Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues

Just When It Looked Like Slick Willard Had It Sewn Up ...

2012-02-09T00:48:00.005-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

... Sanitarium makes it a race again!

If I had $10,000 handy to bet, the way Slick Willard apparently has, I would still bet on him. I would do so because I think he's where the most of the really big money of the Republican Party is, and will stay.

Boss Hogg still has his pockets of support -- including the very deep pockets of one of the richest players in Vegas, or anywhere in the world, multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson. That will keep him in the campaign for at least a while.

Ron Paul? Fageddaboudit. As one pundit once put it, he reminds too many people of that mentally ill uncle that every family has. He will keep the support of his loyal ideologues, but they won't exceed 10-15% in that many states.

Sanitarium seems to have emerged as a surprisingly strong second-place contender, which shows two things -- how full of surprises the Republicans are this time, and how astonishingly weak their field is. If anybody had told me six months ago that Sanitarium would still even be in this thing now, I'd have thought they were ready to be committed to one (a sanitarium).

My $10,000 wager, as of now, would be on a Slick Willard/Sanitarium ticket. Wall Street is still the Republican Party's 800-pound gorilla, and I think the "smart money" believes that Slick Willard has the best chance to win in November. Sanitarium would be a good No. 2 to reassure and co-opt Tea Party types, fundamentalists, Catholic Falangists and other far-right creatures.

Boss Hogg might have had a good shot at the No. 2 spot earlier, but he's pissed off too many people. Word is among Washington insiders, even "conservatives," that anyone who knows Gingrich very well generally detests him. That's not the type who makes a good, loyal veep.

But, we've seen plenty of twists and turns in this Rethuglican contest, so stay tuned. There may be a few more coming.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

A Connection Between Conservatism And Stupidity?

2012-01-26T23:17:00.005-06:00

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.

Boss Hogg Wins Big In South Carolina!

2012-01-22T16:20:00.005-06:00

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

As South Carolina Nears: Just When You Think He's Found Bottom, Perry Digs Deeper

2012-01-17T16:26:00.003-06:00

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.

You're Embarrassing Texans: Time For Rick "El Pendejo" Perry To Quit The Race

2012-01-09T01:06:00.007-06:00

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.

Thoughts On The New Year: How Quickly Libertarians Forget

2012-01-01T15:38:00.003-06:00

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.

Are The Holidays A Bad Time To Remind People That The Iraq War Was A Hideously Bad Idea?

2011-12-26T01:29:00.012-06:00

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.

Time For Double-Dipping Governor Goodhair To Play Texas Fold 'Em

2011-12-18T02:16:00.006-06:00

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.

Farewell To Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011: He Was Nobody's Bitch

2011-12-16T03:37:00.003-06:00

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.

Newt 'Boss Hogg' Gingrich And Child-Labor Laws

2011-12-13T11:26:00.005-06:00

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.

Rick Perry's Conscience

2011-12-09T01:47:00.003-06:00

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.

Herman Cain Candidacy Was An Absurd Joke Anyway -- He's An Ignoramus

2011-12-05T01:19:00.007-06:00

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.

Disgusted With Black Friday And Other Thanksgiving Excesses? Check Out Andy Borowitz

2011-11-28T02:22:00.004-06:00

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 Myth Of The Free Market, Part II: Steve Forbes Needs His Cranium Occupied

2011-11-21T00:21:00.004-06:00

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.

Joe's Got Computer Issues

2011-11-18T15:43:00.000-06:00

I plan to be back in the saddle ASAP. -- mj

Joe Paterno, Jailbird? Even If He's Given Some Benefit Of The Doubt, It Looks Bad

2011-11-11T03:45:00.006-06:00

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.

Rick 'Texas Toast' Perry Has Become An Embarrassment To The State

2011-11-10T01:58:00.004-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

And that's REALLY saying something, because we've been major-league embarrassed by an assortment of politicians in recent years.

After Il Doofus' incredible 8-year reign, I had become convinced that there is no person so stupid as to not qualify to be the Republican presidential nominee, so I was worried that Governor Goodhair had a real chance. Now it looks like he actually doesn't -- he somehow managed to find where the bottom was.

I'll repeat that I had the sad displeasure of interviewing him at the very dawn of his political career, when he was running for state representative in 1984. I got the very, very distinct impression of a serious bubblehead back then.

I'm very embarrassed that Texans have elected a man this vapid as governor, time after time. You may guess that he would never have even gotten my vote for dogcatcher. I regard my pit bull terrier as marginally smarter, and at least he had the good sense not to run for president.

Perry, somehow, has never lost an election. In the minor leagues, he's been a solid .300 hitter. Fortunately for the country, when he decided to step up and face major league pitching, he has struck out over and over.

Goodhair, just come home and be a bad governor for a few more years. Then just retire to West Texas, and let a Democrat, or at the very least a more competent Republican, be elected guv. You've done enough damage to the image of Texas for one lifetime.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Smokin' Joe Frazier, 67, Finally Takes The Count He Never Took As A Brave Champ

2011-11-08T00:10:00.003-06:00

Joe was never a very popular champion. He lacked Muhammad Ali's gift of gab, and held much resentment for his archrival. But he was definitely among the 10 best heavyweights of all time, and watching him in his prime was awesome.

Something I didn't know earlier -- one of the keys to Joe's victory in his first match with Ali in 1971 was something he and his corner figured out. Ali had a habit of dropping his right hand before loading up to throw a hard right uppercut. Yank Durham, Joe's chief cornerman, told him to watch for that. After 10 hard rounds in which Ali generally had the edge, in the 11th Frazier threw one of his patented left hooks over Ali's dropped right on one of those occasions.

Ali was seriously staggered, and the fight turned in Joe's favor after that. It happened again early in the 15th and final round. Ali hit the deck for the count of 4 that time. He got up and finished the fight, but by then Joe had made boxing history.

Here's remembering Smokin' Joe.

Somebody Needs To Tell Right-Wingers Like Palin: The Free Market Is A Myth

2011-11-07T01:15:00.004-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

What got me thinking about this was the cosmic fool Sarah Palin's recent pronouncements, to a Republican crowd in Florida, about the Occupy protesters.

This fool called the Occupy protesters misguided, in that they are supposed to be just more people seeking a bailout, more people who want to help themselves to other people's money, rather than being what she would prefer -- an Astroturf movement directing their rage at Washington politicians, i.e. Democrats.

Here's a link to a story on this.

According to this dipstick, the protesters shouldn't be blaming "the free market," or "job creators." They should be blaming Obama, Pelosi, et al, for the current morass.

Her imbecilic pronouncements embody all that is delusional about right-wing thinking in America today, and also in many generations past.

What "free market"?

Let's get into this point by point. In the wholesale grocery business, there's a thing called "slotting allowances," through which producers of a food product pay supermarket chains to get more prominent display on the shelves and aisles, etc., for their products. It's common knowledge among those who work in that industry.

It's a sort of legal payola, so that a dominant producer -- let's say, Campbell's soup -- can get much more prominent promotion on any grocery aisle than any of their competitors. Not surprisingly, Campbell's has a very impregnable oligopoly in U.S. soup sales. They have competitors, but they are largely ineffectual. Once an outfit like that gets on top, just try knocking them off.

Tax abatements

In the part of Texas where I live, this is a racket par excellence. The companies getting tax breaks at the local level read like a who's who of area corporations: Bell Helicopter, Radio Shack, General Motors, General Electric, Alcon and In-N-Out Burger. That's just a few.

The game is simple. The local yokels offer tax abatements to corporations to locate in said area. The corporations get competing offers from several locales. If one bunch of yokels doesn't offer a sweeter deal, well, they can just do legal blackmail and say, we'll just locate someplace that will give us MORE, and we'll take all the jobs there! All of them!! Booohooohooohahahaha!

And, guess what: THEY GET IT. ALL OF IT.

And you, John Q. Taxpayer, pay more in local property and sales taxes so that these corporate scofflaws can pay less. And they hire you at minimum wage or little more, and say that this has been their good deed as job creators!

What is the business of lobbyists?

This is something that renders notions of a "free market" nonsense. Or at least it should.

What do lobbyists do for a living? They are in places like Washington and Austin to influence public policy, and in such a way that will help maximize profits for their employers. Sometimes they don't even do it in a subtle way. Twentysomething years ago, chicken magnate Bo Pilgrim created quite a stir in Austin when he showed up passing out checks on the floor of the Texas Senate. At least most of the people on the make are more subtle than that.

Tax breaks, 2011-style

Recent studies have revealed that about two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no federal income tax. I mean, nothing, zilch, nada. The list reads, again, like a who's who of giant corporations -- ExxonMobil and General Electric come to mind. If someone wants to challenge me on this, the data are out there, and I'll be quite happy to respond.

How have they been able to do this? Short answer -- LOBBYISTS. They employ the very best, and they have been getting results over the past 25 years that have been little short of unbelievable. They own a lot of Washington politicians (please take note that these are just the front people, Sarah Palin) and can make them write a lot of lucrative things into the tax code.

Capitalism's internal contradictions

As a young man, trying to make my way in newspaper journalism, I was interviewed by a typical medium-small publisher, a silly man who had made his way up from being a sports woof-woof. He told me that, "We're all for competition. But when we get a competitor, we do our best to crush them, to run them out of business."

And, of course, they had been frequently successful at doing just that. And obviously, that's something that would be expected of them.

But it points out the basic problem that the entire capitalist system faces sooner or later: Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly.

They say they are for competition, but they ultimately want to eliminate competition. And, sadly, they will resort to whatever hideous means are necessary to do just that.

Adam Smith wasn't entirely on their side

Smith was writing in a very different time and place, but there are some selections from his writing that show a very different Smith from the one that the right wing lionizes.

"Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."

Where is THAT Adam Smith when you need him?

Quotes from the "GOP," including one from a current presidential hopeful

In 1993, President Bill Clinton's economic plan raised the marginal tax rate on wealthy individuals, and not by a huge amount, by rich folks' standards. I was a taxpayer back then, middle-class, and I noticed little difference in my tax bill. The increase mostly hit the very rich. By the way, it passed in the House by ONE vote. Clinton had a strong Democratic majority in the House, but he couldn't even get all the Democrats to vote for it.

Let's see what Republicans had to say about this:

"We are buying a one-way ticket to a recession." -- Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, 1993. (Gramm, by the way, was an economics professor at Texas A&M before he began his lucrative political career.)

"It'll flatten the economy." -- Sen. William Roth, R-Delaware, 1993. (This is the dude for whom the Roth IRA is named.)

"I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable." -- U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, 1993, soon to be House speaker. Well, Newt, we did eventually have a recession. You were just 14 or 15 years off in your prediction.

Of course, you the reader remember quite well what happened during the '90s, after the Clinton economic plan passed by one vote. The U.S. economy collapsed. The national debt quadrupled. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work.

Oh, wait -- none of that happened, did it? Quite the opposite, if I remember right. I guess I finally awakened from that long national nightmare of peace and prosperity.

How many times do the supply-siders have to be proved wrong?

Apparently it's going to take at least one more time. The polls show a very disheartening trend among many Americans toward delusional nostalgia. One poll indicated that, when asked which past American president people would want back to help guide us through the current crisis, 36% said Ronald Reagan! And only 29% said FDR!

Americans, don't get stuck on stupid. Reagan? You mean the guy who cut the marginal tax rate on rich people down to 28%, and tripled the national debt? Hell, he's one of the major reasons we're in this predicament now!

Part II is coming: The Myth Of The Free Market

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Tricks, But No Treats: Beware Of This Scam While Shopping Online

2011-10-31T15:07:00.002-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Have you ever been charged for something that you have not asked for -- or even worse, been charged for something that you specifically turned down?

I've seen both these scenarios many times before. It's not that such practices didn't already exist before the Internet. But shopping online has given greedy, unscrupulous capitalists (I sincerely hope I'm not being redundant there) lots of new opportunities to gouge consumers.

A few days ago I went online to reorder bank checks. I ordered four boxes at a discount price, chose a secure, tracked UPS method of shipping, for a fee, and then was presented with an option of buying a form of identity protection insurance for a fee of $9.80.

I had already chosen a good UPS shipping method with theft in mind, and I already have the means of identity protection if the problem arises. So, I have a very clear memory of moving my computer mouse to the "no" circle, clicking it, and seeing the little dot appear inside the circle that was to reject the coverage.

I kept moving to the "view shopping cart" page, and saw a final charge of $69.52. Without thinking much about it at first, I hit "place order."

Big mistake. I should have noticed that the $69.52 was too much. When I checked the itemized list on the shopping cart, they had sneaked that $9.80 insurance premium in on me.

