values at the time he was alleged to be pursuing an open marriage and/or divorce from Wife No. 2. And, after leading the charge to chase House Speaker Jim Wright out of office on an ethics rap over some petty book deal, Boss Hogg later gets hit with a monumental ethics judgment over -- guess what, a much bigger book deal!
In any case, Boss Hogg seems to be largely forgiven and very much back in the fray. But it's looking like anybody that the Republicans are looking over now will have a tough time taking out Obama. They've all got baggage that the president simply doesn't have.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
As South Carolina Nears: Just When You Think He's Found Bottom, Perry Digs Deeper
By Manifesto Joe
Texas Gov. Rick "El Pendejo" Perry is staying in the presidential race even though few people take him seriously anymore. With his latest ploy, it looks as though he's trying to outflank Romney by being a Republican Party bottom-feeder, scraping up as much of the right-wing Gothic vote as he can.
This time, El Pendejo seems to be defending the four Marines shown, in a widely circulated video, peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
These were just kids who made a mistake, he says. Here's a link to a story on the subject.
Well, at least the Marines in question didn't piss on these bodies until after the enemy fighters were dead. Perhaps in certain fraternities, this is a hazing practice that occurs while the freshman pledges are still very much alive.
El Pendejo saved his criticism for the Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who condemned this asinine video. Their condemnations, he said, were "over-the-top" and show disdain for the military. While he seemed to stop short of endorsing urination on corpses as a display of patriotism, it seemed more than a bit twisted for him to direct his stream toward those condemning this sort of desecration.
On a mission from God?
Right before the Iowa caucuses in which he fared so poorly, El Pendejo told reporters that he would abandon his presidential bid if God tells him to do so. I suppose we are to gather from this that he and God are on regular speaking terms.
Come off it, El Pendejo. Some key Religious Right figures recently met here in Texas and voted to endorse Rick Santorum for president. Evidently, God whispered to these holier-than-thou types that a sleaze bucket with a brain is better than a sleaze bucket without one.
Anyway, it looks like God told him to forge ahead, and his utterances seem to reek more of desperation with each new one. It looks like one more hammering, in South Carolina, will be needed for El Pendejo to finally hear "the Voice."
I can't say whether God is talking, but I am, and so are a lot of other embarrassed Texans. El Pendejo -- please, please quit.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Texas Gov. Rick "El Pendejo" Perry is staying in the presidential race even though few people take him seriously anymore. With his latest ploy, it looks as though he's trying to outflank Romney by being a Republican Party bottom-feeder, scraping up as much of the right-wing Gothic vote as he can.
This time, El Pendejo seems to be defending the four Marines shown, in a widely circulated video, peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
These were just kids who made a mistake, he says. Here's a link to a story on the subject.
Well, at least the Marines in question didn't piss on these bodies until after the enemy fighters were dead. Perhaps in certain fraternities, this is a hazing practice that occurs while the freshman pledges are still very much alive.
El Pendejo saved his criticism for the Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who condemned this asinine video. Their condemnations, he said, were "over-the-top" and show disdain for the military. While he seemed to stop short of endorsing urination on corpses as a display of patriotism, it seemed more than a bit twisted for him to direct his stream toward those condemning this sort of desecration.
On a mission from God?
Right before the Iowa caucuses in which he fared so poorly, El Pendejo told reporters that he would abandon his presidential bid if God tells him to do so. I suppose we are to gather from this that he and God are on regular speaking terms.
Come off it, El Pendejo. Some key Religious Right figures recently met here in Texas and voted to endorse Rick Santorum for president. Evidently, God whispered to these holier-than-thou types that a sleaze bucket with a brain is better than a sleaze bucket without one.
Anyway, it looks like God told him to forge ahead, and his utterances seem to reek more of desperation with each new one. It looks like one more hammering, in South Carolina, will be needed for El Pendejo to finally hear "the Voice."
I can't say whether God is talking, but I am, and so are a lot of other embarrassed Texans. El Pendejo -- please, please quit.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, January 9, 2012
You're Embarrassing Texans: Time For Rick "El Pendejo" Perry To Quit The Race
By Manifesto Joe
I'm very embarrassed that "we" even elected him governor. (I use the editorial "we," because I would never have voted for him even for dogcatcher.) Rick "El Pendejo" Perry has regularly and predictably embarrassed himself in debate after debate, against competitors who -- let's face it, there are probably no Mensans among these dolts. No, not even Gingrich. (He's been aptly described as a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like.)
Rick Perry didn't make quite as gaping an asshole of himself as usual in Saturday night's debate, from all accounts. But he still managed to look the most stupid among a rather dim group.
Calls Obama "a socialist"
I can see now why this fool made a D in intro-level economics at Texas A&M. He doesn't appear to know what a socialist is.
The dictionary definition of socialism is: "any of the various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of the society or the community sharing in the work and the products."
What Governor Goodhair seems to base this on is that Obama advocates a system of progressive taxation at the federal level, and the idea that "Obamacare" entails a sort of government takeover of the U.S. health-care system.
Regarding progressive taxation, Obama is on record as advocating a return to the Clinton-era rates of income tax, which featured a marginal rate of 39.6% at the very top bracket for the richest Americans.
If this makes Obama a "socialist," then Dwight Eisenhower must have been a Maoist revolutionary. There was a marginal rate of 91% during his very staid 1950s Republican administration. And Dick Nixon must certainly have been a Marxist-Leninist of some sort. There was a 70% marginal rate while he was president, and he actually had some good words for the idea of a guaranteed annual income for Americans.
Redistribution of income is a trend that works in more than one way, you see, with the rich usually faring much better at it, especially at the state and local levels. It does not define socialism, not in the least.
And "Obamacare" is essentially "Romneycare" implemented at the national level. Private insurers, and private, self-employed doctors and other health professionals, are at the core of such a system. The House of Representatives, then Democratic-controlled, actually voted narrowly for a "public option," but that couldn't get through the Senate, thanks to the faux Democrats who held the balance of that "majority" at the time. Single-payer, the closest thing to "socialism" that has ever been discussed, wasn't even on the table. And even if it had been, doctors would have remained private and self-employed, not government employees as one finds in certain national health-care systems in other developed countries.
So, this falls vastly short of any reasonable definition of "socialism" as well.
It's a huge embarrassment to Texans to have such a drooling Aggie boob attempting to grab some of the limelight at the national level. Come home, El Pendejo -- things are going to go badly enough for you over the next three years.
Wants to send U.S. troops back to Iraq? Why don't we just send his moronic ass there?
He has often seemed to want to be president of his own little separate fiefdom of a country. Let's send his ass over there and let him run for office! When thanking the voters of that unfortunate country, I suspect it would go like, "I'd like to thank the voters here who cast ballots for me -- the Shiites, the Christians, and -- oh, what's that other bunch?"
I don't know what he's hanging on for over here, other than that he might want to be named secretary of one of those federal departments he wants to eliminate. Maybe then he could remember all three.
Give it up, El Pendejo, and just come home and serve out your term, if the courts will let you. You've brought enough shame to a state that already has far too much imbecility to answer for. Quit now, and come home.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I'm very embarrassed that "we" even elected him governor. (I use the editorial "we," because I would never have voted for him even for dogcatcher.) Rick "El Pendejo" Perry has regularly and predictably embarrassed himself in debate after debate, against competitors who -- let's face it, there are probably no Mensans among these dolts. No, not even Gingrich. (He's been aptly described as a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like.)
Rick Perry didn't make quite as gaping an asshole of himself as usual in Saturday night's debate, from all accounts. But he still managed to look the most stupid among a rather dim group.
Calls Obama "a socialist"
I can see now why this fool made a D in intro-level economics at Texas A&M. He doesn't appear to know what a socialist is.
The dictionary definition of socialism is: "any of the various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of the society or the community sharing in the work and the products."
What Governor Goodhair seems to base this on is that Obama advocates a system of progressive taxation at the federal level, and the idea that "Obamacare" entails a sort of government takeover of the U.S. health-care system.
Regarding progressive taxation, Obama is on record as advocating a return to the Clinton-era rates of income tax, which featured a marginal rate of 39.6% at the very top bracket for the richest Americans.
If this makes Obama a "socialist," then Dwight Eisenhower must have been a Maoist revolutionary. There was a marginal rate of 91% during his very staid 1950s Republican administration. And Dick Nixon must certainly have been a Marxist-Leninist of some sort. There was a 70% marginal rate while he was president, and he actually had some good words for the idea of a guaranteed annual income for Americans.
Redistribution of income is a trend that works in more than one way, you see, with the rich usually faring much better at it, especially at the state and local levels. It does not define socialism, not in the least.
And "Obamacare" is essentially "Romneycare" implemented at the national level. Private insurers, and private, self-employed doctors and other health professionals, are at the core of such a system. The House of Representatives, then Democratic-controlled, actually voted narrowly for a "public option," but that couldn't get through the Senate, thanks to the faux Democrats who held the balance of that "majority" at the time. Single-payer, the closest thing to "socialism" that has ever been discussed, wasn't even on the table. And even if it had been, doctors would have remained private and self-employed, not government employees as one finds in certain national health-care systems in other developed countries.
So, this falls vastly short of any reasonable definition of "socialism" as well.
It's a huge embarrassment to Texans to have such a drooling Aggie boob attempting to grab some of the limelight at the national level. Come home, El Pendejo -- things are going to go badly enough for you over the next three years.
Wants to send U.S. troops back to Iraq? Why don't we just send his moronic ass there?
He has often seemed to want to be president of his own little separate fiefdom of a country. Let's send his ass over there and let him run for office! When thanking the voters of that unfortunate country, I suspect it would go like, "I'd like to thank the voters here who cast ballots for me -- the Shiites, the Christians, and -- oh, what's that other bunch?"
I don't know what he's hanging on for over here, other than that he might want to be named secretary of one of those federal departments he wants to eliminate. Maybe then he could remember all three.
Give it up, El Pendejo, and just come home and serve out your term, if the courts will let you. You've brought enough shame to a state that already has far too much imbecility to answer for. Quit now, and come home.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Thoughts On The New Year: How Quickly Libertarians Forget
By Manifesto Joe
Ironically, they got bailed out, too
It's been three years, two months and five days since Jacob Weisberg's essay "The Libertarians' Lament" appeared in Newsweek magazine's edition of that date. On that day -- Oct. 27, 2008 -- the country had gone into an economic recession that could easily have been a worldwide depression, but for the meddling of the federal government.
Now, as 2012 is dawning, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the Libertarian Party nominee for president in 1988, appears to have a good chance of at least placing second in the Republican Iowa caucuses. And, his ideology of "free markets" and absolutely minimal government seems to have as many adherents as ever.
Not much more than three years ago, Weisberg mordantly commented:
The best thing you can say about libertarians is that, because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be principled and rigorous in their logic. ... "Let failed banks fail" is the purist line. This approach would be a wonderful lesson in personal responsibility, creating thousands of new jobs in the soup kitchen and food-pantry industry.
Here's a link to the entire Weisberg article. The Daily Beast got it early and ran it online on Oct. 17.
I was agreeing wholeheartedly with everything Weisberg wrote as I first read this piece. Now, unfortunately, it's clear that he was wrong in his last paragraph:
The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from Ayn Rand. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk and misallocate resources — or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight constitute a recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and this time, there will be no bailout.
I wouldn't say he was wrong at all in his assessment of libertarians. It was actually his last sentence in which he erred.
The federal bailout of the big, floundering banks was not, as it turned out, merely that. It was also a bailout of "free market" ideology, even as the government's action belied that worldview.
We didn't get to see the reality of what would have happened had the "free market" been left to its own devices, as the Hoover administration did in 1932. Not that things didn't go badly for a lot of people -- but we didn't see 25% unemployment, mass evictions, soup kitchens, widespread hunger, food riots, or any of the other symptoms of economic disaster on the scale that Americans saw back then.
It now looks as though it will be necessary for people to see such things, yet again, for the lesson to be learned, at least for another 75 years. Talk to many Americans now, and it's as though the events of the past few years never really happened.
Ideologues tend to shape their worldview based on preconceived ideas, rather than on observable facts. The world can behave as it will -- no matter to libertarians. I'm reminded of a scene from the movie Citizen Kane, in which Kane is being told off by Boss Jim W. Gettys. "You're going to need more than one lesson," Gettys tells Kane. "And you're going to get more than one lesson."
Sadly, this time the libertarians didn't endure the lesson they so richly deserved. And the reason they didn't get it is that too many other people throughout the world would have suffered at least equally, and probably worse, for libertarian follies. It was their insistence upon deregulation of financial markets that pretty clearly caused the debacle of 2007-08.
But, how soon most people forget, especially the victims of ideology. Markets do not regulate themselves, yet Americans are once more being implored to let them do that voodoo that markets are alleged to do so well. Many are buying it, despite the repeated lessons of history.
There are some simple reasons for this. The financial industry is very powerful, and certain people are making as much money as ever off a relatively unregulated system. For obvious reasons, they want to keep it that way, and will twist the necessary arms.
But perhaps the most frustrating reason is that, generally, a full-fledged disaster has to happen before people will modify their worldview. That happened to many Americans in the 1930s, but this time the debacle wasn't profound enough to have that effect on enough people, and certainly not on economic libertarians. Bailouts gave them the opportunity to rewrite history in their own way.
Once more, the mixed system of regulated welfare capitalism appears to have become a victim of its own success. Shielding people from the worst excesses of "free-market" capitalism has ironically worked against the mixed system, not in its favor.
The libertarians were due for a lesson that they didn't get. Apparently, it's going to take a far more profound disaster than the Great Recession to make realists out of ideologues. The Great Depression II?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Ironically, they got bailed out, too
It's been three years, two months and five days since Jacob Weisberg's essay "The Libertarians' Lament" appeared in Newsweek magazine's edition of that date. On that day -- Oct. 27, 2008 -- the country had gone into an economic recession that could easily have been a worldwide depression, but for the meddling of the federal government.
Now, as 2012 is dawning, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the Libertarian Party nominee for president in 1988, appears to have a good chance of at least placing second in the Republican Iowa caucuses. And, his ideology of "free markets" and absolutely minimal government seems to have as many adherents as ever.
Not much more than three years ago, Weisberg mordantly commented:
The best thing you can say about libertarians is that, because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be principled and rigorous in their logic. ... "Let failed banks fail" is the purist line. This approach would be a wonderful lesson in personal responsibility, creating thousands of new jobs in the soup kitchen and food-pantry industry.
Here's a link to the entire Weisberg article. The Daily Beast got it early and ran it online on Oct. 17.
I was agreeing wholeheartedly with everything Weisberg wrote as I first read this piece. Now, unfortunately, it's clear that he was wrong in his last paragraph:
The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from Ayn Rand. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk and misallocate resources — or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight constitute a recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and this time, there will be no bailout.
I wouldn't say he was wrong at all in his assessment of libertarians. It was actually his last sentence in which he erred.
The federal bailout of the big, floundering banks was not, as it turned out, merely that. It was also a bailout of "free market" ideology, even as the government's action belied that worldview.
We didn't get to see the reality of what would have happened had the "free market" been left to its own devices, as the Hoover administration did in 1932. Not that things didn't go badly for a lot of people -- but we didn't see 25% unemployment, mass evictions, soup kitchens, widespread hunger, food riots, or any of the other symptoms of economic disaster on the scale that Americans saw back then.
It now looks as though it will be necessary for people to see such things, yet again, for the lesson to be learned, at least for another 75 years. Talk to many Americans now, and it's as though the events of the past few years never really happened.
Ideologues tend to shape their worldview based on preconceived ideas, rather than on observable facts. The world can behave as it will -- no matter to libertarians. I'm reminded of a scene from the movie Citizen Kane, in which Kane is being told off by Boss Jim W. Gettys. "You're going to need more than one lesson," Gettys tells Kane. "And you're going to get more than one lesson."
Sadly, this time the libertarians didn't endure the lesson they so richly deserved. And the reason they didn't get it is that too many other people throughout the world would have suffered at least equally, and probably worse, for libertarian follies. It was their insistence upon deregulation of financial markets that pretty clearly caused the debacle of 2007-08.
But, how soon most people forget, especially the victims of ideology. Markets do not regulate themselves, yet Americans are once more being implored to let them do that voodoo that markets are alleged to do so well. Many are buying it, despite the repeated lessons of history.
There are some simple reasons for this. The financial industry is very powerful, and certain people are making as much money as ever off a relatively unregulated system. For obvious reasons, they want to keep it that way, and will twist the necessary arms.
But perhaps the most frustrating reason is that, generally, a full-fledged disaster has to happen before people will modify their worldview. That happened to many Americans in the 1930s, but this time the debacle wasn't profound enough to have that effect on enough people, and certainly not on economic libertarians. Bailouts gave them the opportunity to rewrite history in their own way.
Once more, the mixed system of regulated welfare capitalism appears to have become a victim of its own success. Shielding people from the worst excesses of "free-market" capitalism has ironically worked against the mixed system, not in its favor.
The libertarians were due for a lesson that they didn't get. Apparently, it's going to take a far more profound disaster than the Great Recession to make realists out of ideologues. The Great Depression II?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Are The Holidays A Bad Time To Remind People That The Iraq War Was A Hideously Bad Idea?