I immediately called the toll-free number given on the order page, and after a few minutes of automated bullshit I finally got to speak to a live representative. Explaining what happened, I was told that my bank's checking account would be debited $69.52, but then get a credit of $9.80. I threw in a comment that I'd seen this sort of thing before -- I truly have -- and that I think it's an unfortunately common method of gouging the customer. That day, my rep had little to say in response.

By the next day, I had gotten an e-mail notification about my order being received, and that the total charge was $69.52. Nowhere was the refund of $9.80 mentioned, so I thought I'd better call them again.

I got a different phone rep this time. After I asked why the $9.80 credit wasn't on the e-mail notice, she said she had a record of a different rep talking to me the day before, and that this rep had filled out a requisition for the credit to be made. It wouldn't show up on bank records until the next week, I was told.

OK, but why isn't it on the e-mail notice, I asked. I told her that I'd encountered this sort of thing before while shopping online, and regard it as something very intentional and insincere.

I got a speech about how "accounts receivable" charges for the insurance as a separate item, and how they have to process the requisition separately. I was also told that I had the opportunity to view the shopping cart before final approval, at which time I could have rejected the insurance fee.

I have a very, very clear memory of rejecting the fee once, when first presented with it, and I told her this. Telling me that I should have checked over the shopping cart later, I said, is telling me that in order to reject the fee, I would have to have rejected it TWICE.

As if well-rehearsed -- and I suspect that she was -- she started the "accounts receivable" speech all over again. I let this go on for two or three sentences, replied, "I don't buy it," and hung up.

I've kept all the pertinent paperwork, and plan to check with my bank this week about that credit. If I don't get it soon, I plan to take that $9.80 out in phone rep time (at typical wages, perhaps an hour's worth) if they don't give it to me. $9.80 isn't much to some of these corporate types. But to someone like me, it's a good home-cooked meal for three people.

I was born, but it damn sure wasn't yesterday. I know exactly what these people are up to, and why this is common on the Internet. They may eventually have to refund me this money. But think of all the senior citizens out there, and all the younger people who are just bad at math to begin with, who wouldn't notice anything wrong. If they already rejected the fee once, they would think they were done with it and just pay the total without giving the matter any thought.

That's exactly what our corporate lackeys are counting on. There will be enough people of those descriptions who will be unknowingly gouged.

Beware of this trick, and don't give such bastards any treats. That's my advice on Halloween. I wish I'd taken it all earlier, myself, because now I'll have to fight for my money. Maybe you won't have to fight for yours.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Cain Not Just A Koch Brothers Puppet, He's An Ignoramus

2011-10-25T12:56:00.007-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

I should preface by saying that Herman Cain isn't stupid at all, at least certainly not in the classic sense of the word. Truly stupid people don't get master's degrees in computer science from Purdue University. But there's a big difference between intelligence and wisdom, and Cain exhibits little of the latter.

In the world according to Herman Cain, those of you out there who aren't rich, and have no job, "blame yourself." (Translation: Blame the victim.) Here's a link to a story on this.

Encouragement of self-hatred is nothing new in the Republican Party. It's one way they've stayed either in power or on the fringes of it for well over a century -- by isolating, dividing and fragmenting society's losers. It's never been corrupt institutions, it's always YOU. It's never hard-luck incidents like recessions, stock-market crashes, layoffs or catastrophic illnesses in families. Anything to keep the losers from banding together and doing something collectively about corrupt institutions.

This has always been a Republican subtext, and perhaps Cain should get some credit for having the chutzpah to say it right out loud. But that doesn't make this notion any less foolish.

A society is, at the very least, the sum of the individuals who are part of it. Certainly there are lazy, wasteful and moronic people out there (including many who inherited wealth and live in gated communities). There are also plenty of hardworking, thrifty, shrewd folks who have been laid off at work, have seen their life savings fractured because of reckless speculation by the high rollers, and/or have had the misfortune of getting sick or seeing a spouse or child come down with a catastrophic illness.

There are many other considerations in the "race," which as the Bible eloquently says, doesn't always go to the swiftest. (Since he is an associate Baptist minister, I assume that Mr. Cain knows his Bible.)

Luck is a factor that is often crucial. Just being the right stiff, in the right place, at the right time with the right line -- pure dumb luck -- is a biggie. Mark Cuban comes to mind. I suspect that there are many out there as hardworking, shrewd and thrifty as Cuban who are now desperately looking for work and fighting off foreclosure. But, with Americans and their mass media being the dollar-worshipping types that they are, one hears plenty about Cuban, and little if anything about the struggling, faceless masses out there.

Ruthlessness is another key factor. Anyone who's spent much time in the corporate world knows that this can't be underestimated. A ruthless person is apt to be willing to do things that a more ethical and dignified person is unwilling to do. Consequently, ruthless people often end up in managerial roles, and then tend to reward and promote ruthless toadies just like themselves.

In short, someone who has had their eyes and mind open in America, or any other place, for a few decades should know that material success and failure are unpredictable and capricious things. And, the winners tend to just keep on winning, and the losers ... they tend to spend their lives struggling just to get out of that hole.

According to his Wikipedia biography, Mr. Cain grew up relatively poor:

Herman Cain was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Lenora Caine (née Davis), a cleaning woman and domestic worker, and Luther Cain, Jr., who was raised on a farm and worked as a barber and janitor, as well as a chauffeur for Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff. Cain has said that as he was growing up, his family was "poor" but "happy". Cain related that his mother taught him about her belief that "success was not a function of what you start out with materially, but what you start out with spiritually". His father worked three jobs to own his own home — something he achieved during Cain's childhood — and to see his two sons graduate.

It's certainly an inspiring success story. But Mr. Cain should be reminded of his roots, and also of the fact that in the Great Recession some Americans, a great many, have had difficulty finding just one job, let alone three.

Very few lives out there have been the stuff of Horatio Alger novels. It's nice that Mr. Cain's life has gone like that. For most of us who grew up poor and became a little upwardly mobile, it was a struggle just to make it into the middle class, against odds. Saying "blame yourself" is a platitude from a smug, self-satisfied ignoramus.

Now for the Cain campaign ad on the Web

People are trying hard to figure this one out. Were they serious?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/cain-unorthodox-ad-131143258.html

This 56-second Internet campaign ad looks as though Herman was trying to win over the votes of cigarette fiends.

Then there are the numerous gaffes

TV journalist David Gregory was a bit nonplussed when Cain admitted not really knowing what the "neoconservative" movement is or was. It's merely been discussed ever since Il Doofus (Bush 43) took office. How could a person seeking the White House in 2012 have missed out on something political that has been so extensively covered since 2001?

There was also his illegal-alien-killing electric fence for the Mexican border (oh yeah, just a joke), and the one about Jesus being the "perfect conservative" who was killed by a liberal court. Wow.

Again, perhaps Cain should get a little credit for admitting when he doesn't know something, as in the case of "neoconservative." He didn't just go on talking and making a bigger fool of himself, a la Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.

But a person this foolish, and so ill-informed on the issues, shouldn't even be running for Congress, let alone the Republican presidential nomination.

Experience has taught me not to "misunderestimate" the foolishness of Republicans. I suppose it's still possible for Cain to get the nomination. But the powerful Wall Street branch of the party wants a November winner, not an October buffoon. Even Rick Perry, poor as his debate performances have been, is looking like someone the kingmakers will prefer to an amateur like Cain. (At this point, I'd bet on Romney, though he'll have to name an extreme right-wing running mate to placate the Tea Party.)

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Herman Cain Is A Trojan Horse For The Koch Brothers

2011-10-18T00:26:00.008-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

It's been odd and interesting seeing Herman Cain's surge in the polls as a Republican presidential contender. He's never held public office. He was little-known until recent debates. And, in a political party not known for its progressive ideas on racial issues, he's black.

But for the time being, the GOP presidential contest seems to have come down to a three-way fight between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Cain. He's definitely a player in this thing now, if the polls are to be believed.

Now that he's been under the microscope for a while, we can see why. He's the apparent candidate of the billionaire Koch brothers.

The Kochs are the worst kind of corporate pond scum on the planet. According to the Credo Mobile phone company:

Koch Industries' units have stolen oil from federal lands, rigged prices with competitors, paid bribes to win contracts in six countries, sold oil equipment to Iran despite a U.S. ban, been charged with releasing tons of cancer-causing benzene into the atmosphere, and have had five criminal convictions in the U.S. and Canada.

Credo's source is Bloomberg News. Here's a link to the story.

They are also the most notable bankrollers of the Tea Party "astroturf" movement, and hence have a vast amount of clout in today's Republican Party.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has longstanding ties to the Koch empire and their extreme-right-wing group, Americans for Prosperity. He and close associates have been carrying water for the Koch brothers for a very long time, as The Associated Press reported yesterday. Here's a link to that story.

Cain's "9-9-9" tax proposal is something that could have come right out of the Koch brothers' boardrooms or far-right "think" tanks. Sounds catchy for the rubes -- but in case you hadn't heard, any sales tax is very regressive in effect, hitting those who spend proportionately more of their income on consumer items the hardest. He would, under his proposal, institute a 9% sales tax at the federal level, and this on many people who are already paying 8% or more at the state level, where the tax structure is usually more regressive anyway.

There was one analysis of how, for example, multibillionaire Warren Buffett would fare with Cain's stupid "9-9-9" plan. Buffett estimates that he paid about 17% of his income in federal taxes last year. With Cain's plan, he would pay far, far less -- and of course, the poor would pay far, far more.

Cain is a Trojan horse for some very sinister things going on in American politics right now. I doubt that even the Koch brothers believe that he will emerge as the Republican nominee. But good performances by Cain will pull the party toward the right and strengthen the hand of the Tea Party, even if Romney is the probable nominee.

Speaking of lying demagogues, then there's Paul Ryan

In a recent appearance on Meet the Press, Ryan, a high-ranking Republican U.S. House member from Wisconsin, said that the U.S. has, at 35%, a higher corporate income tax than other countries have, "And we're losing as a result of it."

What this lying demagogue failed to mention is how few U.S. corporations actually pay anything close to that. Numerous recent studies have found that two-thirds of American corporations actually pay no federal income tax at all. ExxonMobil not only paid no federal income tax for 2009, but actually got a credit of $156 million, for a year in which their reported profit was well over $19 billion.

(To be fair, ExxonMobil spokesmen told PolitiFact that the company’s "U.S. income tax expense" for 2009 was approximately $500 million. The company declined to provide documentation for that number.)

Here's a link to the Ryan story.

One thing it seems that Republicans can always be counted on to do is give you part of the story -- just the part that could help more rich people get by paying little or no tax.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

I'll Sign The Papers, Just Please Don't Make Me Listen To Rush Limbaugh

2011-10-13T16:32:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

In 2002, as I was about to undergo cataract surgery, I had the misfortune of being in a room in which the surgical nurses were playing Rush Limbaugh's radio show. I was hearing Rush while I briefly underwent sedation, and when I woke up, Rush was still on. That made me think, just for a moment, that I had died and my soul had entered a place of eternal damnation.

Perhaps I should have sued for malpractice, but unfortunately I think I waited until the time after the statute of limitations had passed.

Now, I understand that a Harris County woman who was briefly in custody of the Houston police in 2010 is suing because she was forced to listen to Lardbaugh while she was in the squad car. She claims that Lardbaugh was making derogatory remarks about black people (not a big stretch, that one) and that the police officer was laughing at them (not a big stretch, either).

Following is a link to the story, courtesy of Yahoo! News.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/woman-froced-listen-rush-limbaugh-files-lawsuit-too-154424839.html

(Sorry this isn't in the usual link form, but Blogger isn't letting me do this the usual way.)

Police torture?

They might consider using this method at Guantanamo Bay. It might work even better than waterboarding.

According to the story:

Bridgett Nicholson Boyd filed a lawsuit against the city of Houston for being forced to listen to Limbaugh's radio show. In 2010, Boyd was ticketed for driving on the shoulder of a road (even though she said her car was breaking down). The police officer also arrested her and drove her to the local jail. During the ride, Boyd said, she was forced to listen to Limbaugh make "derogatory comments about black people" (which the officer was laughing at). Though the charges against Boyd were immediately dropped, she's now claiming defamation, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. On his radio show, Limbaugh weighed in on the case. "We don't make derogatory comments about black people," he said. "We make derogatory comments about liberals."