By Manifesto Joe
Tact was never one of my strong suits, so I'm going to go ahead with this. It isn't that the U.S. has never "invaded" another country -- I think the Vietnamese can attest to that. But at least the anti-communist crusade of the later 20th century was a somewhat better reason for that adventure, ill-fated though it clearly was.
This time, it was so transparent, I can't see how the Il Doofus administration got a majority of the Senate, including Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, to more or less vote for this fiasco.
It didn't turn out to be quite as expensive as Vietnam, at least from the U.S. standpoint. There were a lot more amputees and nonfatal casualties, thanks to better medicine and equipment. U.S. deaths numbered less than 4,500, compared with about 58,000 in Vietnam. The proportion of wounded and permanently maimed, relatively weighed, was larger.
But a sad thing is that brown-skinned people don't seem to count in the eyes of many Americans. It's estimated that well over 1.4 million Iraqis died as a result of the war of 2003-2011. And, if you check the news posts of recent days, they are still dying. Apparently it isn't over yet.
I never believed any of the administration's bullshit, not from day one. They had no "weapons of mass destruction" credibly documented, and as it turns out, they never did. The administration basically forced Colin Powell to lie to the U.N. to engineer some kind of credibility for this invasion. And it's not hard to see what the true motives were.
It's certainly true that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, one who largely modeled himself and his methods after Josef Stalin. But, Saddam was being very effectively contained. And, the U.S. has not merely tolerated, but has actually supported, many dictators just as bad. Those despots just happened to be rancid butter on the right side of the bread.
The widespread political ignorance of the American people was largely exposed during this farce. If you went out onto the streets and asked many Americans about this war -- to this day, many would mistakenly say that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, that he actually did have "weapons of mass destruction," that he was linked to the 9/11 attacks, and so forth. The Il Doofus administration eventually had to admit that none of the above was true. But the propagandists had worked the damage long before that, and lastingly.
Now, as I understand it, the U.S. has basically put the Iraqi government du jour on notice that no more military intervention is forthcoming. There will be diplomatic missions, but even if Iraq erupts into civil war in coming months -- which looks entirely possible -- no more American troops will be sent in.
The rotten motive for this war is not hard to see, and never really was. If this place hadn't had oil, and lots of it, no one in the Western world would have considered them worth a second thought.
Problem was, how to get it out. Pipelines would get blown up. There were never enough workers to get it out of the fields, anyway. A place with so much turmoil isn't a place that can be a reliable supplier of cheap oil to a dominating Western nation.
So, it turned out to be, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi phrased it, "a grotesque mistake."
A lot of people thought that Barack Obama, once in the presidency, should have hastened U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. After all, he'd opposed the invasion from the start, to his credit. But Obama apparently felt that he had to take the advice of experienced military minds, and then proceed with a withdrawal slowly. After nearly three years, it has only recently been concluded. (Well, sort of. There are still a hell of a lot of "advisers" there.)
A sad thing for Obama is that, if civil war does indeed erupt in Iraq in coming months, Obama's Republican rivals will probably depict him as weak, that he pulled the troops out too soon, and that he shouldn't have announced a specific timetable. But if he decides to be a "hawk" and send U.S. troops back there, then he'd be a reckless warmonger. You can't win when confronted with fools.
Something I ran into along the way, as a center-left blogger, is the argument that the "surge" worked. What the "surge" appears to have done was to simply drive the Iraqi insurgency into hiding, with them waiting for the U.S. exit, then to re-emerge. Now, absent a U.S. occupation, it looks like they're coming back out. And they were always going to, no matter how long it took. When it's your country, you're usually willing to wait.
I am profoundly sad, not only for those Americans who died in this nasty desert, but also for those who left arms, legs and minds behind in the horrific slaughter. And I have numerically more sorrow for the many, many more Iraqis who died and were exiled, some perhaps never to return.
I am reminded of an old U.S. literary debate between poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish and poet and literary critic Malcolm Cowley.
MacLeish, who served as an officer in World War I, argued that there was a just cause that Americans died for during that war. But looking back, how much difference was there, essentially, between the Britain-France alliance, and the Kaiser's Germany?
Cowley was with the American Field Service during the war. His argument back was, basically, that they (Americans) died for nothing. I fear that he was right.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tact was never one of my strong suits, so I'm going to go ahead with this. It isn't that the U.S. has never "invaded" another country -- I think the Vietnamese can attest to that. But at least the anti-communist crusade of the later 20th century was a somewhat better reason for that adventure, ill-fated though it clearly was.
This time, it was so transparent, I can't see how the Il Doofus administration got a majority of the Senate, including Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, to more or less vote for this fiasco.
It didn't turn out to be quite as expensive as Vietnam, at least from the U.S. standpoint. There were a lot more amputees and nonfatal casualties, thanks to better medicine and equipment. U.S. deaths numbered less than 4,500, compared with about 58,000 in Vietnam. The proportion of wounded and permanently maimed, relatively weighed, was larger.
But a sad thing is that brown-skinned people don't seem to count in the eyes of many Americans. It's estimated that well over 1.4 million Iraqis died as a result of the war of 2003-2011. And, if you check the news posts of recent days, they are still dying. Apparently it isn't over yet.
I never believed any of the administration's bullshit, not from day one. They had no "weapons of mass destruction" credibly documented, and as it turns out, they never did. The administration basically forced Colin Powell to lie to the U.N. to engineer some kind of credibility for this invasion. And it's not hard to see what the true motives were.
It's certainly true that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, one who largely modeled himself and his methods after Josef Stalin. But, Saddam was being very effectively contained. And, the U.S. has not merely tolerated, but has actually supported, many dictators just as bad. Those despots just happened to be rancid butter on the right side of the bread.
The widespread political ignorance of the American people was largely exposed during this farce. If you went out onto the streets and asked many Americans about this war -- to this day, many would mistakenly say that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, that he actually did have "weapons of mass destruction," that he was linked to the 9/11 attacks, and so forth. The Il Doofus administration eventually had to admit that none of the above was true. But the propagandists had worked the damage long before that, and lastingly.
Now, as I understand it, the U.S. has basically put the Iraqi government du jour on notice that no more military intervention is forthcoming. There will be diplomatic missions, but even if Iraq erupts into civil war in coming months -- which looks entirely possible -- no more American troops will be sent in.
The rotten motive for this war is not hard to see, and never really was. If this place hadn't had oil, and lots of it, no one in the Western world would have considered them worth a second thought.
Problem was, how to get it out. Pipelines would get blown up. There were never enough workers to get it out of the fields, anyway. A place with so much turmoil isn't a place that can be a reliable supplier of cheap oil to a dominating Western nation.
So, it turned out to be, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi phrased it, "a grotesque mistake."
A lot of people thought that Barack Obama, once in the presidency, should have hastened U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. After all, he'd opposed the invasion from the start, to his credit. But Obama apparently felt that he had to take the advice of experienced military minds, and then proceed with a withdrawal slowly. After nearly three years, it has only recently been concluded. (Well, sort of. There are still a hell of a lot of "advisers" there.)
A sad thing for Obama is that, if civil war does indeed erupt in Iraq in coming months, Obama's Republican rivals will probably depict him as weak, that he pulled the troops out too soon, and that he shouldn't have announced a specific timetable. But if he decides to be a "hawk" and send U.S. troops back there, then he'd be a reckless warmonger. You can't win when confronted with fools.
Something I ran into along the way, as a center-left blogger, is the argument that the "surge" worked. What the "surge" appears to have done was to simply drive the Iraqi insurgency into hiding, with them waiting for the U.S. exit, then to re-emerge. Now, absent a U.S. occupation, it looks like they're coming back out. And they were always going to, no matter how long it took. When it's your country, you're usually willing to wait.
I am profoundly sad, not only for those Americans who died in this nasty desert, but also for those who left arms, legs and minds behind in the horrific slaughter. And I have numerically more sorrow for the many, many more Iraqis who died and were exiled, some perhaps never to return.
I am reminded of an old U.S. literary debate between poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish and poet and literary critic Malcolm Cowley.
MacLeish, who served as an officer in World War I, argued that there was a just cause that Americans died for during that war. But looking back, how much difference was there, essentially, between the Britain-France alliance, and the Kaiser's Germany?
Cowley was with the American Field Service during the war. His argument back was, basically, that they (Americans) died for nothing. I fear that he was right.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Time For Double-Dipping Governor Goodhair To Play Texas Fold 'Em
By Manifesto Joe
It would appear that his greed overwhelmed everything else, including his own very marginal intellect. Nationally, Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry has not only shown himself to be a fool, but a hypocrite as well. He should quit his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, come back home and "lawyer up" for a fight simply to remain in office here in Texas.
There appears to be an ongoing debate about the legality of Perry drawing $92,000 a year in state retirement pension at the same time that he's still being paid $150,000 a year as sitting governor of Texas. Here's a link to a Texas Tribune story about the legal pros and cons.
However this ends up at the state level, not even Republicans are likely to take him seriously at the national level, ever again. This is a guy who kept retired Texas teachers from being rehired and still draw their retirement benefits. Yet he's drawing enough "retirement" pay to cover most of the rent of the $9,900-a-month digs he's living in while the Texas Governor's Mansion is being restored. (Oh, and he doesn't pay for that, either -- the taxpayers of Texas do.)
And, this is a guy who had the nerve to bogusly compare Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, in a cheap attempt to swindle people in their prime working years out of benefits after they reach retirement age.
To our collective shame (not mine individually), Texas voters had multiple opportunities to turn this vapid opportunist out of office over the past decade. Sadly, they did not do it. Now he is bringing greater infamy to a state that already had Il Doofus (Bush 43) to answer for.
Goodhair, enough is enough. You're all through. Come home and talk to your lawyers. You're likely to need them.
Postscripts on the Republicans
The Republican field is likely to narrow a lot in coming weeks, as I anticipate that Goodhair is going to get trounced in Iowa.
Newt Gingrich, who seemed to emerge as a sort of front-runner for a while, has a talent for self-destruction. He sticks his foot in his mouth about every other time he opens it.
At the most recent debate, Gingrich said something to the effect that Palestinian school textbooks promote terrorism, and that they offer passages that go something like, "If you have 13 Jews, and nine of them are killed, how many Jews are left?"
Researchers looked into this and could find little or nothing to substantiate it. It was, at best, an exaggeration. At worst? ... well, as Mitt Romney phrased it -- "zany."
With Perry and Gingrich likely disposed of, it looks as though Mitt Romney's only real competition in the long haul is going to be -- Ron Paul, Congressman Clueless. This is a 76-year-old man whose answer to the problems of a country that's in the throes of a Second Gilded Age is to steer us passionately back to the legal and economic system that characterized the First Gilded Age, back around 1880. Even Republicans are likely to deem him far too crazy to have the nomination.
Even though Romney isn't beloved among the Republican right wing, it looks like he's going to be what they've got. I think by now it's mostly going to be a question of whom he chooses as a running mate.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It would appear that his greed overwhelmed everything else, including his own very marginal intellect. Nationally, Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry has not only shown himself to be a fool, but a hypocrite as well. He should quit his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, come back home and "lawyer up" for a fight simply to remain in office here in Texas.
There appears to be an ongoing debate about the legality of Perry drawing $92,000 a year in state retirement pension at the same time that he's still being paid $150,000 a year as sitting governor of Texas. Here's a link to a Texas Tribune story about the legal pros and cons.
However this ends up at the state level, not even Republicans are likely to take him seriously at the national level, ever again. This is a guy who kept retired Texas teachers from being rehired and still draw their retirement benefits. Yet he's drawing enough "retirement" pay to cover most of the rent of the $9,900-a-month digs he's living in while the Texas Governor's Mansion is being restored. (Oh, and he doesn't pay for that, either -- the taxpayers of Texas do.)
And, this is a guy who had the nerve to bogusly compare Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, in a cheap attempt to swindle people in their prime working years out of benefits after they reach retirement age.
To our collective shame (not mine individually), Texas voters had multiple opportunities to turn this vapid opportunist out of office over the past decade. Sadly, they did not do it. Now he is bringing greater infamy to a state that already had Il Doofus (Bush 43) to answer for.
Goodhair, enough is enough. You're all through. Come home and talk to your lawyers. You're likely to need them.
Postscripts on the Republicans
The Republican field is likely to narrow a lot in coming weeks, as I anticipate that Goodhair is going to get trounced in Iowa.
Newt Gingrich, who seemed to emerge as a sort of front-runner for a while, has a talent for self-destruction. He sticks his foot in his mouth about every other time he opens it.
At the most recent debate, Gingrich said something to the effect that Palestinian school textbooks promote terrorism, and that they offer passages that go something like, "If you have 13 Jews, and nine of them are killed, how many Jews are left?"
Researchers looked into this and could find little or nothing to substantiate it. It was, at best, an exaggeration. At worst? ... well, as Mitt Romney phrased it -- "zany."
With Perry and Gingrich likely disposed of, it looks as though Mitt Romney's only real competition in the long haul is going to be -- Ron Paul, Congressman Clueless. This is a 76-year-old man whose answer to the problems of a country that's in the throes of a Second Gilded Age is to steer us passionately back to the legal and economic system that characterized the First Gilded Age, back around 1880. Even Republicans are likely to deem him far too crazy to have the nomination.
Even though Romney isn't beloved among the Republican right wing, it looks like he's going to be what they've got. I think by now it's mostly going to be a question of whom he chooses as a running mate.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Farewell To Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011: He Was Nobody's Bitch
By Manifesto Joe
I seriously disagreed with him more than occasionally, but I have to take my hat off at least briefly to this man. He was a toady to no one.
To his credit, he cut his own intellectual path through life, without regard for what anybody else was thinking. I thought he went seriously wrong after the 9/11 attacks -- I think he got the wrong idea from that. But I can sort of understand what was happening there. He despised all fundamentalist religion, not excepting Islamic extremists from the mix. I'd say he just got a little bit detoured by them, and a bit blinded by their "opponents."
He was always his own man, first and foremost, and I have to respect that. So, Chris, maybe God isn't great. But if God is there, I hope he (or she) cuts you a decent deal. I wish you great debates in what afterlife may be. Absent that -- peace.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I seriously disagreed with him more than occasionally, but I have to take my hat off at least briefly to this man. He was a toady to no one.
To his credit, he cut his own intellectual path through life, without regard for what anybody else was thinking. I thought he went seriously wrong after the 9/11 attacks -- I think he got the wrong idea from that. But I can sort of understand what was happening there. He despised all fundamentalist religion, not excepting Islamic extremists from the mix. I'd say he just got a little bit detoured by them, and a bit blinded by their "opponents."
He was always his own man, first and foremost, and I have to respect that. So, Chris, maybe God isn't great. But if God is there, I hope he (or she) cuts you a decent deal. I wish you great debates in what afterlife may be. Absent that -- peace.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Newt 'Boss Hogg' Gingrich And Child-Labor Laws
By Manifesto Joe
The Golf Links
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
-- Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
Newt "Boss Hogg" Gingrich has a doctorate in history, so he damned sure ought to have known better than to open up this can of worms. During an address at Harvard University last month, Gingrich said that U.S. child labor laws have done "more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. ... It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in ... child laws, which are truly stupid."
Here's a link to a report on Boss Hogg's Harvard address and related issues.
Boss Hogg would essentially kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. His idea would, for example, permit school districts to bust janitors unions by replacing most of them with little kids working part time. A given campus would have an adult "master janitor" in charge of the tykes, and together they would keep the building and the grounds clean.
I might ask whether the adult "master janitor" would be required to have a green card, but I suppose that's a bit irrelevant.
Gingrich coming out for the repeal of certain child-labor laws is pretty significant since he may now be the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. It's certainly as significant as Texas Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry's bogus comparison of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme.
At a time when millions of Americans are desperate for work, it seems the height of right-wing smugness that Boss Hogg would be coming out with this position now. There aren't enough jobs for adults, yet he would have schools across the country busting the janitors unions and hiring low-wage children to replace them. Someone should remind this "historian" that FDR signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 because during the Great Depression, there were men and women desperate enough to take low-wage jobs that had long been filled by children.
Perhaps if Boss Hogg had ever known that kind of desperation in his whole life, or had known someone who had, his point of view would be different.
Personally, I spent many boring summers growing up in a small South Texas town without work, even after attaining legal age. I was 17 by the time I got my first job. Before then, since there was little to do, I helped my family by tending the vegetable garden, and spent the rest of the time watching TV, playing sandlot baseball with other kids or actually READING BOOKS. The school system I attended was barely adequate, so after some point I may have learned more at home than I did in the classroom.
And, one thing I remember vividly from childhood was an old man who had been put to work in the tobacco fields of North Carolina when he was 7. My mother's parents lived either with or near us until my grandfather died when I was 13.
This old man went to work at age 7 and worked until he was 71. The child-labor issue has much personal resonance with me, because I remember this man so well. He had a good, quick mind. He could add up a column of numbers in his head, like a savant. He was interested in politics and loved to argue, so some relatives speculated that if he'd had a chance, he might have been a good lawyer.
Radio had opened doors for him, and TV even more. He was a loyal listener to the KTRH "All-News Weekend" that originated from Houston, and was a devoted viewer of Walter Cronkite the other days of the week.
Problem was, since he only went to about three weeks of school before being put to work, he never really learned how to read.
Oh, he could handle simple things like traffic signs -- he'd been a great truck driver in his day. And, he learned how to sign his own name to documents and such. But he had to have the newspaper or letters from relatives read to him.
My grandmother, who had been to the sixth grade and qualified as literate, offered to teach him how to read. Apparently out of shame, he never took her up on it. He should have.