Boyd was apparently a completely innocent person, but even if she were a convicted felon, might this not constitute cruel and unusual punishment?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Occupy Wall Street' Protesters In Danger Of Becoming Dupes For The Republican Party

2011-10-07T02:37:00.007-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

This isn't going to be a popular post among many on the "left," or what's left of it. Politics, for those who have studied the subject for a while, clearly emerges as the art of compromise. It's certainly necessary to have the activists outside on the streets, but perhaps even more important to have those nasty insiders who actually make the "sausage" laws that we have to live with for generations.

I'm happy in one sense to see lots of people on the streets in the "Occupy Wall Street" protest movement. It's high time that a lot of Americans understood that the system has long been rigged against them. Not that this is anything new -- it's just gotten worse over the past 30 or so years.

A sad thing that I'm seeing in this movement is the Mainstream Media spin on it, and how many people in the rank and file of it are playing into its hands. It's being depicted as a protest against "bad economic conditions" rather than against the fundamentals of a capitalist system that has reverted to its primitive and brutal roots, with few mitigating forces to shield ordinary people from its ill effects.

One laid-off worker in New York was interviewed by the MSM, and he said that he saw no real difference between Bush and Obama. The middle class in America, he "reasoned," is actually worse off after nearly 3 years of Obama than it was after 8 years of Il Doofus.

I would have to say to such a person that he was missing the salient point. If a Bush surrogate had been elected president instead of Obama, such people would INDEED be able to see the difference, quite starkly. Obama clearly hasn't been everything that the remaining progressives in America might have wanted. But they fail to see that the Il Doofus "kleptocracy" was given an almost totally free hand for nearly seven years before the meltdown got fully under way, and that Obama's policies, while not all we wanted, have served to keep things from getting much worse than they might have been.

I'm one person who was very unhappy and railing against the "kleptocracy" that we were seeing all through the '80s during the Reagan years, but I didn't notice many people raising any cain back then. It was, in fact, hard to get anyone to even listen to the alternative viewpoint. Now, we have political neophytes taking to the streets and railing against things that have been happening for decades, not just for a few years. Come to the party, folks. Some of us were telling you all this shit back in the days when you were dutifully casting your first votes for Republicans.

Again, Obama hasn't been all I would have liked, but in the current climate, it's unlikely that anyone electable could have been. He was forced to work with a Congress that wouldn't give him what he wanted. In November 2008, we elected a president, not a dictator. As an example, the public option narrowly passed in a heavily Democratic House of Representatives. In the Senate, it had a majority, but fell short of the 60-vote "supermajority" that our system requires to enact damn near anything. DINOs like Ben Nelson and "independents" like Joe Lieberman wouldn't put it over. For politically savvy people, this wasn't a surprise. Our system is awash in corporate money, and people like that know that they can't stay in office without that largess.

So, the public option fell short. And then, what was the reaction of the voters? Over 30% of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't show up at the polls in 2010. The Republicans, fueled by the faux populism of the Tea Party and Koch brothers' money, won the House back in a near landslide. People like me told you what was going to happen after that. And you were surprised?

Get real, folks. Some of us out here were fighting this battle even before some of you were born. And it's been damned thankless.

Don't let the MSM distort this into something else. Even Newt Gingrich is trying to make this out into some faux right-wing populist BS. Don't let it happen!

Obama isn't what I wanted, and probably even less what you wanted. Would you prefer Rick Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Or Mitt Romney, who wants to increase the military budget and add 100,000 troops to our fighting force, and yet still presumes to balance the federal budget?

Well, it's looking more and more like you're going to get one of those right-wing demagogues. Then perhaps you will see, the hard way, what the difference is between a hard-right-wing fool and a centrist compromiser. I'll take the latter, thank you.

Compromise is hard. Dealing with moronic ideologues is harder. You're about to find that out.

I'm reminded of lines from The Second Coming, a poem by William Butler Yeats.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Don't let it happen, protesters. Another presidency like that of Il Doofus could really, really do this country in.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Last Week: AP Whitewashes Tax Inequity, And Rick Perry Becomes The GOP Pinata

2011-09-26T00:13:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Last week brought good news and bad. The bad news is that The Associated Press did one of their imbecilic "fact checks" on the question of unfair taxation in America, and their whitewash was widely disseminated by the Mainstream Media. They were fundamentally inaccurate on many points.

Thank God for Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ analyzed the AP data and pretty thoroughly nailed where they went wrong.

The issue became a media focus point after President Obama proposed a deficit reduction plan that included a minimum tax on the rich. So, here's where AP went with this, excerpted from the CTJ review:

"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."

The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

If that's what you get from "the data," AP doesn't do a good job of showing it. The piece points out early on that about 1,400 millionaires paid no income tax at all -- that's a small number of tax avoiders, they explain, though clearly this would be part of what Obama is talking about.

But then they zero in on what seems to be their best case:

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Well, that sounds like a slam dunk, right? The rich pay twice as much as middle class earners. Or maybe not: Obama's claim hinges on the fact that, for high-income families and individuals, investment income is often taxed at a lower rate than wages. The top tax rate for dividends and capital gains is 15 percent. (The emphasis is mine. -- MJ) The top marginal tax rate for wages is 35 percent, though that is reserved for taxable income above $379,150.

So what if much of a really wealthy person's income is investment income? AP doesn't get into that; it moves on to discussing the fact that a lot of poor people pay no income tax.

Here's a link to the entire CTJ article.

One of the most pernicious mantras of the right wing is the alleged "liberal bias" of the MSM. There might have been some case for this to have been made 25 or more years ago, when Dan Rather was king at CBS and AIM was in its infancy. What appears to have happened is that the death of the Fairness Doctrine, plus a quarter-century of corporate whippings, scattered most of the hard-hitting, independent journalists. Apparently, what's mostly left are miserable corporate shills such as those who concocted this AP whitewash on U.S. taxation.

There were more problems. The AP focused on the top 10% of earners paying an estimated 70% of federal income taxes. I haven't had time to check this for accuracy, but presuming that it's true -- it's not the top 10% who are the main problem here. It's more like the top 1%, the superrich.

Not only did the AP "analysis" not account at all for the lower rates on investment income and capital gains, it didn't examine the shelters and breaks that go only to the very highest "earners."

Nor did the "analysis" discuss the corporate income tax, which in 1959 accounted for 39% of all federal income tax revenue, according to the IRS. We're a long, long way from those days. By 1989, the IRS corporate take was down to 17%, according to the agency itself. And last year, two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no income tax at all, and some like ExxonMobil even got vast refunds.

It's a common fact that while wages and salaries stagnated over the past 30 years in real dollars, the U.S. economy roughly doubled in size. So, if ordinary schmucks saw no gains from their greater productivity during that time, who made off with all that loot?

Now the good news: Governor Goodhair as pinata

Sorry, Spanish purists, but I couldn't figure out how to make an "n" with a tilde work on Blogger.

It's a bit heartening to know that people in other parts of the U.S. are beginning to figure out what some Texans have known for a very long time -- that Rick Perry is a lightweight among lightweights. His vapid, stammering performance at last week's Republican presidential debate was ample evidence. The other GOP "contenders" suddenly realize that there's a papier-mache figure there, just waiting for a blindfolded rival to rip him open with a stick so that the candy will come pouring out.

And that economic miracle that Goodhair keeps touting is about that fragile, too. Analysts are seeing that most of the state's revenue comes from two sources: federal funding, and sales tax. None of this looks good for Goodhair, a neo-secessionist who's eternally railing about federal interference and high taxes. Want to guess who bears the biggest burden of sales taxes? (Hint: It's known as a "regressive" tax.)

And then, property taxes, which tend to hit the middle class hardest, are the crucial revenue source at the local level in Texas.

All this, so that Goodhair can spread 'em wide for our Corporate Masters to relocate their headquarters here in Texas.

And while I've got the CTJ site up, here's a link from thinkprogress.org to a post about Goodhair's Texas "miracle."

The American people may still be stupid enough for Perry to emerge as the Republican nominee. In today's climate, it honestly wouldn't surprise me. But at least the rest of America has had fair warning now.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Republicans: This Is What Happens When Some People Forget To Take Their Medication

2011-09-19T12:56:00.008-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Although it's tempting, I'll refrain here from demonizing all Republicans. My wife appears to be the only Democrat in her large extended family, and some of my in-laws are the salt of the Earth. They just spend too much time watching Fox News.

Republicans appear, at present, to be inhabiting some alternate universe -- one in which prolonged tax breaks for rich people and giant corporations create full employment, one in which 46 million poor Americans are all feasting on junk food while they're not talking on their smart phones, one in which medically uninsured people don't end up costing taxpayers money anyway, one in which perpetual military meddling abroad doesn't end up making us targets at home -- etc., etc.

In other words, they live in an alternate universe that seems to bear no resemblance to the one in which most of the rest of us live.

I'll focus on two points that seem to sum up this phenomenon.

Republican response to Obama's tax plan

If there's one serious problem I have with President Obama, it is with his habit of trying over and over, despite numerous betrayals, to reason and compromise with the mentally disturbed. Until recent days, he's been far, far too nice.

Obama has flatly said that he will veto any deficit-cutting plan that cuts benefits for Medicare recipients yet does not raise taxes for wealthy individuals and big corporations. After about 32 months of trying in vain to work with crazy people, he's finally delineating the difference between us and them. It wasn't us who recklessly did our best to crash the world economy, or who have horded wealth from an economy that doubled in size over 30 years, while wages and salaries were stagnant. It was them.

Yet now, they want us to pay.

Obama's proposal for a minimum tax on rich people is, historically, pretty modest. But I still have yet to hear anyone in the Mainstream Media point out that, about the time I was born in 1956, the U.S. marginal income tax rate was close to 90%, and after JFK-era cuts remained 70% for many years.

It's true that not many high earners ever paid that much, thanks to shelters and loopholes. But even with some of those eliminated, bear in mind that only the most "left-leaning" people are proposing a marginal rate as high as 49%, compared to the 35% where the top rate stands now, with shelters and loopholes included. And it's been pointed out that investment income, the staple of the wealthy, is taxed at only 15%.

Here's a link to the Associated Press story about this.

Predictably, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the ball carrier for the supply-side die-hards, has called Obama's proposal "class warfare." That phrase is sounding more hollow than ever, as we've been watching wealth be horded for three decades only to see an unemployment rate of at least 9% (not counting the many underemployed people, or those who have given up and stopped looking for work).

But that's the Republican mantra, despite abundant evidence that "supply-side" hording has not translated into job creation, and that our current "recovery" is weak because consumers simply don't have much money to spend.

Obama surely knows that his plan has no chance of passage by the current House of Representatives, and Speaker John "Orange Julius" Boehner has told him so. It's a proposal whose purpose is to beat pathologically stubborn Republicans over the head with around this time next year, as the election nears and the economy is expected to remain in the tank.

With a bad economy that may double-dip into recession, rhetoric crafted around this proposal may be the best chance Obama has for re-election, since a lot of people under such conditions will vote against the incumbent no matter whom it is.

Sigh. God must have loved stupid people. He made so many of them.

That said, on to the next Republican spectacle.

Tea Party trolls cheer hypothetical death during televised GOP debate

This is, of course, old news by now. The reason I didn't want to comment on it days ago is that it was too fresh, and I wanted more time to consider what's happening to the Republican Party.

In case you didn't see it or read about it, here's a link to the audience laughing and cheering at the Tea Party debate as CNN's Wolf Blitzer presses Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, about the hypothetical death of an uninsured man.

Granted, even Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that he was taken aback by the audience reaction. And, not all Republicans are Tea Party sympathizers. In the latest poll I've heard about, self-identifying Republicans are just about split up the middle about whether they approve of the Tea Party "movement."

But half of Republicans sympathizing with these sorts of attitudes and values should be a bit disturbing. And although Paul's rhetoric about self-reliance sounds oh-so-noble on its face, he's been around long enough to remember why Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in the first place.

Bills for the uninsured often weren't being picked up by churches, private individuals, etc., nor are they now. What happens now, more often than not, is that uninsured people go to taxpayer-supported charity hospitals for services. Either that, or the hospitals are forced to simply write off unpaid bills, and the taxpayer gets stuck with that in a different way.

Again, I am loath to demonize Republicans. They aren't all crazy. But they appear to be indoctrinated so well as to be impervious to reality, much as in the manner of religious fundamentalists. Ever tried arguing with one of those?

And, it would appear that a certain element among Republicans are indeed disturbed people, embracing cretinous and savage values and attitudes. And the party as a whole seems so frightened of losing elections that it panders to them.