In any case, I got to know quite well and firsthand a victim of child labor. It condemned him to a lifetime of toil and relative poverty, and a painful awareness that he never really had much of a chance for anything better.
It's not that what Boss Hogg has in mind is quite as bad as this was -- he's proposing the legalization of part-time work for children in generally nonhazardous jobs. But I find it offensive that he would go public with this especially now, when plenty of grownups out there can't buy a job.
And, I find it offensive on behalf of a tobacco-chewing old man in overalls who would have made a terrific lawyer but never had a chance. Boss Hogg, those laws were passed so that the children of future generations wouldn't have to witness such wasted potential.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
The Golf Links
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
-- Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
Newt "Boss Hogg" Gingrich has a doctorate in history, so he damned sure ought to have known better than to open up this can of worms. During an address at Harvard University last month, Gingrich said that U.S. child labor laws have done "more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. ... It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in ... child laws, which are truly stupid."
Here's a link to a report on Boss Hogg's Harvard address and related issues.
Boss Hogg would essentially kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. His idea would, for example, permit school districts to bust janitors unions by replacing most of them with little kids working part time. A given campus would have an adult "master janitor" in charge of the tykes, and together they would keep the building and the grounds clean.
I might ask whether the adult "master janitor" would be required to have a green card, but I suppose that's a bit irrelevant.
Gingrich coming out for the repeal of certain child-labor laws is pretty significant since he may now be the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. It's certainly as significant as Texas Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry's bogus comparison of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme.
At a time when millions of Americans are desperate for work, it seems the height of right-wing smugness that Boss Hogg would be coming out with this position now. There aren't enough jobs for adults, yet he would have schools across the country busting the janitors unions and hiring low-wage children to replace them. Someone should remind this "historian" that FDR signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 because during the Great Depression, there were men and women desperate enough to take low-wage jobs that had long been filled by children.
Perhaps if Boss Hogg had ever known that kind of desperation in his whole life, or had known someone who had, his point of view would be different.
Personally, I spent many boring summers growing up in a small South Texas town without work, even after attaining legal age. I was 17 by the time I got my first job. Before then, since there was little to do, I helped my family by tending the vegetable garden, and spent the rest of the time watching TV, playing sandlot baseball with other kids or actually READING BOOKS. The school system I attended was barely adequate, so after some point I may have learned more at home than I did in the classroom.
And, one thing I remember vividly from childhood was an old man who had been put to work in the tobacco fields of North Carolina when he was 7. My mother's parents lived either with or near us until my grandfather died when I was 13.
This old man went to work at age 7 and worked until he was 71. The child-labor issue has much personal resonance with me, because I remember this man so well. He had a good, quick mind. He could add up a column of numbers in his head, like a savant. He was interested in politics and loved to argue, so some relatives speculated that if he'd had a chance, he might have been a good lawyer.
Radio had opened doors for him, and TV even more. He was a loyal listener to the KTRH "All-News Weekend" that originated from Houston, and was a devoted viewer of Walter Cronkite the other days of the week.
Problem was, since he only went to about three weeks of school before being put to work, he never really learned how to read.
Oh, he could handle simple things like traffic signs -- he'd been a great truck driver in his day. And, he learned how to sign his own name to documents and such. But he had to have the newspaper or letters from relatives read to him.
My grandmother, who had been to the sixth grade and qualified as literate, offered to teach him how to read. Apparently out of shame, he never took her up on it. He should have.
In any case, I got to know quite well and firsthand a victim of child labor. It condemned him to a lifetime of toil and relative poverty, and a painful awareness that he never really had much of a chance for anything better.
It's not that what Boss Hogg has in mind is quite as bad as this was -- he's proposing the legalization of part-time work for children in generally nonhazardous jobs. But I find it offensive that he would go public with this especially now, when plenty of grownups out there can't buy a job.
And, I find it offensive on behalf of a tobacco-chewing old man in overalls who would have made a terrific lawyer but never had a chance. Boss Hogg, those laws were passed so that the children of future generations wouldn't have to witness such wasted potential.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Rick Perry's Conscience
This is, with permission, a reprint of a post by Burr Deming of Fair and Unbalanced of Nov. 18. It's taken me a while to get around to this, but I felt it was one of the best expositions of the barbaric institution of capital punishment as it is practiced here in the state of Texas. By the way, Mr. Deming's blog is on "Joe's Hot Links" for those who want to read more.
By Burr Deming
The way he had the man killed, and how he acted later, reminded me of a long ago personal experience.
It was decades back. An elderly relative, one I love dearly, was distraught. Her Social Security check had never arrived. What would she do now? So much for her depended on that check.
Her husband was not a popular character within the family. He was pompous, preening, and had a tendency toward self serving untruth. He enjoyed spending money and forgetting to mention it to his wife. He also had a reputation of having sticky fingers.
He was sullen as I reassured her. The check was probably late. But if it was lost or stolen, she only had to report it. These things happened, and there were procedures.
The only people who had anything to worry about would be anyone who might have taken the check from her mailbox. Stolen government checks are always traced, I said, and thieves are dealt with harshly. If the check was lost a replacement check would be issued. If the check had been stolen, a replacement check would be issued and someone would later be caught and go to jail. She could count on it.
Her hard-to-take husband jumped to his feet in anger. How dare I threaten him with jail ! ! !
When wrong is done, it is often guilty action later that points to culprits. "Consciousness of guilt" is used as evidence of guilt. In some states, fleeing the police qualifies. Trying to cover up a crime can as well.
After the now infamous Susan Smith drowned her two infant children in an attempt to overcome difficulties with her boyfriend, her lawyers tried to argue a variation of an insanity defense. She had been abused as a youngster. She had an unstable childhood. She was not conscious that she was doing anything wrong when she trapped her kids in a car and let it go into a lake.
The insanity defense became pretty much impossible because she had lied about the crime. She maintained that a black man, a stranger, had hijacked her automobile with the kids inside. She tried to cover up her guilt. If she was divorced from reality or did not know it was wrong to kill her children, or was oblivious to what she had done, then why invent a story to keep it a secret? She had demonstrated a consciousness of guilt. And so she now resides at Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina.
Twenty years ago, Cameron Todd Willingham could have tried to plead insanity. He was convicted of burning up his children near Austin Texas. But he tried to make it seem as if he hadn't committed the crime. Outside the burning home, he acted like a crazy man, fighting to get back to his children, crying, begging firefighters to rescue his family. Local forensic analysts, however, concluded the fire had been set deliberately.
Willingham's contrived emotions outside his home were just part of the clumsy coverup, just like the arson itself. He did not even try a defense of insanity. What was the point? He had demonstrated a consciousness of guilt. So instead, he continued, improbably, to maintain his innocence. He was sentenced to death in 1992.
Death sentences take time and, over the years, cracks appeared in the case. It turned out the forensic analysts didn't really know much about science. One outside fire investigator after another questioned the initial conclusions. The evidence did not support the accusation of arson. Finally, one of the biggest reputations got involved. The case attracted the attention of Dr. Gerald Hurst. He was an Austin fire investigator and a scientist in his own right. He worked the case pro bono.
The case quickly became cut-and-dried. The original findings were based on ignorance and superstition. Assumptions about science that were well known to be wrong at the time were presented as fact. It was the fire science equivalent of witchcraft. Completely predictable effects of electrical faults were needlessly termed suspicious, then conclusive. It was outrageous. Dr. Hurst called it junk science. He sent his report directly to the Governor of Texas.
We have a legal system that, at present, puts severe restrictions on death sentence appeals. Guilt or innocence seldom plays a part. It's all procedural. And there were no discernible procedural errors. The courts rely on a final non-judicial appeal. A governor may issue a pardon or commute a sentence if the judicial system is unable to get close to justice.
Indications are Texas Governor Rick Perry took 4 hours less time looking over the Hurst report than the OJ jury took examining the Los Angeles mountain of evidence. Which is to say zero. He didn't take the time to read it at all.
Cameron Todd Willington's last words before his execution in 2004 was to say once again that he was innocent of killing his children.
In the years after the execution, interest began to balloon. The Hurst report began to make the rounds and it looked devastating. Texas, in particular Rick Perry, had ordered an innocent man executed, ignoring obvious evidence that had been placed in the Governor's hands.
In 2009, a review of the case was ordered by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Renown scientist Dr. Craig Beyler was put in charge. Governor Perry's ofice insisted there was plenty of evidence to indicate the executed man could be guilty. But as he looked into it, Beyler appeared increasingly skeptical about the evidence, the verdict, and the execution.
Two days before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was to meet and consider Beyler's conclusions, Governor Perry moved in. He fired three of the commissioners, and replaced the chairman. The new chairman cancelled the meeting on the execution.
It was Governor Rick Perry's coverup.