This may not be a recipe for disaster next year. If the economy remains in the tank as it is expected to, any Republican nominee, even a somewhat crazy and/or stupid one, is likely to make next year's presidential election much closer than it should be. History favors them in the short run. But in the long run, this will be a recipe for disaster.

Institutions can go insane as easily as people can. While not all Republicans are crazy, as an institution, the Republican Party seems to have crossed into the territory of institutional insanity. I just hope that some kind of implosion can occur before they end up doing as much damage to the country as they seem to intend.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

On Social Security And Medicare, Old May Throw Young Under The Bus

2011-09-12T13:42:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't old, sick people who recklessly crashed the world financial system or got the U.S. embroiled in two (or three) wars without figuring out how to pay for them. Nor was it they who kept cutting taxes for big corporations and wealthy individuals, to the point where a record surplus became record deficits.

But, as the congressional "supercommittee" tries to figure out ways to slash the deficit and national debt -- well, it's been said that they aren't supposed to have Social Security and Medicare in the equation. Don't bet on that.

Since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House, with many of the freshmen members coming directly from the Tea Party "movement," the House agenda is rigidly right-wing. That means that taxes stay just where they are, a joy ride for the rich. Since these are generally pro-military hawks, don't look for defense spending to take many hits. Corporate welfare will probably continue, because these folks know where their campaign contributions come from.

So, where is there left to go for spending cuts? Only one place -- the so-called "entitlements." That means, for the most part, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. All campaign rhetoric aside, when the dust settles, that's where the scalpel will be drawn.

When I said that old, sick people didn't do any of the things that racked up so much debt, I meant that they weren't the direct instigators. But their consent was necessary, and a sad, just plain ridiculous number of people 65 and older vote Republican. They've been giving their consent for over 30 years.

In that time, the U.S. economy has doubled in size, but wages and salaries have remained stagnant. Want to guess who's been the big beneficiary of this?

As the U.S. economy has been thusly restructured, the middle class has been having a long war waged on it, and in large part its members, especially the older ones, seem unaware that this has even been happening. Now we're getting down to what conservatives and libertarians have long meant, in realspeak, by smaller, limited government.

It means government similar to the one the U.S. had in 1890. There was no federal income tax, and the concept of busting trusts was in its infancy. A startlingly small number of people held about half of the wealth in the country. U.S. senators were not directly elected, but rather were chosen by state legislatures. (Texas Gov. and presidential candidate Rick Perry apparently would like to see us go back to doing that.) In the Senate, it was common for the lawmakers to be referred to as "a silver senator" or "a textile senator." They were put there to represent very specific financial interests.

And about half of America's elderly lived in poverty, according to the contemporary definition. That compares with about 10 percent today.

In short, "limited government" means a plutocracy in which the limitations are one-dimensional. It's OK to dole out vast land grants to railroad companies to lay cross-continental tracks. It's not OK to do anything to help old, sick and/or poor people. In the spirit of social Darwinism, those people are supposed to just die off and leave the world to "the strong."

The appeal to selfishness

I turned 55 this year, so I'm in sort of a gray area regarding the U.S. welfare state, or what's left of it. I'm at least a decade away from qualifying for any "entitlements," but they are definitely not an abstraction to me now. They are within sight.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, put forth a plan this year that pretty much telegraphed the punch that's coming. For people my age and older, there's not that much to worry about -- Social Security and Medicare will be there for people our age, albeit with some "strategic" trims here and there.

Anybody out there in America who's much younger than me, have your Vaseline handy. You're going to get it, and you should know where.

Clearly, the right-wing's strategy is to assure older people, usually the biggest Republican voting bloc, that the "entitlements" will be there for them. What they are moving us toward is a sort of "phase-out" of America's already-meager welfare state. I'm actually glad now that my wife and I decided not to have kids -- I would hate to have left young people behind to deal with the future that U.S. right-wingers obviously have in mind for them.

When one is in one's twenties, retirement is so far off that it is an abstraction. Besides, at that age, many people about halfway expect to one day make that "big score" that will put them far ahead in the game. Not that many twentysomethings expect what usually happens -- that one will have to work so hard just to be middle-class, and just to stay there as one ages.

Having grown up relatively poor, with parents who were young during the Great Depression, I never took very much for granted. But some Americans, including many my age and older, have always taken just about everything for granted.

And when the day comes when Americans are no longer "entitled" to "entitlements," guess who's going to get thrown under the bus? It won't be the older folks.

Where are the hellraisers?

I was just a kid during the Sixties, but I remember the era quite well enough that I felt a sense of having missed a lot while I was in college in the 1970s. By the time Gerald Ford was president and the Vietnam War was over, there was a lot less to raise hell about. We had to look for things, like maybe legalizing pot or establishing co-ed dorms, to stir shit about.

It seems to me that the young have their own nasty Vietnam going on right here, right now -- and they don't seem to be, as a generation, doing much about it. It's pretty standard that when reporters interview younger people about their financial future, they will say that they expect to work until they are 70 or 80. Retirement, to them, is becoming an obsolete concept.

I would warn those now 25 about what things are going to be like when you are 55. You don't sleep as soundly. Odd aches and pains start to emerge. Some days it's hard to gather the self-discipline to make it to that middle-class job that, you realize, is what stands between you and homelessness.

At 55, retirement starts to sound awfully good, and it will to you, too, twentysomethings. And in 30 years, when you're in my shoes, and I'm gumming Jello in a nursing home if I'm even still alive, retirement will definitely not be an abstraction for you. And the Paul Ryans, the people you're not taking much action to stop right now, have a much grimmer future in store for you.

My advice is to get out on the streets and raise some holy hell now, while you've got the energy. For your own future, it's imperative now for you to put the fear of God and organized labor into the likes of Mr. Ryan.

Twentysomethings, this is your crucial time, and you won't be able to depend on many Florida retirees to fight any battles for you. Either fight for control of the bus, or be thrown under it.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

On Labor Day, Remembering Who Really Built America

2011-09-05T16:13:00.003-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Once almost 20 years ago, when I was having a conversation with a young man whom I knew to be politically right-wing, the subject somehow moved to entrepreneurs. "Entrepreneurs built this country," he told me.

I tend to be reluctant to get into arguments with people whose minds, I know, cannot be changed. I simply replied, "Well, yes and no," and moved the conversation on to other matters. In my time on Earth, I've never yet known a person whose mind was changed as a result of a political argument.

Another factor is that I often don't think of the right things to say at the right times. I'm much better with a keyboard or on paper, because it affords more time to consider things.

Looking back, what I wish I had said back to this young man was, "They had a hell of a lot of help from the people who did the hands-on labor. You know, workers. You've heard of them, right?"

Beasts of burden?

You don't have to talk to libertarians or most American conservatives for very long to discover that, in the world they inhabit, workers are more or less like a team of mules, mere beasts of burden. The entrepreneur is like the farmer behind the plow, motivating and guiding them and taking almost all the risks.

I feel compelled to point out that Farmer Jones would have an awfully hard time plowing his own back forty without his team of mules. And even if one subscribes to this unsympathetic and inhumane view of human labor, doesn't it make sense to feed and care for the beasts of burden well, so that they will stay healthy and strong for their work?

You wouldn't know that while looking at capitalism as it's been practiced through most of U.S. history. Overworked, underpaid, ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-doctored laborers have been the norm, not the exception. Our "entrepreneurial" class has consistently squeezed all it could out of those brutish proles, and then tossed them out onto the street when the time came that they weren't needed or were no longer much good.

And there, I'm talking about the ones fortunate enough to be paid at least a bare subsistence for their labor. Until the 1860s, there was a very large class of Americans whose labor was taken from them by force.

On Labor Day, take a break from the grill and those cold ones and take time to remember who really did the work that built this nation. They are the ones who did the sweating behind jackhammers, not behind a roulette wheel.

The U.S. did see a significant period during the 20th century in which conditions for working people improved, thanks to union organizing and governmental reforms. But since about 1980, we've been seeing the fingers of workers pried off those gains, one by one. Now, joblessness and working conditions are as bad as or worse than they've been anytime since 1940.

Marx: Right about one thing?

Karl Marx was apparently wrong about a lot, but from the looks of things now, he may have been dead-on right about one -- the inability of capitalism to reform itself. Marx predicted that there would be many efforts to mitigate the harsh conditions that capitalism generally brings to the working class, but that capitalism would always, inexorably revert back to its primitive state -- like it's doing now, in America and elsewhere.

For decades, I've been one of those who has hoped that a workable "third way" could be found, given the brutality of laissez-faire on one extreme and communism on the other. I've seen my hopes usually dashed, to the point that I fear them now to be just wishful thinking. I sincerely hope, on this Labor Day, that my current inclinations are wrong.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Day Of The Voting Dead: Perry Re-Elected Despite 'Dead Peasant' Insurance Scheme

2011-08-26T15:49:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

People don't seem to recall what was happening five years ago in politics. That was so long ago! I'll refresh some memories. Il Doofus' approval ratings were sliding down to eventual record lows, he was about to lose control of Congress -- and in Texas, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry was something less than popular.

The problem with Perry's opposition that year was that they couldn't unite behind one candidate. Goodhair was re-elected with only 39% of the vote, and his main opposition was split three ways -- Democrat Chris Bell got 29.8%, independent state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn got 18%, and country-Western singer and novelist Kinky Friedman got 12.6% (Kinky's a funny and engaging personality, but he flopped badly as a politician.)

Now let me really solicit memories, all the way back to late 2003. The Huffington Post has reminded everyone, including me, that Gov. Rick Perry's office was proposing to Swiss banking giant UBS a scheme in which UBS would buy life insurance policies on retired Texas teachers, cutting the state government in with revenue upon the deaths of said teachers. The survivors of the teachers would get nothing, and the elderly ex-teachers themselves would be offered something like $50 to $100 to sign the contract.

Here's a link to the Huffington Post article on the scheme. It's noteworthy that former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, author of some of the financial deregulation that half wrecked the U.S. and world economies, was by this time a vice president of UBS, and was reportedly in on the talks.

In this ghoulish scheme, UBS would essentially be gambling on the deaths of the retired teachers, with the state cut in on revenue from the deals. Corporations had long been using this as a tax break, since insurance premiums and death benefits are not taxed.

Walmart had already gone through horrid publicity over this practice, in which that company took out life insurance policies on its low-wage "associates." "Dead peasant insurance" was what some pundit dubbed it.

When news of this scheme hit Texas news media outlets in the coming months, it queered the deal. Teachers groups were predictably outraged. And, there seemed to be little question that the governor's office was the main force pushing the scheme. (It's also noteworthy that Perry's 23-year-old son went to work for UBS a few years later.)

But the voters didn't seem to remember any of this come 2006, nor did the news media. Knuckle-dragging zombies staggered to the polls and re-elected Perry, and they did it again in 2010.

Thankfully, the Huffington Post has raised this story from the dead. It's going to be important to keep reminding the public about this matter, and many others, as Goodhair lurches toward the possibility of the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Hey, New Yorkers: Take The Hurricane Warning Seriously

2011-08-25T06:24:00.005-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

I've been through four hurricanes and two tropical storms. Don't take any warnings about this sort of thing lightly.

The one I'm thinking of is when I was 14, and it wasn't expected to be that much. It gained strength spectacularly just off the Gulf Coast, and then came in. It was officially called a Category 3 hurricane after the fact. At the time, people measured the gusts at 160 mph, more like a Category 4. Later, the official measure was lower, but it was quite enough.

I never saw anything like it before, and I hope I never do again. Fortunately, we were riding the thing out in a very strong house, and we had boarded the place up as much as one does with a routine hurricane. Things were going down all around us. Power lines, garages, houses -- collapsing. The eye passed over us, so then there was a long lull in the middle -- a deathly calm.

Then the worst part came. The second "half" was more like two-thirds of the storm. It seemed like it would never end.

Then we spent about a week digging our way out of the ruins. No power (in August in South Texas), only the water we had drawn, food out of cans. A little help from the Red Cross and FEMA.

A direct hit on Manhattan would be a calamity. Take this seriously.

Correction: FEMA as we know it now didn't exist until the late 1970s. There was federal aid coming to the area then, but it had to have been under different auspices. We didn't lose our home, so of course we didn't ask for any.

Right-Wing Reign Of Error: How Kooks Like Bachmann Keep Getting It Wrong

2011-08-22T00:33:00.008-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Sometimes it happens because they're stupid -- and sometimes it happens because they're convinced that everybody else is stupid. Either way, the right wing in America can't be trusted for any kind of facts or history, recent or distant. Their inaccuracies are countless, but a few more recent ones stand out.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity

Boobs usually come in pairs, and on the right wing it's no exception. Herr Lardbaugh and Herr Hannity told their listeners earlier this month that President Obama inherited a U.S. unemployment rate of 5.6% and 5.7% (Hannity gave the lower figure.)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the accepted authority on this subject, put the U.S. unemployment rate at 7.8% in January 2009, the month that Obama took office. So, who's lying?