Consciousness of guilt.
By Burr Deming
The way he had the man killed, and how he acted later, reminded me of a long ago personal experience.
It was decades back. An elderly relative, one I love dearly, was distraught. Her Social Security check had never arrived. What would she do now? So much for her depended on that check.
Her husband was not a popular character within the family. He was pompous, preening, and had a tendency toward self serving untruth. He enjoyed spending money and forgetting to mention it to his wife. He also had a reputation of having sticky fingers.
He was sullen as I reassured her. The check was probably late. But if it was lost or stolen, she only had to report it. These things happened, and there were procedures.
The only people who had anything to worry about would be anyone who might have taken the check from her mailbox. Stolen government checks are always traced, I said, and thieves are dealt with harshly. If the check was lost a replacement check would be issued. If the check had been stolen, a replacement check would be issued and someone would later be caught and go to jail. She could count on it.
Her hard-to-take husband jumped to his feet in anger. How dare I threaten him with jail ! ! !
When wrong is done, it is often guilty action later that points to culprits. "Consciousness of guilt" is used as evidence of guilt. In some states, fleeing the police qualifies. Trying to cover up a crime can as well.
After the now infamous Susan Smith drowned her two infant children in an attempt to overcome difficulties with her boyfriend, her lawyers tried to argue a variation of an insanity defense. She had been abused as a youngster. She had an unstable childhood. She was not conscious that she was doing anything wrong when she trapped her kids in a car and let it go into a lake.
The insanity defense became pretty much impossible because she had lied about the crime. She maintained that a black man, a stranger, had hijacked her automobile with the kids inside. She tried to cover up her guilt. If she was divorced from reality or did not know it was wrong to kill her children, or was oblivious to what she had done, then why invent a story to keep it a secret? She had demonstrated a consciousness of guilt. And so she now resides at Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina.
Twenty years ago, Cameron Todd Willingham could have tried to plead insanity. He was convicted of burning up his children near Austin Texas. But he tried to make it seem as if he hadn't committed the crime. Outside the burning home, he acted like a crazy man, fighting to get back to his children, crying, begging firefighters to rescue his family. Local forensic analysts, however, concluded the fire had been set deliberately.
Willingham's contrived emotions outside his home were just part of the clumsy coverup, just like the arson itself. He did not even try a defense of insanity. What was the point? He had demonstrated a consciousness of guilt. So instead, he continued, improbably, to maintain his innocence. He was sentenced to death in 1992.
Death sentences take time and, over the years, cracks appeared in the case. It turned out the forensic analysts didn't really know much about science. One outside fire investigator after another questioned the initial conclusions. The evidence did not support the accusation of arson. Finally, one of the biggest reputations got involved. The case attracted the attention of Dr. Gerald Hurst. He was an Austin fire investigator and a scientist in his own right. He worked the case pro bono.
The case quickly became cut-and-dried. The original findings were based on ignorance and superstition. Assumptions about science that were well known to be wrong at the time were presented as fact. It was the fire science equivalent of witchcraft. Completely predictable effects of electrical faults were needlessly termed suspicious, then conclusive. It was outrageous. Dr. Hurst called it junk science. He sent his report directly to the Governor of Texas.
We have a legal system that, at present, puts severe restrictions on death sentence appeals. Guilt or innocence seldom plays a part. It's all procedural. And there were no discernible procedural errors. The courts rely on a final non-judicial appeal. A governor may issue a pardon or commute a sentence if the judicial system is unable to get close to justice.
Indications are Texas Governor Rick Perry took 4 hours less time looking over the Hurst report than the OJ jury took examining the Los Angeles mountain of evidence. Which is to say zero. He didn't take the time to read it at all.
Cameron Todd Willington's last words before his execution in 2004 was to say once again that he was innocent of killing his children.
In the years after the execution, interest began to balloon. The Hurst report began to make the rounds and it looked devastating. Texas, in particular Rick Perry, had ordered an innocent man executed, ignoring obvious evidence that had been placed in the Governor's hands.
In 2009, a review of the case was ordered by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Renown scientist Dr. Craig Beyler was put in charge. Governor Perry's ofice insisted there was plenty of evidence to indicate the executed man could be guilty. But as he looked into it, Beyler appeared increasingly skeptical about the evidence, the verdict, and the execution.
Two days before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was to meet and consider Beyler's conclusions, Governor Perry moved in. He fired three of the commissioners, and replaced the chairman. The new chairman cancelled the meeting on the execution.
It was Governor Rick Perry's coverup.
Consciousness of guilt.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Herman Cain Candidacy Was An Absurd Joke Anyway -- He's An Ignoramus
By Manifesto Joe
I know I'm supposed to be indignant. If his accusers are telling the truth, Herman Cain has not merely been an adulterer, but a harasser as well. In adultery, at least the other person in the affair is a consenting adult. Victims of harassment have consented to nothing.
But I was always much more concerned, and still am, that an obvious ignoramus like Cain could ever have gotten as far as he did in presidential aspirations. This is a guy who actually said in an interview on the campaign trail, with alarm, that China is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Cain would have been around 18 or 19 at the time that China completed its first successful test of an atomic bomb. They've had the A-bomb for 47 years, and have probably developed some rather sophisticated delivery systems by now.
It's no crime that, as an ordinary citizen/dorkus, Cain missed that little tidbit of information. But for someone aspiring to be president of the U.S., it's downright laughable.
In other words, the big problem there was never Herman Cain's penis. It's his brain. (Or am I being redundant?)
Unfortunately, Mr. Cain was only one of the igmos in the GOP field. There are at least two others surviving among the Republicans' "seven dwarfs," and they will be vying to pick up Cain supporters as the Iowa contest draws nearer. I don't think I need to name them.
Whither the Republicans?
After the Tea Party-backed Republican candidates triumphed so resoundingly in last year's midterm elections, I was seriously worried that the country was in a mood to elect, literally, any bozo the GOP put up against President Obama. Now it looks far less certain. Any major political party that has Newt Gingrich emerging as a frontrunner for the presidential nomination has got to be in serious trouble. They honestly don't seem to know whom the hell to nominate.
Mr. Gingrich is far from the dumbest of the Republican contenders. But he's a longtime political opportunist, and there is considerable evidence that he at least used to be a serial adulterer.
His chief rival appears to be Mitt Romney, who seems to have a squeaky-clean image but has two serious drawbacks: (1) He's a Mormon trying to win over Religious Right types who regard Mormonism as a cult, and (2) Based on his record as governor of Massachusetts, I think he could be expected to govern more as a moderate than as the hard-right ideologue that Tea Party types clearly prefer.
What will happen? My guess is that there will be a long battle through the primaries, with Romney getting the edge. Wall Street wants a winner, not a buffoon, and that small but powerful wing of the party will have its way in the end. Gingrich, who has nothing better to do, would be well-advised to accept the No. 2 spot on the ticket, if Romney will have him.
I would say that's the Republicans' best chance next year. And, looking at the electoral map, they would have to win Florida, Ohio, and one of two key Western states -- either Nevada or Colorado -- to be able to win the presidency.
Six months ago, I feared the worst. Now, I'm more optimistic. Obama's not what I would have liked to see. He's not FDR. Hell, he's not even Truman or LBJ. But looking over the Republican "seven dwarfs," I'm just about ready to be a trusting fool and say for a second time, "Yes, we can!"
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I know I'm supposed to be indignant. If his accusers are telling the truth, Herman Cain has not merely been an adulterer, but a harasser as well. In adultery, at least the other person in the affair is a consenting adult. Victims of harassment have consented to nothing.
But I was always much more concerned, and still am, that an obvious ignoramus like Cain could ever have gotten as far as he did in presidential aspirations. This is a guy who actually said in an interview on the campaign trail, with alarm, that China is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Cain would have been around 18 or 19 at the time that China completed its first successful test of an atomic bomb. They've had the A-bomb for 47 years, and have probably developed some rather sophisticated delivery systems by now.
It's no crime that, as an ordinary citizen/dorkus, Cain missed that little tidbit of information. But for someone aspiring to be president of the U.S., it's downright laughable.
In other words, the big problem there was never Herman Cain's penis. It's his brain. (Or am I being redundant?)
Unfortunately, Mr. Cain was only one of the igmos in the GOP field. There are at least two others surviving among the Republicans' "seven dwarfs," and they will be vying to pick up Cain supporters as the Iowa contest draws nearer. I don't think I need to name them.
Whither the Republicans?
After the Tea Party-backed Republican candidates triumphed so resoundingly in last year's midterm elections, I was seriously worried that the country was in a mood to elect, literally, any bozo the GOP put up against President Obama. Now it looks far less certain. Any major political party that has Newt Gingrich emerging as a frontrunner for the presidential nomination has got to be in serious trouble. They honestly don't seem to know whom the hell to nominate.
Mr. Gingrich is far from the dumbest of the Republican contenders. But he's a longtime political opportunist, and there is considerable evidence that he at least used to be a serial adulterer.
His chief rival appears to be Mitt Romney, who seems to have a squeaky-clean image but has two serious drawbacks: (1) He's a Mormon trying to win over Religious Right types who regard Mormonism as a cult, and (2) Based on his record as governor of Massachusetts, I think he could be expected to govern more as a moderate than as the hard-right ideologue that Tea Party types clearly prefer.
What will happen? My guess is that there will be a long battle through the primaries, with Romney getting the edge. Wall Street wants a winner, not a buffoon, and that small but powerful wing of the party will have its way in the end. Gingrich, who has nothing better to do, would be well-advised to accept the No. 2 spot on the ticket, if Romney will have him.
I would say that's the Republicans' best chance next year. And, looking at the electoral map, they would have to win Florida, Ohio, and one of two key Western states -- either Nevada or Colorado -- to be able to win the presidency.
Six months ago, I feared the worst. Now, I'm more optimistic. Obama's not what I would have liked to see. He's not FDR. Hell, he's not even Truman or LBJ. But looking over the Republican "seven dwarfs," I'm just about ready to be a trusting fool and say for a second time, "Yes, we can!"
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Disgusted With Black Friday And Other Thanksgiving Excesses? Check Out Andy Borowitz
By Manifesto Joe (Well, sort of)
The Walmart pepper-spray incident in California was just one more of many reasons for Americans to feel ashamed about Black Friday. If there is no other reason for us to be embarrassed about being residents of the U.S., this is it.
I can't equal this man's one-liner humor, so I give you Mr. Andy Borowitz!
How to cut a turkey the Republican way: give 1% of your guests 99% of the meat.
Celebrate Thanksgiving the American way: spend money you don't have on Chinese products.
Here's a Thanksgiving diet tip: this year, don't eat like such a fucking pig.
Rick Perry says as President he would pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving and execute an innocent man instead.
BREAKING: US to Deploy Walmart Shoppers in Afghanistan.
The NBA deal is an inspiring story of millionaires finding common ground with billionaires.
BREAKING: FDA Declares Rick Perry a Vegetable.
As Egyptians risk their lives for new government, Americans bravely do the same for new flat screens.
My immigration proposal: we let illegal immigrants stay here but Mexico has to take our presidential candidates.
Besides pepper-spraying protesters and not arresting football coaches, what exactly do campus police do?
China may lead us in math and science, but we are way ahead of them in shitty vampire movies.
Want more? Andy is on Facebook and Twitter!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
The Walmart pepper-spray incident in California was just one more of many reasons for Americans to feel ashamed about Black Friday. If there is no other reason for us to be embarrassed about being residents of the U.S., this is it.
I can't equal this man's one-liner humor, so I give you Mr. Andy Borowitz!
How to cut a turkey the Republican way: give 1% of your guests 99% of the meat.
Celebrate Thanksgiving the American way: spend money you don't have on Chinese products.
Here's a Thanksgiving diet tip: this year, don't eat like such a fucking pig.
Rick Perry says as President he would pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving and execute an innocent man instead.
BREAKING: US to Deploy Walmart Shoppers in Afghanistan.
The NBA deal is an inspiring story of millionaires finding common ground with billionaires.
BREAKING: FDA Declares Rick Perry a Vegetable.
As Egyptians risk their lives for new government, Americans bravely do the same for new flat screens.
My immigration proposal: we let illegal immigrants stay here but Mexico has to take our presidential candidates.
Besides pepper-spraying protesters and not arresting football coaches, what exactly do campus police do?
China may lead us in math and science, but we are way ahead of them in shitty vampire movies.
Want more? Andy is on Facebook and Twitter!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Myth Of The Free Market, Part II: Steve Forbes Needs His Cranium Occupied
By Manifesto Joe
Recently, Steve Forbes joined Sarah Palin in saying something to the effect that the Occupy protesters need to go occupy Congress, not Wall Street. According to reports, the one-time Republican presidential candidate said that the protesters need to protest cumbersome regulations that he believes stymie business and seem intended to destroy the financial industry (Huh? Does he mean the one that was so unwisely deregulated during the late 1990s?)
Most of those who know Forbes' history, I'm sure, realize that this is yet another fool who, to paraphrase Jim Hightower's line about George H.W. Bush, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Forbes personifies all that is corrupt and twisted about the current system of rigged games, and the privileges that the system's 1% beneficiaries have the absurd nerve to deny that they have.
During his first campaign for president, which fortunately didn't go far, Forbes proposed a flat tax of 17%, and even suggested that the first $33,000 of a family income could go untaxed. That lured in an awful lot of uninquiring minds. I remember talking to a small-business owner who thought Forbes' idea was just wonderful -- until I explained to him what the catch was.
In the Forbes plan, income from dividends and interest, pensions, and capital gains would all be exempt from any and all federal taxation. For the most part, I just described what makes the difference between a very wealthy person and one of more modest means.
My friend hadn't heard that part, and had to back down and say, "You're right." I told him that a modified flat tax probably isn't such a bad idea, at least compared with the convoluted mess we have now. But the Forbes plan clearly wasn't the right one. I recall even Pat Buchanan, nobody's bleeding heart, commenting caustically that Forbes' plan sounded like something the boys in the boardroom would come up with.
What Forbes personifies is ironic -- he's the most dogmatic of "free-market" advocates, yet he represents all about the so-called free market that is, for all practical purposes for the vast majority of people, a joke and a hoax.
The U.S. is a plutocracy, not a democracy or even a republic
I've heard a lot of argument back and forth about whether the U.S. was constitutionally designed to be a "democracy" or a "republic." I'd have to say that it's supposed to have been some of both, or what could be described as a "democratic republic." It was obviously meant to be a "republic" inasmuch as our government is largely representative, divided and subject to certain checks and balances, as opposed to a "direct democracy." There are many democratic features in the system, but our founders seemed to clearly have the concept of the "tyranny of the majority" in mind.
But in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the country was largely composed of yeoman farmers and small-business people. Women didn't have the vote, and black people -- well, the proposition that they were even people was often a minority opinion among whites. In much of the nation then, they were property.
Much has changed since those days, some very much for the better, and some very much for the worse. Corporations have attained a supremacy over the economy (not just ours -- the world's) that even the visionaries of the 18th century might not have imagined.
Money is officially considered speech
Two rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have pretty much established plutocracy as our obvious form of government. The first, Buckley v. Valeo, came in 1976. Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The second ruling was in 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Here's yet another link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The general effect of these rulings, in tandem, was that in America, money is speech, and for all practical purposes, elections can be bought and sold, as though public offices were on the marketplace.
It has, of course, become quite clear to some of us that they are. Obama perhaps thought he could change things, but he ran up against that nasty and hard brick wall that is Corporate America. Wall Street more or less controls both major political parties, and its agents seem to have an awful lot of pull on Obama himself, whether he knows it or not.
Why does the myth of the "free market" persist?
It's very simple: People find this ideology to be very profitable in certain places and circumstances. Supply-side and "free market" theorists can be proved wrong again and again, but as long as some people find this ideology supremely profitable, they will embrace it, without reservations, and can find plenty of economists to rationalize it.
There's a great irony in all this. "Free market" thinkers point to the need for incentives, and the will to power and wealth, as defenses for their viewpoint. Where they go wrong is in thinking that, when you have a lot of people living by this philosophy, an "invisible hand" tends to move self-interest in a socially productive direction, toward competition and hard work that is supposed to ultimately benefit all who live in such a society.
I have felt that "invisible hand" many times. It always felt much more like a fist to me.
The inexorable lure of people toward a position of great wealth and social dominance lays waste to the very thing that is supposed to make this ideology work. Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly. The practitioners of the system are generally opportunists who will do what is necessary to establish that arrangement, even if it involves breaking a few rules. And it's especially convenient if they can arrange things in such a way that it's all quite legal and accepted as good and standard business.
And so, Steve Forbes, and Sarah Palin -- the temptation to rig the game so that the supreme competitors can win, over and over, is far too great. That is where lobbyists come in, and where the ultimate codification in favor of the winners happens over and over. The politicians become the "enemy" only when they stubbornly fight in favor of the public interest. More often, they are the stooges and dupes who do the bidding of the fat-cat "winners" such that the public loses much more often than it wins.
The real road to serfdom
We in America have been on it, for over 30 years. Only recently has a genuine grassroots movement emerged in which those brutally marginalized by the system have the nerve to stand up on their hind legs and say no. They finally see that the financial system has been a game rigged in favor of the so-called winners, and against them. They've finally seen that the misbehavior of the financial industry, with its subprime mortgages and derivatives and such, amounts to a tiny minority of privileged people using other people's money in order to rake in more and more money for themselves.