It turns out that the AVERAGE jobless rate for 2008 was 5.8% -- all 12 months combined into an average. Even if Herr Lardbaugh and Herr Hannity were using that figure, they STILL got it wrong. (The easiest job in the world has got to be that of Herr Lardbaugh's fact-checker.)

Here's a link to New York magazine's story on the subject.

Bachmann's unbelievable string of gaffes

In the previous case, I think we've got a couple of smart asses who are putting bogus numbers over on the rubes. In the case of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., I fear that we've got the proto-rube. This person is under serious consideration to be the Republican nominee for president of the U.S. Yet, she's shockingly stupid, too much so to even be respected as a member of the U.S. House.

First, she kicks off her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, which she mistakenly calls the birthplace of John Wayne. It was actually a residence of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

More recently, she wished Elvis a happy birthday on the 34th anniversary of his death.

And, on a right-wing radio talk show Thursday, Bachmann said that Americans are fearful of the rise of the Soviet Union. Here's a link to a story on that interview.

Bachmann is, of course, no newcomer to the reign of right-wing error. Here's a link to my earlier post about the congresswoman blaming something she called the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" on FDR. (It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover.)

I understand that Bachmann is blaming all her recent gaffes on her strenuous speaking schedule. But, that's one good reason to have a rather long and grueling campaign trail for the presidency -- at the very least, it gives the public a chance to vet the contenders and see what they perform like under pressure.

But what worries me is that Americans had plenty of time to size up both Ronald "Mr. Magoo" Reagan and George W. "Il Doofus" Bush. The standards have clearly been lowered enough that Bachmann may get a complete pass on all this, and more to come.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Another Texas Two-Step: Governor Goodhair Declares, Michael Burgess Scares

2011-08-13T10:50:00.005-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

As of this writing, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry still hadn't given the South Carolina speech that is said to be the one that will make his bid for the presidency official. I'm presuming that he will do just that.

Goodhair keeps indicating that he wants to go national with The Texas Way. That's great -- if you're already rich. Texas has a pretty decent Third World economy. I would advise y'all in the rest of the U.S. to try to stick with the First World formula. The Third World path has definite limitations.

Sure, there have been plenty of jobs created in Texas during the nearly 11 years Goodhair has been governor -- low-wage, service-sector jobs, mostly. The state has become a veritable magnet for illegal immigrant labor. It's been estimated that if you got rid of all the workers who are here illegally, about a third of the restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would have to close. Seems like everybody in the Anglo culture here has a few anecdotes about things like, approaching somebody in a restaurant or supermarket only to be told, "No habla Ingles."

(Fortunately, "Donde esta el bano?" was a common tourista question I remembered from Spanish class.)

Creation of such crummy jobs is about all Texas can point to for recent bragging rights. During Goodhair's time in office (he's the state's longest-serving governor, unfortunately), basics such as education, health care, per capita income and infrastructure of all kinds have suffered. The state ranks relatively low in any rankings of such sectors. ("Thank God for Mississippi!" one school official is reported to have said.)

Our public universities, led by the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems, are BIG, like everything in Texas. They are also notoriously mediocre. Even New York City's public college system, designed mainly for disadvantaged students, is considered at least marginally better than what the state government supports here.

Goodhair should know about academic mediocrity -- he's a graduate of A&M's College Station flagship, and he even did some time on academic probation while he was there.

Then there's his beef with the federal government. He has hinted strongly at secession, yet he whines when he doesn't immediately get federal money, like when wildfires burned up a lot of ranches and rural subdivisions.

Among other things, the state's debt has approximately doubled in a decade, and the $25 billion shortfall that the Legislature "dealt with" during this biennial session was by far the largest in Texas history.

Hey, but we still have no state income tax! Instead, we have very high sales taxes and user fees. And the property taxes can be pretty steep, thanks to all those medical bills the taxpayers have to cover so that our charity hospitals and clinics can treat the millions of uninsured people.

Don't get the idea that I hate Texas -- hell, I'm a native South Texan, and there is much in this culture that I know I would miss if I relocated to some politically sane place like Vermont. I have my own recipe for the best chili con carne in the world, and there's nothing like a big platter of sizzling fajitas, prepared by someone who really knows how. Shiner Bock gets my vote as one of the best beers around, and the wines of West Texas are getting better all the time. I'm indifferent to the Dallas Cowboys, but I have to admit to feeling a little pride when the Texas Rangers made it to the World Series for the first time in franchise history last fall.

But we ought to face it -- Texas is a good place mainly for those lucky enough to be born rich. If you live in a gated community and can afford to send your kids to private schools and colleges, you don't notice it much when a lot of the basics begin to fall apart. Well, maybe when you fail to miss a big pothole in the road while driving that swell new Lexus to the country club, one notices then.

Rick Perry thinks Texas should be a model for the rest of the nation. Il Doofus -- not coincidentally Perry's predecessor as governor -- just about halfway took the U.S. to that very place during eight years in office. If the American people are stupid enough to want someone to really finish the job, then Goodhair's their man. He's been one of the lousiest governors we ever had, and it would be fitting for him to be the Republicans' successor to Il Doofus, who in Texas started the job that Perry has pretty well finished here.

I just hope the rest of the country is wise enough not to do what Texans have done.

Step Two: Burgess wants to impeach Obama so that the latter's agenda can be stopped

Yep, that's what U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville (Dallas area), told a Tea Party gathering in Keller, Texas, a few days ago. I don't remember him elaborating as to exactly what the charges would be, but he did say that it would be a great way to save the republic, or something like that, by bringing President Obama's agenda to a grinding halt.

Reporters tried to get Burgess to follow up on this. At first he responded awkwardly, then his office suddenly stopped taking any phone calls on the subject. He's been silent ever since.

Here's a link to a UPI report on the subject.

You may recall that Burgess was one of the "lawmakers" in Congress who wanted to block government regulation that would require light bulbs to be more energy-efficient. Here's a link to my post on that.

The voters in Texas sure know how to pick 'em.

A stock response from Republicans would be to point out that there were Democrats who wanted to bring articles of impeachment against Il Doofus. I honestly wish that could have happened. In that case, during the 2002-03 run-up to the Iraq invasion, we had a president who was pretty clearly lying to us about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He got the U.S. into a war that, so far, has cost nearly $800 billion and nearly 1.5 million Iraqi lives. War crimes charges on the international scale might have been good, too.

Unfortunately, Il Doofus didn't leave quite enough evidence to bring impeachment charges. As always, he left open the possibility that he was merely ignorant and foolish.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Republicans In Denial That Clinton Surplus Was Real

2011-08-09T15:12:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Who were the last two U.S. presidents to deliver balanced federal budgets? Answer: The last one was Bill Clinton. Before him, you have to go all the way back to fiscal 1968-69 -- that one was Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Yep, it was those "tax-and-spend" Democrats who did this. During the years in between, and since, we've seen what happens when government spends, but doesn't adequately tax. The debt piles up, like it did under Ronald Reagan and Il Doofus.

The Republican talking point about this is that the Clinton surplus is supposed to have been solely the result of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, which created a spike in income tax revenues because of overvalued Internet stocks. The bubble certainly helped Clinton, but saying that it was the only reason for the increased revenue is denial of history.

Here's a link to an article on the subject at FactCheck.org. Even when the accounting excludes the Social Security surplus, Clinton delivered two balanced budgets, including one with an $86.4 billion surplus (with Social Security included, that would be $236.2 billion).

The article states:

The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans incorrectly claim is the "largest tax increase in history." It fell almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton’s fiscal 1994 budget also contained some spending restraints. An equally if not more powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and rising salaries.

So yes, the dot-com bubble was a big factor. But it's like poet Charles Bukowski said about luck -- that counts, too.

Notable here is that the Clinton economic plan, which the House passed in 1993 by a single vote, raised the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6%. I was a middle-income taxpayer during those years, and the effect of the Clinton plan on my taxes was almost nil. Rich people were, for a change, forced to pay something closer to their fair share for the upkeep of society.

Since President Obama has had a struggling economy to deal with since Day One (thanks so much, Il Doofus) letting tax rates return to the Clinton-era levels wouldn't come even very close to balancing the current budget. Obama has been a hard-luck SOB who inherited the biggest mess anyone has faced since FDR. And unlike FDR, he didn't have a 3-to-1 majority in the Congress, and fickle voters cost him a majority in the House last year.

Now, of course, he's being kicked around from two directions -- from the right, by lunatics who can't decide whether he's a socialist or a Nazi, and from the left, by those who would rather have had him fight losing battles for the public health-care option and for a more genuine compromise on the debt-ceiling issue. It's not hard to understand Obama's critics on the left, but if he'd done what they apparently wanted him to do, we'd have no health-care changes coming at all, and the economy would REALLY be in ruins.

But, I digress -- back to Clinton and his budgets. The basic lesson here is that all governments, any governments, must have adequate revenue in order to function. In 30 years, the U.S. economy has doubled in output, but wages and salaries for ordinary workers have stagnated. It's the superrich who have reaped the benefits (and they didn't even use a gun). And their tax burden has been dramatically reduced.

Bill Clinton wasn't my ideal as a president (nor is Obama). I reluctantly voted for Clinton twice. I opposed NAFTA, which he and Al Gore delivered up for our Corporate Masters. Clinton also signed off on deregulation of financial markets that proved disastrous, and that even he now admits was a mistake. And, I'd say the jury remains out on what Molly Ivins always called "welfare deform," which Clinton also signed.

But in politics, one often has to hold one's nose and take what one can get, and in the 1990s that was Clinton. Warts and all, I'd rather have him in charge than Il Doofus or Reagan, any day.

Letting tax rates revert to Clinton-era levels would just be a start. Right now, with conditions as they are, balancing the budget would require closing a lot of loopholes, plus a top marginal rate of, say, 49%. I think we've seen, judging from the long-term record of supply-side policy, that such a move would have little negative impact on job creation.

But the reality is that the Tea Party has great power in the House of Representatives, and the economy remains in the tank. Putting Obama over for a second term is far from certain. If we emerge in 2013 with a Republican president and both houses of Congress under that party's control, prepare for the worst. We'll likely see deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare -- and yet there will still be huge deficits, for years to come.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rick 'Governor Goodhair' Perry No Doubt Learned How To Pray In College

2011-08-08T01:18:00.003-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry seemed to win a lot of brownie points with the Religious Right for his Saturday prayer fest in Houston. Some 30,000 people attended, it was estimated. He looks like a likely candidate for president, and he doubtlessly won over a lot of Tea Party support by instigating this event.

Recently, we the voters have also gotten a chance to look at his college transcript, that of an animal husbandry major at Texas A&M who graduated with a 2.3 GPA. Here's a link to it, courtesy of The Huffington Post.

Goodhair made a C in U.S. history, and a D in principles of economics. I suspect that, between hits of No Doz, he learned how to pray right before his economics final. Apparently God didn't deign to help him too much in organic chemistry -- he flunked a second course in it.

Here's from a contemporary student:

"A&M wasn't exactly Harvard on the Brazos River," recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post. "This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke."

And this guy may want to be president?

I realize that people can grow a lot during half a lifetime. FDR reportedly wasn't a great student, and Truman never went to college. LBJ went to what was then Southwest Texas State Teacher's College, now Texas State University. Where I'm from, that was always known as a great party college that often turned out good schoolteachers. Eisenhower ranked low in his graduating class at West Point, and Il Doofus is said to have gotten through Yale largely on "gentleman's C's." Reagan famously told Barbara Walters in an interview that "I never knew anything above C's," and his alma mater was Eureka College in Illinois.

Personally, I would rather have someone for president who at least bothered to read most of the textbooks. Whatever their shortcomings were and are, I get the impression that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at least managed to do that.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

The Screw Deal: Debt-Ceiling Pact Yet Another Hosing Of Americans

2011-08-02T14:28:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

The American people have taken so many hosings over the past 30 years, it's gotten to where most folks don't know they are having it done to them, let alone who's on the spraying end of the hose. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who held her nose and voted for the deal to raise the federal government's debt ceiling, commented that not one cent of this "compromise" was coming from the wealthiest Americans. (That's a pretty strong hint about who's on the spraying end.)

Call it The Screw Deal, Part III. Since there aren't very many specifics, the effects of Part III won't be known for a couple of years. Rest assured that if a Republican -- any Republican -- wins the White House next November, and Republicans also win control of the Senate and retain control of the House of Representatives, this will be perhaps the biggest hosing of them all.

This deal leaves the door open for meat-ax cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Will somebody please tell me exactly what role the elderly, the poor and the sick played in getting the U.S. mired in two foreign wars that the rich paid not one cent in extra tax to finance?

For those among us who understand what's happening, this has been a lot like sitting at a train crossing in your car, waiting for a very, very long train to finally pass. The caboose just never seems to arrive, after scores of cars have slowly passed.

Reagan and the first Screw Deal

During the protracted "debate" about the debt-ceiling deal, there was a lot in the Mainstream Media about the alleged wit and wisdom of Ronald Reagan, and how neither party seemed to be remembering moves from the Gipper's playbook. Au contraire -- the Republicans have been following that playbook for 30 years, and with astonishing success at the polls.

Reagan presided over the first Screw Deal in phases during 1981-86. The first year, he got tax cuts passed that dramatically reduced the burden on his rich friends and the big corporations. Oh, well, he did toss a bone to everyone. Here's a quick summary of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts from Wikipedia:

Included in the act was an across-the-board decrease in the marginal income tax rates in the U.S. by 23% over three years, with the top rate falling from 70% to 50% and the bottom rate dropping from 14% to 11%. This act slashed estate taxes and trimmed taxes paid by business corporations by $150 billion over a five year period.

Then, the very next year, the supply-siders had to pull back from some of their initial commitments with what has been described as the biggest tax increase in U.S. history. Still, the deficits started, and they were at record levels for that time.

In 1983, Reagan signed off on an increase in Social Security payroll taxes. Now, it was nice in a sense that this action has kept the system going in the 28 years since. But please note that Social Security taxes are regressive -- they are cut off and maxed out after a certain level of income. It is a burden that is largely borne by middle-income people.

Then, in 1986, Reagan presided over tax "reform" that, while plugging a few loopholes, also cut the top tax rate all the way down to 28%. The Screw Deal, Part I, was complete.

The years of Bush the First and Bill Clinton slowed and mitigated some of The Screw Deal's effects, with tax increases passed under both. In particular, the Clinton economic plan that barely passed in 1993 raised the marginal tax rate back up to 39.6%, and those record deficits started shrinking until they had turned into record surpluses by the time Clinton left office.

(Of course, Republicans can't let Clinton have credit for anything, so they now say that the Internet "bubble" of the late 1990s worked heavily in Clinton's favor, and perhaps it did. But he delivered the first balanced budget the country had seen in 30 years, and that's a fact they can't reasonably deny.)

Il Doofus and the second Screw Deal

In 2001, the first year of his stolen presidency, Il Doofus got a tax cut passed that once more lowered the top rates for his rich friends. Oh, and again, he tossed everybody a bone, with those $300 rebates and such. Wow.

By the very next year, Il Doofus was responding to the 9/11 attacks like a true bozo, by moving toward an invasion of Iraq to depose of one of Al-Qaida's worst enemies, Saddam Hussein. No tax increase was proposed to help pay for this needless bloodbath. I think what Doofus & Co. thought was that an Iraq conquest was going to be easy. So far, it has cost nearly $800 billion.

What we kept hearing, starting with Reagan and then throughout the Il Doofus administration, was that keeping taxes lower on rich people and big corporations was supposed to stimulate employment through the resulting investment. Somehow, this proposition doesn't appear to work in practice. If it did, we should now be literally awash in swell new jobs for our 9%-plus unemployed. Hey, I'm still waiting for my "trickle-down" from the first time. (Always felt more like "tinkle-down" to me.)

So now, after eight long years of Il Doofus, Barack Obama inherits two unpaid-for foreign wars, a tax system in which two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay zero income tax, and record deficits. Republicans are blaming him, with MSM stooges like CNN's Don Lemon sitting there like burros while these fools say Obama has been spending money insanely for two-and-a-half years. (Lemon failed to point out to a Republican talking head that Obama inherited from Il Doofus the first budget he presided over. The job of journalists is to present the public with facts, not just to sit and allow specious rhetoric to go unchallenged.)

Exactly how much is Obama to blame for The Screw Deal, Part III?

It's easy to understand the frustration with Obama that's coming from the far left -- well, what there is of "the far left." It looks like millions of people turned out in 2008 to vote for a guy they thought would be Dennis Kucinich. Instead, he turned out to be a Bill Clinton-style Republicrat. (I hate to break it to y'all -- but that's exactly why Clinton became president, and why Kucinich didn't and never will.)

I'll argue once more that Obama has simply done what was politically necessary. He believes that it's often wiser to compromise today and thereby live politically to fight another day. He couldn't afford to just dig in and preside over a debt default, because then, House Speaker Orange Julius & Co. would blame him, and it likely would have stuck.

And, like him or not, Obama appears to be the only thing standing between Americans and those meat-ax cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I don't like the fact that he left the door open for such cuts -- but I don't think that, privately, he likes being the guy who signed off on that deal.

A lot will hinge on what happens next year. I'm not particularly happy with Obama, either, but when one considers the likelihood of a Congress with both houses controlled by Republicans in 2013 -- well, it looks like he's what we've got. And he can't do anything without votes.

Stay tuned.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

A Short Hiatus

2011-07-29T15:42:00.001-05:00

Joe's been ill this week and is taking a short hiatus ... will be back soon. Meanwhile, I'm watching the fiasco in Washington with some interest, even though I strongly suspect how it will turn out. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised.

Texas Two-Step: How Many Republicans Does It Take To Screw Up A Light Bulb?

2011-07-18T00:15:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

As budget-deficit and debt-limit talks between the president and the Congress are stalemated, and the future of little things like Social Security and Medicare may be hanging in the balance, isn't it comforting to know that lawmakers like Joe Barton of Arlington, Texas, are in there fighting for the rights of Americans to buy cheap-ass light bulbs?

Barton, a veteran Republican House member, already had the dubious distinction of being the member of Congress who most strikingly resembles a victim of Down's syndrome. His "valiant" battle for the cheap incandescent light bulb didn't do much for his image. Here's what The Christian Science Monitor had on this issue Tuesday.

But wait -- the issue isn't burned out yet. After Barton failed to get a supermajority for his bill in the House, Michael Burgess came to the rescue. Politico.com reported that:

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) on Wednesday filed an amendment to the Energy and Water spending bill that would prohibit the Energy Department from requiring traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.

Here's a link to the entire article.

Seems that presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, Retarded-Minn., has climbed aboard this issue as well. It's supposed to be unbelievable government intrusion into people's lives. How dare the government try to tell people that they shouldn't waste electricity!

Step Two: Texas State Board of Education needs more conservative Christians?

That's according to Barbara Cargill, a Republican from The Woodlands (Houston area), the new chairperson of the state board. Cargill has drawn criticism for a speech she made to a friendly audience, saying:

"Right now there are six true conservative Christians on the board, so we have to fight for two votes. In previous years, we had to fight for one vote to get a majority."

Here's a link to the entire article.

This affronted some other members of the 15-member board, who consider themselves Christians but don't seem to want to force "intelligent design" materials into public school biology classes. Ms. Cargill doesn't consider them, even the Republicans among them, to be reliable votes.

Since we're on the subject of "intelligent design," don't look to the Texas Legislature or any other entities of this state's government for evidence of that. Thanks to public policies toward education, schoolchildren will begin this school year in August without new textbooks. Yep, that's right. Here's a link to a story on the subject.

But hell, who needs them thar books? It's the humanity in the classroom that matters, right?

(That was often what seemed like the very problem to me.)

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Hoping Murdoch Shuts Down More Of His Sleazy, Journalism-Sullying 'Outlets'

2011-07-11T16:23:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

"Weirdo tries to seize girls"

"Woman attacked by frozen turkey"

While I was in college in the mid-1970s, the San Antonio News, one of the last of the old p.m. newspapers, was among those on the stands. Above are examples of the headlines one would see on Page One. Inside, there were pictures of bloody wrecks, crime scenes, etc. (The "turkey" headline, run around Thanksgiving, topped a story about a woman who had a frozen turkey slip off a supermarket counter and break bones in her foot.)

The News was one of Rupert Murdoch's early newspaper ventures in the U.S., his journalism-debasing empire having already engulfed his native Australia. Who would have guessed, way back then, that Murdoch would eventually dominate U.S. "news" media with huge outlets such as Fox "News" and The Wall Street Journal?

The Murdoch approach to "journalism" -- sensationalism, wide-open reactionary political bias -- has proved very profitable, and has become so pervasive and popular that a whole generation of Americans may not even remember what real, principled journalism was like.

Now, in Britain, it's been said that we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg. No sooner had Murdoch shut down News of the World in London that a couple more of Murdoch's British newspapers have been implicated in the spreading telephone-hacking scandal.

I, for one, hope this spreads so far that Murdoch's grimy "news" empire in other countries is affected as well. His philosophy goes far beyond "yellow journalism" -- one friend of mine described it as "purple journalism."

Cultural decadence from an army of one

Arguably, no one person has done more to contribute to the West's current cultural decadence than Rupert Murdoch.

He has taken many once-respectable newspapers and, under his ownership, transformed them into lurid right-wing tabloids. In Fox "News," he has created a popular cable TV news network that resembles a far-right version of the old Soviet newspaper Izvestia. To anyone who understands what real journalism is, this is propaganda, not news. As for The Wall Street Journal, I never took it very seriously, anyway. But under Murdoch's ownership, the bias will be much more open and will spread to Page One, if it hasn't already.

Now we may be seeing that the Murdoch approach to "journalism" may far exceed what we already knew about it. Not only is the content foul -- the methods may be toxic as well, and may be standard throughout this man's septic global empire.

To read the latest on the Murdoch telephone-hacking scandal, go to http://news.yahoo.com/british-government-lawyers-look-block-bskyb-bid-paper-011132041.html

Here's hoping that much more of this guttersnipe's enterprises will be forced to close as well. I just feel sorry for the various reporters and line editors who will lose their jobs -- but they should have known that they were working for pond scum, anyway.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

On July 4, Thoughts About How Fatcats Ripped Us Off Again In The Great Recession

2011-07-04T15:36:00.003-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Leave it to the likes of me to rain on your parade. Today is Babe Ruth Diet day (hot dogs and beer), which is fine with me, but I thought you might want to know why they both cost more than they did four years ago.

Any big change in the economy brings winners and losers, and it's been a long time since working- and middle-class Americans could count themselves among the former. Although The Great Recession was supposed to have ended two years ago (economists say), unemployment lingers at 9.1%, and shareholders and CEOs are raking in more moola than ever.

Surprised? You shouldn't be -- that's the way these folks have been gaming the system for most of our country's 235-year history. What's frustrating for many of us watching this is that history has shown that We the People can stop this, but sadly, "We" usually don't.

Here's a link to a story that goes into detail about the latest ripoff.

The problem is the people who took $700 billion in bailouts because they were too big to fail, then turned around and eliminated jobs upon jobs to make their bottom lines look better.

I offer some passages from the story:

"The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders," said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.

Corporate profits are up by almost 50 percent since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

But wait, there's more:

The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.

We seem to have a generation of people -- ironically, many of them baby boomers -- who have not only forgotten how to fight the fatcats, they don't even know which political party is at least marginally more on their side. Granted, the Democrats' performance over the past 35 years has been generally lame. But by either not voting or voting for Republicans, Americans have put government largely in the hands of people who want to end Medicare as we know it and have even proposed privatizing Social Security.

And even as the outsourcing has continued, and money has poured into Swiss bank accounts and shelters in the Cayman Islands, they would have you believe that any tax increase on them is going to be a job-killer. So you ultimately pay more tax, and you get laid off anyway.

I suppose none of this should be surprising nowadays. We live in a time in which two politicians being seriously considered for the presidency are so ignorant, one thinks Paul Revere was warning the British, and the other insists that John Quincy Adams was one of the Founding Fathers.

The times cry out for citizens with enough guts to fight the powers that be, at least through voting and organizing, if nothing else. You know -- sort of like they did on July 4, 1776. Unfortunately, I see little of that spirit on the horizon, other than Tea Partiers who are foolish enough to compare themselves with the likes of Jefferson.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bachmann's Right-Wing Hypocrisy: Family Took Government Money

2011-06-27T15:24:00.007-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

I remember a conversation with a peer who, after being liberal and hippieish as a teenager, was turning conservative in his early twenties. I had been a libertarian for years and was finally seeing all the problems inherent to that ideology, especially from the working-class point of view.