Unfortunately, not enough Americans see this, just yet. When you've got an economy that has doubled in size in 30 years, and yet the wages and salaries of the middle and working classes have stagnated, the purpose of this game should be obvious. But the "winners" have a propaganda apparatus that is unprecedented. There's an entire "news" empire -- no need for me to identify it -- that keeps spooning this bilge out to millions every day.
The first and most important way to fight back is to reject the ideology. It doesn't involve having to embrace "communism," as "they" would have you believe. Just say NO -- stop heeding. Listen, but with a critical mind, and a knowledge that the people who have profited most off this system for 30 years want to keep it going for at least 30 more. That's more than half the battle.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Recently, Steve Forbes joined Sarah Palin in saying something to the effect that the Occupy protesters need to go occupy Congress, not Wall Street. According to reports, the one-time Republican presidential candidate said that the protesters need to protest cumbersome regulations that he believes stymie business and seem intended to destroy the financial industry (Huh? Does he mean the one that was so unwisely deregulated during the late 1990s?)
Most of those who know Forbes' history, I'm sure, realize that this is yet another fool who, to paraphrase Jim Hightower's line about George H.W. Bush, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Forbes personifies all that is corrupt and twisted about the current system of rigged games, and the privileges that the system's 1% beneficiaries have the absurd nerve to deny that they have.
During his first campaign for president, which fortunately didn't go far, Forbes proposed a flat tax of 17%, and even suggested that the first $33,000 of a family income could go untaxed. That lured in an awful lot of uninquiring minds. I remember talking to a small-business owner who thought Forbes' idea was just wonderful -- until I explained to him what the catch was.
In the Forbes plan, income from dividends and interest, pensions, and capital gains would all be exempt from any and all federal taxation. For the most part, I just described what makes the difference between a very wealthy person and one of more modest means.
My friend hadn't heard that part, and had to back down and say, "You're right." I told him that a modified flat tax probably isn't such a bad idea, at least compared with the convoluted mess we have now. But the Forbes plan clearly wasn't the right one. I recall even Pat Buchanan, nobody's bleeding heart, commenting caustically that Forbes' plan sounded like something the boys in the boardroom would come up with.
What Forbes personifies is ironic -- he's the most dogmatic of "free-market" advocates, yet he represents all about the so-called free market that is, for all practical purposes for the vast majority of people, a joke and a hoax.
The U.S. is a plutocracy, not a democracy or even a republic
I've heard a lot of argument back and forth about whether the U.S. was constitutionally designed to be a "democracy" or a "republic." I'd have to say that it's supposed to have been some of both, or what could be described as a "democratic republic." It was obviously meant to be a "republic" inasmuch as our government is largely representative, divided and subject to certain checks and balances, as opposed to a "direct democracy." There are many democratic features in the system, but our founders seemed to clearly have the concept of the "tyranny of the majority" in mind.
But in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the country was largely composed of yeoman farmers and small-business people. Women didn't have the vote, and black people -- well, the proposition that they were even people was often a minority opinion among whites. In much of the nation then, they were property.
Much has changed since those days, some very much for the better, and some very much for the worse. Corporations have attained a supremacy over the economy (not just ours -- the world's) that even the visionaries of the 18th century might not have imagined.
Money is officially considered speech
Two rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have pretty much established plutocracy as our obvious form of government. The first, Buckley v. Valeo, came in 1976. Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The second ruling was in 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Here's yet another link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The general effect of these rulings, in tandem, was that in America, money is speech, and for all practical purposes, elections can be bought and sold, as though public offices were on the marketplace.
It has, of course, become quite clear to some of us that they are. Obama perhaps thought he could change things, but he ran up against that nasty and hard brick wall that is Corporate America. Wall Street more or less controls both major political parties, and its agents seem to have an awful lot of pull on Obama himself, whether he knows it or not.
Why does the myth of the "free market" persist?
It's very simple: People find this ideology to be very profitable in certain places and circumstances. Supply-side and "free market" theorists can be proved wrong again and again, but as long as some people find this ideology supremely profitable, they will embrace it, without reservations, and can find plenty of economists to rationalize it.
There's a great irony in all this. "Free market" thinkers point to the need for incentives, and the will to power and wealth, as defenses for their viewpoint. Where they go wrong is in thinking that, when you have a lot of people living by this philosophy, an "invisible hand" tends to move self-interest in a socially productive direction, toward competition and hard work that is supposed to ultimately benefit all who live in such a society.
I have felt that "invisible hand" many times. It always felt much more like a fist to me.
The inexorable lure of people toward a position of great wealth and social dominance lays waste to the very thing that is supposed to make this ideology work. Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly. The practitioners of the system are generally opportunists who will do what is necessary to establish that arrangement, even if it involves breaking a few rules. And it's especially convenient if they can arrange things in such a way that it's all quite legal and accepted as good and standard business.
And so, Steve Forbes, and Sarah Palin -- the temptation to rig the game so that the supreme competitors can win, over and over, is far too great. That is where lobbyists come in, and where the ultimate codification in favor of the winners happens over and over. The politicians become the "enemy" only when they stubbornly fight in favor of the public interest. More often, they are the stooges and dupes who do the bidding of the fat-cat "winners" such that the public loses much more often than it wins.
The real road to serfdom
We in America have been on it, for over 30 years. Only recently has a genuine grassroots movement emerged in which those brutally marginalized by the system have the nerve to stand up on their hind legs and say no. They finally see that the financial system has been a game rigged in favor of the so-called winners, and against them. They've finally seen that the misbehavior of the financial industry, with its subprime mortgages and derivatives and such, amounts to a tiny minority of privileged people using other people's money in order to rake in more and more money for themselves.
Unfortunately, not enough Americans see this, just yet. When you've got an economy that has doubled in size in 30 years, and yet the wages and salaries of the middle and working classes have stagnated, the purpose of this game should be obvious. But the "winners" have a propaganda apparatus that is unprecedented. There's an entire "news" empire -- no need for me to identify it -- that keeps spooning this bilge out to millions every day.
The first and most important way to fight back is to reject the ideology. It doesn't involve having to embrace "communism," as "they" would have you believe. Just say NO -- stop heeding. Listen, but with a critical mind, and a knowledge that the people who have profited most off this system for 30 years want to keep it going for at least 30 more. That's more than half the battle.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Joe Paterno, Jailbird? Even If He's Given Some Benefit Of The Doubt, It Looks Bad
By Manifesto Joe
I admit that I'm not much of a football fan. I actually like traditional boxing better, and preferred it. I'd much rather fight one opponent, of similar weight, at a time. But even among those who are football fans, this looks awful.
Joe Paterno, now pushing 85, is the winningest college FBS Division I football coach. He's been at Penn State for something like 45 or 46 years as the head coach. But from the evidence, he is accused of spending over 13 years covering up for a degenerate assistant who was alleged to have been buggering young boys. To be specific, a graduate assistant coach reported to Paterno that he saw this apparent scumbag in the locker-room shower molesting a boy whom he believed to be 10 years old.
What's perhaps even worse is the reaction to this among students at Penn State. They rioted in Paterno's favor, and even turned over a TV van.
It's pretty disgusting that, in a time when many Americans are suffering horrible deprivations, a bunch of pampered little jackasses are RIOTING in Paterno's favor over something this stupid and negligent. Is football more important than the safety of our children?
In our system, people are innocent until proved guilty, and rightly so. But the evidence in this case is severe, and it looks very much as though some of the woof-woof, jock-sniffing people at Penn State were putting football far above common decency. And that apparently includes a great many of the pampered, drunken students.
Let's get the grand jury going on this, right now.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I admit that I'm not much of a football fan. I actually like traditional boxing better, and preferred it. I'd much rather fight one opponent, of similar weight, at a time. But even among those who are football fans, this looks awful.
Joe Paterno, now pushing 85, is the winningest college FBS Division I football coach. He's been at Penn State for something like 45 or 46 years as the head coach. But from the evidence, he is accused of spending over 13 years covering up for a degenerate assistant who was alleged to have been buggering young boys. To be specific, a graduate assistant coach reported to Paterno that he saw this apparent scumbag in the locker-room shower molesting a boy whom he believed to be 10 years old.
What's perhaps even worse is the reaction to this among students at Penn State. They rioted in Paterno's favor, and even turned over a TV van.
It's pretty disgusting that, in a time when many Americans are suffering horrible deprivations, a bunch of pampered little jackasses are RIOTING in Paterno's favor over something this stupid and negligent. Is football more important than the safety of our children?
In our system, people are innocent until proved guilty, and rightly so. But the evidence in this case is severe, and it looks very much as though some of the woof-woof, jock-sniffing people at Penn State were putting football far above common decency. And that apparently includes a great many of the pampered, drunken students.
Let's get the grand jury going on this, right now.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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