It was not lost on me by then that I was in the middle of attending a good private college on what's called a "full ride," a package combining loans, grants and scholarships that was paying for everything except side expenses. And because my father was a disabled veteran, I was also getting VA and Social Security stipends, as long as I stayed in college, until I turned 22.

I started seeing, at long last, what liberals were really up to, after all. I was a son of a relatively poor family. I had performed well in high school and had high test scores. An alliance of government liberals and private benefactors was making it possible for me to get the same kind of education that a son of an affluent family would be able to take for granted. (It took a while to pay off the loans, but what the hell. ...)

In a libertarian world, or in a conservative one, for that matter, most of this would not have been possible. In fact, college might not have been possible at all, because none of these people were too keen on paying taxes to support public universities, either.

When I pointed all this out to my friend, he did not exhibit any of the same dissonance I was experiencing. To him, he told me, this was just your good luck.

No, it wasn't. It was the culmination of decades of changes in public policy, aimed at mitigating the circumstances of the deserving poor. But it struck me then, and has remained with me since, that the economic ideology of libertarians and conservatives is, at its core, opportunism. They certainly wouldn't turn down a "full ride," or any of those government payments, either. They just wouldn't want to pay the taxes to keep them going for young people 30 years later. Just kick the ladder down after you've ascended it. That's their tough luck.

Now on to Michele Bachmann

With this in mind, now comes the revelation that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's family took lots of government money from a couple of sources. The far-right Republican lawmaker, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination with plenty of Tea Party and other anti-government support, has been on record as wanting to cut the corporate income tax rate to as little as 9%. And here her family is, slopping at the government trough much more lucratively than any welfare loafer ever imagined.

The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that:

An examination of her record and finances showed that a counseling clinic run by her husband received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, with part of the money coming from the federal government. And a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner, received some $260,000 in federal subsidies.

Here's a link to the complete story.

When one reads on down, to her denials and such, it seems clear that this "fiscal conservative" is not only a hypocrite, but a liar as well. She's denying things that are explicitly on record. But, hey -- she wouldn't be the first presidential candidate to have done that, nor will she be the last.

Thinking about it, such hypocrisy and opportunism isn't unusual among right-wingers. They'll take government money, and plenty of it, as long as it is for their benefit. They're just against it when it benefits anybody else.

Former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, allegedly of this fair state (he was actually born and raised in Georgia) comes to mind.

This piece of pond scum got a Ph.D. with the help of government loans and grants, then spent most of his career on the public payroll, as an economics professor at Texas A&M and as a member of Congress. As a lawmaker, he consistently voted against anything that benefited poor people, and was a driving force behind the financial deregulation that has proved calamitous for America and the world during The Great Recession. How many people have lost jobs and homes because of this contemptible toad? And yet he had the gall to oppose the very kinds of programs that aided his toxic, verminous ascent in life.

So, Michele Bachmann's family slopping at the government trough should be no surprise. Now let's see her lie her way out of this as the campaign heats up.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

With Two-Tier System, Credit Bureaus Make Joke Of 'Free Market' -- Again

2011-06-21T13:05:00.003-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

There are many things that make a mockery of the notion of "free markets." But a new twist on this, courtesy of our three beloved major credit bureaus, has been made public -- the bureaus operate two systems, one for the rich, powerful and famous, and another for the rest of us.

Economic folklore has it that in a "free" marketplace, there's no room for "politics" or favoritism. Everything is strictly facts and cold, hard cash. That kind of marketplace exists in economics textbooks and nowhere else. Deregulation has never put lobbyists out of their business, which is clearly to influence public policy in a manner favorable to whichever sector they represent.

On to the credit bureaus: In a "free" marketplace, treatment is also supposed to be fair -- just the facts, ma'am. Everybody is supposed to be dealt with the same.

The New York Times reported last month that Equifax, Experian and TransUnion all keep a sort of "VIP" list, according to consumer lawyers and legal documents.

Here's a link to the story.

The favorable list includes people such as celebrities, politicians and judges. It's the Orwellian wisdom that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

So, what did the credit bureaus themselves have to say? Transunion and Equifax said all consumers can speak to a live representative. Don't you just love doing business over the phone with Dennis from Bangalore?

Experian was different, denying that they have such a list. According to the story:

David Szwak, a consumer lawyer in Shreveport, La., provided sworn testimony from former Experian employees that the category existed.

At least all the above is consistent with one's experience. It seems like when you call any company or agency nowadays, they either deny the situation or they give you over to some phone jockey who has no firsthand knowledge of anything.

So, what is the practical effect of such a preferred list? Preferential treatment, of course. If there's an error on your credit report, it's much easier to fix it if you're a VIP. As a result, a VIP's credit score is likely to be higher than it is for the rest of us, no matter what the individual has done. And then, it's easier to get loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc. It's the old story of the more you have, the more you get.

A classless society?

That's the toxic and pernicious idea that "free-market" enthusiasts would generally have market participants believe.

Although this idea is a delusion, it has very deep roots in American culture. In 1981, economist Robert Lekachman discussed this phenomenon in simple terms. The United States is a young country that, through most of its history, has had a frontier. "Political" equality, at least for white males, was considered a given, not something that was part of what workers had long been fighting to win.

"A worker seemed to have every opportunity to become independent, to rise from his class rather than with it," Lekachman wrote.

He went on to discuss a 1906 classic by German economist Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? Lekachman quoted Sombart:

"The economic success of American capitalism has made the average worker into a sober calculating businessman without ideals. ...

"America is famous for its rags-to-riches stories. But how many Carnegies are there? The self-made man is largely a myth. 3 in 10 sons of blue collar workers will make it to white collar status. But only 1 in 10 will achieve longer-range mobility."

Lekachman wrote, "Sombart observed that the United States was 'born Bourgeois.' It didn't inherit any of Europe's pre-capitalist social groupings -- peasants, artisans or aristocrats. The U.S., more than any other country, enshrines the individual aim of owning property. ..."

That is, if you can get a loan or a mortgage. Here, class will tell, and the folklore of American equality of opportunity is rendered nonsense. Being rich and powerful counts, and it always has. If you think you're on a level playing field ... well, I guess you can call up one of the major credit bureaus for a report. They will let you talk to a live representative.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

With Obama Impersonator, Republicans Show Their Usual Ribald Sense Of Humor

2011-06-19T02:47:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

I've looked at this video, and it looked to me like Reggie Brown was just doing Mark Russell type of stuff, knowing that he was playing to a Republican audience.

But apparently that wasn't enough for them (The Republican Leadership Conference). At some point in the performance, the music was turned on and Mr. Brown was ushered off the stage.

Here's some of the performance, courtesy of Huffington Post:

Check it out here.

Yep, that Republican sense of humor just keeps going and going. ...

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

25 Years Ago, I Was Telling People That This Was Happening

2011-06-18T04:34:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

I'm including multiple links to make sure that folks can somehow get this.

http://youtu.be/JTzMqm2TwgE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE

I was saying all this 25 years ago. I don't think this necessarily makes me a visionary, because some other people were saying it, too. We just couldn't get very many people to listen, nor can we now. At least now an economist and former Labor secretary is saying it, too.

And, he's being far too nice. Regarding the American middle class, he never uses the word "stupid." I have, and often.

Qaddafi Apparently Thanks Republican Yellowbellies For Their Support

2011-06-14T01:36:00.010-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

These are people who are, in essence, ready to put anyone in jail who doesn't support a U.S. military action -- that is, as long as it's a military action being led by Republicans.

They couldn't wait to put American troops in harm's way over those mythical "weapons of mass destruction" that were supposed to have existed in Iraq. They were just peeing in their pants to get the U.S. involved over there, just as long as it wasn't them or their kids who were going to do any of the bleeding. And in so doing, they killed something like a million and a half Iraqis.

Now, suddenly, dealing with an oil-rich lunatic in Libya presents a complex issue. Muammar Qaddafi has ruled that country despotically and maniacally for 42 years, but since it's not considered a sure thing to just go in there, knock off the dictator and steal all the country's oil, it's a moral gray area. Suddenly, the U.S. just can't afford to be the policeman of the world.

I'm not sure whether U.S. involvement in the Libyan conflict, via NATO, is a good idea. The U.S. has come to reflexively get involved in the affairs of other countries, in areas regarded as strategic, for far too long. I'm a bit nostalgic for isolationism, and even at my age I don't remember it. At least if you don't get involved, there's no "blowback," as the CIA quaintly phrases it.

But I find it poisonously funny when I see erstwhile superpatriots, the very assholes who would have gladly put my rear in a federal prison if The Bill of Rights didn't forbid it, passing resolutions questioning a military initiative by a Democratic president.

And, it seems like a Democrat can never quite hit the right note with them -- Sen. John McCain, the would-be U.S. president, is on record as saying that he thinks the problem was that the U.S. didn't use enough force in Libya. Meanwhile, for Obama, it's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

I've heard enough bellowing by Republican yellowbellies, for long enough. They just HAD to get us mixed up in a generation-long quagmire in Iraq, ostensibly because of that strutting dictator. Now, when faced with another one, and a Democratic president decides for the U.S. to participate in a NATO campaign, he's usurping the Congress. Anyway, it's too hard to steal their oil because there are too many competitors.

Here's a link to this story, courtesy of TGUAR's nightly news roundup. Of course, House Speaker Boner's office says it can't vouch for the authenticity of the letter from Qaddafi. And I'm sure they never will.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Congressman Weenie And Damage Control

2011-06-07T01:17:00.002-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

This kind of thing seems to go full circle in politics. John Edwards. John Ensign. David Vitter, etc., etc. ... And now, Congressman Weenie.

I don't know what it is about politicians that, at some point, makes them think that they are bulletproof, especially in these times. Many used to be able to get away with numerous indiscretions, but the glass house has become much thinner and far less opaque. These people can't do much weirdness, for very long, without having it catch up with them.

As I indicated, right, left and center can point fingers all over the place, endlessly. The problem is that it all diverts attention away from that which needs it the most.

The United States appears to be about 30 years into what could easily be described as a Second Gilded Age. Two-thirds of corporations pay zero income tax, and some big ones even get refunds. Wealthy individuals have seen their tax burden dramatically decrease, even as the national debt skyrockets. I'm just some ordinary schmuck, and I just got through paying the IRS much more tax than ExxonMobil will have to pay for years to come.

And with the Fairness Doctrine on the scrap heap, Americans are continually bombarded in mass media with all manner of lies and obfuscation to keep them from understanding how badly they are being screwed.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all under siege, even as private "health insurers" are raking in record profits and corporate pension plans are being abandoned. It's coming to a time in which a person 55 or 60 with pre-existing health conditions may as well just put a bullet in his or her brain. It's cheaper, and anybody can buy a gun.

With conditions such as this, what's left of the center-left coalition in America doesn't need to have to do damage control over some lawmaker's stupid sex antics. There's a lot more at stake in this country than anything that has to do with some schlemiel sending young women pictures of himself with a hard-on in his shorts.

Whatever needs to be done, such as Congressman Weenie resigning, let's get on with it. This country has problems that are daunting to say the least, and it's going to take generations to solve them. Let's get this in the past ASAP.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Sen. Wendy Davis' Filibuster Derails Texas School Finance Bill, Forces Special Session

2011-05-31T00:44:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

It wasn't exactly a scene out of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Wendy Davis only had to filibuster for an hour and 15 minutes Sunday night, because of Texas Senate rules. But in so doing, she at least temporarily derailed the $4 billion gutting of the state's public education system by stopping the Texas Senate from passing a revenue measure on the next-to-last day of the regular biennial session.

On Monday, the regular session's last day, Republicans had to muster 25 out of 31 Senate votes (80%) to resurrect the bill, and even with their 19-12 majority in that body, they could not. Apparently, everybody goes back to work in special session today.

School officials across the state have been dreading this action by the Legislature. And it will likely come to pass anyway -- the Republicans can come up with simple majorities, most certainly, in both houses. What it will mean is layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs, in large districts and in small.

On the issue of education, when you confront a Republican with the old bromide, "You get what you pay for," their stock response can be, "No, you don't." (I actually had one say that to me.) To a Republican, the quality of teaching has nothing to do with class size, and the quality of the teacher has nothing to do with how much teachers are paid. A good teacher will work for cans of beans, they "reason," and will be just as effective in a classroom with 40 students as in a classroom with 20.

I suppose this is why we've seen so many good teachers leave the field, one might think. But no, this is not the Republican way of "thinking." Really dedicated professional educators will work for peanuts, they seem to think, and will stay no matter if they have to teach 60 in a classroom.

(At this point, I have an aside question for self-interested followers of Ayn Rand: Who is John Galt, and why does he keep saying these moronic things?)

Anyway, Texas Republicans would have one believe that slashing $4 billion from state spending on education will have no effect on quality. Let's just get rid of the deadbeats, they seem to think, and all will be dandy.

It's not as though Texas was ever very generous toward public education. In a decade, the state slipped from 25th among 50 states in per capita spending on students, down to 37th. That's about to get worse.

As deadlines approached, that's when Davis, a first-term Democrat from Fort Worth, decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works.

Governor Goodhair for president?

And this "unpleasant" development comes just as Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry tells reporters that, in essence, he's starting to believe his own bullshit press. After Rush Lardbaugh carried on about him so over the air (a mancrush, Rush?), Goodhair told the news media that he's "thinking" of running for president.

Hell, for over a decade, we've been waiting to see whether Goodhair is even capable of governing this state. With a record budget shortfall confronting Texans, all he could do was tell everybody that budget cuts hurt, but hey, things are tough all over. This is from a man who is living in a house that leases for $9,900 a month, and has become suspiciously wealthy during his time as a "public servant."

He even had the chutzpah to say that school district cuts in personnel are "a local decision." Trustees across the state would have laughed out loud at that if they hadn't been so busy deciding where to cut when state funding is dramatically reduced. One school board member did call Perry's comment "comical."

Well, if the Republicans could get Il Doofus "elected," (appointed?) and if Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are actually considered viable prospects for their presidential nominee, then I suppose Karl Rove is probably confident that he could sell an Aggie who pulled a 2.3 GPA majoring in animal husbandry.

Anyway, Davis' filibuster to force a special session comes at a sensitive time.

Now back to Wendy

Davis apparently decided that she couldn't stay on the sidelines while this feasting on seed corn was taking place. This is from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram report:

Rumors had circulated that throughout the day Sunday that Davis had planned to filibuster against the bill, but the Fort Worth senator declined to confirm the reports and avoided contact with reporters.

But shortly after the Texas House passed SB1811, Davis rose to begin assailing the bill, saying it would mark the first time in state history that Texas has failed to fund student population growth.

She also read letters from constituents questioning the cuts and urging lawmakers to dip into the state's Rainy Day Fund to help finance education.

"We are going to permanently reduce funding to public schools in Texas," she said, clutching a microphone as she stood near her desk at the front of the chamber. "I don't think there is anything to celebrate in that."

Here's a link to the entire article.

It will be interesting to see what soon happens to public education in Texas, and especially if Rick Perry decides to toss his hat, or hair, or something, into the presidential ring.

I hope that in the grim years to come, Texans won't forget one courageous senator who decided to lead a likely futile fight against the triumph of ignorance.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Poll Shows Texans Want Services But Don't Want To Pay For Them

2011-05-23T15:36:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

As the Texas Legislature nears the end of its biennial session, an enlightening new poll from The Texas Tribune has been released.

There's one thing for certain that the poll findings suggest: The lawmakers had better avoid any cuts they can in public education. Among Texas voters, there appears to be a remarkable degree of ignorance about the basics of public affairs.

In short, the poll indicates that Texans want services from their state government, but largely don't seem to want to generate new revenue to pay for them.

Here's a link to the poll's particular findings.

Tea Party foolishness on parade

This Texas Legislature is about 2-to-1 Republican, due in large part to Tea Party success in getting right-wingers to the polls last November. The new members are generally against any and all new taxes, and some of the old ones as well. Their solution to the state's record budget shortfall has always been to take a meat ax to state government.

They are not above lies and distortion to achieve this. Here's a link to a previous post of mine showing Young Republican deceit regarding spending on education.

The poll shows that voter intelligence, or lack thereof, lies behind their electoral success. Far more voters in Texas want to deal with the budget shortfall through cuts than through boosting revenue. But when presented with specific areas, such as public education, for such cuts, the poll respondents became very unclear and frequently contradicted themselves.

Texas has never been generous toward its public schools. Here's a link to a story from earlier this year. In short, about a decade ago, Texas was 25th among the 50 states in spending per pupil. It's now 37th. And now, clearly, that's going to get worse.

A frequent right-wing mantra is that you don't solve problems just by throwing money at them. But there seems to be some correlation between education spending and the quality of teaching that emerges.

Scoring No. 1 on the Report Card on American Education, released in 2010, was Vermont (incidentally, the home state of the only avowed socialist in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders). That state was also No. 1 in percentage of state expenditures on public education, with 36.7% of its budget going there. It makes a difference in quality of teachers, availability of technology and equipment, and in class size, among other factors.

Although one obviously doesn't want to pay needlessly for things, quite often what you get is what you're willing to pay for.

Cutting spending on public education in Texas? This new poll demonstrates that we already have a problem here, as so many likely voters seem to believe that 2 plus 2 can be made to equal 5. For God's sake, we don't need to slash public education -- we clearly already have a deficit in that area!

So, who, then, will pay the new taxes? How about those who have the ability to pay? This state already has one of the most regressive tax structures in America. My wife and I have a very ordinary family income, and yet we pay thousands a year in sales taxes and user fees. How about making some of the big shots, like Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil, pay up?

Where will the corporate scofflaws go?

Another right-wing mantra is that if taxes start going up sharply on big business, they will pull up stakes and head for someplace more hospitable.

And where would that be? Canada? They actually tax their corporations up there. The rates are rather low, but they don't exempt two-thirds of them from paying. Seems that Canadians have figured out that if you want services, you have to pay for them.

Mexico? Would corporate executives want to send their kids to those schools, drive on those roads, and hope that none of their relatives got beheaded by drug-cartel gangsters?

Venezuela? I'm sure that Hugo Chavez would just love for ExxonMobil to relocate its executive suites to Caracas!

What we're witnessing is ignorance on a mass scale, and it goes well beyond Texas' borders. Last night, I got a comment on a post that's a few months old, from a man who has an Internet Tea Party radio show. This was the final paragraph:

Oh and unlike you, I have the balls to post under my own name. Perhaps that comes from knowing that my ideas are corrects and your ideas are nothing more than BS you picked up on MSNBC or from the New York Times. Oh how easily the stupid and naive or fooled by the mainstream media.

This semiliterate man has a radio show? Oh well, I suppose one doesn't have to be able to write and spell coherent English sentences while doing a broadcast. It still gives one pause, though.

It's been said that if you think education is expensive, wait until you see how much ignorance costs. I think that the wait is over.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Donations Show Fox News, WSJ Are Propaganda Wing Of Republican Party

2011-05-16T00:44:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

In case there's still anybody out there who genuinely believes that Fox "News" is "fair and balanced" and that The Wall Street Journal is an evenhanded, objective news source, information is coming out about where and how much Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is donating to political recipients.

News Corp.'s board of directors has decided to come clean about all this and start releasing details about political donations, starting in earnest this summer. But there's already information about where these donations have been going before this. Here's a link to a related story.

What's been happening before now is not exactly shocking to those who understand what Fox, WSJ and the rest of Murdoch's "journalism" holdings have been up to. This is from the aforementioned story:

News Corp., which includes Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal among its holdings, last year contributed $US1.25 million to the Republican Governors Association, which was disclosed, and $US1 million to the US Chamber, which wasn't. The second sum was reported by Politco in October.

Such corporate donations are separate from the contributions made by a company's political action committee, which are regularly disclosed to the FEC.

Unlike their PACs, corporations can't contribute to the political parties, though they can help fund political groups such as the RGA and so-called super PACs. While super PACs can take in unlimited donations, they can't contribute directly to federal candidates. They can explicitly urge voters to support or oppose candidates.

Whither objectivity?

None of this should come as a surprise to anybody with half a brain who has tried to watch Fox "News." It's clear that the complaints about bias at news outlets like CBS and PBS, dating to the Reagan era, were less based on real bias and more based on insufficient bias of the kind that meets with conservative approval.

I would concede that, during the 1980s, I saw a few things on outlets such as CBS News that seemed to me less than objective. But such moments tended to be the exception rather than the rule. When one tries to watch Fox "News" with a "straight face," intellectually speaking, one witnesses a stream of straight news heavily blended with undisguised opinion, without much in the way of labeling or transition. There, it's the rule, not the exception.

I think that perhaps it's time that journalism organizations just flat-out disposed of the principle of objectivity. The purpose of it seemed like a noble, albeit unattainable, goal during the 20th century. But when one goes back and examines the newspaper journalism of the late 19th century, there was little or no pretense of objectivity. In fact, many U.S. newspapers were called the "Republican" or the "Democrat," in plain declaration of their party preference. At least you knew beyond much doubt what you were getting when you put your nickel down at the newsstand.

Maybe it's time to dispense with any pretense. Some of the best "real" journalism around right now is being done by Truthout, a Web-based organization that exists on reader donations and makes absolutely no pretense of not being a progressive, muckraking outfit.

What is bugging conservatives so much, from what I've seen as a 33-year veteran of the news business, is that not very many of their ilk go into the field. Most people who go into journalism fit one of these descriptions: (1) People who want to write for a living, but realize that very few make a living from writing. (Yeah, you guessed it. I'm one of those fools.) There aren't very many conservatives in that group. (2) People who, like the generation who went into the field inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, and other crusading journalists who actually had a impact on history, hoped to make a difference. Not many right-wingers there, either. (3) People who wanted to be sportswriters but couldn't get a break in that area. Sorry to be so blunt, but chuckle-heads and jock-sniffers like this are where some of the conservatives in the field come from.

So, generally, the rank and file of schmucks who go into journalism tend to be center-left in their political sentiments. That shouldn't surprise anyone, any more than it should surprise anyone that most people who go into more lucrative fields like banking or accounting tend to be politically conservative.

Since there's such a tempest over politics and its seepage into journalism practices, why should any of us go on pretending? I've always done my best to be "objective" in my regular job, because that's expected of me. I work for the mainstream media, and I know who signs the checks. They expect a certain kind of product, and I try to deliver it for them.

But I've seen a gradual shift in journalism, from subtle bias toward the left, to blatant bias toward the right, with groups like AIM cracking the whip at MSM outlets until they cave and actually start showing a de facto bias toward the right.

Let's all come out of the closet, boys and girls. Then we'll see where the real bias is -- and I'd bet a fair sum of money that it isn't left-leaning.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Texas Republican Crybabies Will Pout While Obama Visits

2011-05-09T00:51:00.008-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

This is the state whose governor talked in thinly veiled terms, in 2009, about secession. It's probably at a risk to life and limb that President Barack Obama will come here at all.

He's coming Tuesday to El Paso and Austin, two places where he has actually had good voter support -- but the Republicans will be pouting and reviling him.

It seems that his administration didn't approve federal emergency funds after wildfires burned up a lot of acreage, and more than a few posh vacation homes, in the state. Some ranchers are going to lose money, too, because of the destruction.

It's been bad here, but Obama has had a lot on his plate lately. I'd say, given the devastation and loss of life seen in places like Alabama, that the FEMA money is probably being better spent there. (By the way, I've never heard of Alabama being an especially pro-Obama stronghold, either.)

But Texas Republicans seem to think that Obama has a political vendetta against the state, and that he's taking it out on Texas now, amid scorched earth.

Bear in mind, it's not like he's going to be losing a lot of votes over all this. He wasn't getting Republican votes in Texas anyway, ever, so what's there for him to lose, politically?

Here's a McClatchy newspapers piece on the subject, at this link.

When you've got a brat governor who's talking secession, is it a surprise that Texas isn't high on the federal priority list? But I doubt that this is even the reason for the denial. The federal government is dealing with an enormous deficit right now, and decisions have to be made. With all the untaxed money there is here in this state, I suspect that Texas has plenty of money to deal with this situation, without the help of the federal government at this particular time.

Get over it, Republican crybabies.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bin Laden Isn't Qualified To Be Dead Until Donald Trump Sees The Death Certificate

2011-05-02T01:59:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

The problem is, how would we know that it wasn't a fake?

I guess that means that "The Donald" and all the rest of us will have to see the bullet-riddled body. But if the face has been shot to pieces, how would we know that Special Forces didn't just dredge up some 6-foot-4, skinny Arab for target practice? How would we know that Osama isn't actually still alive, scarfing hummus and falafel and advising that closet Muslim in the White House?

Well, by now I suspect you get the point of this sarcasm.

Any credit here for Obama?

Barack Obama seemed downright presidential Sunday night while announcing this big score of scores. But will he get any credit? If you watch Fox "News" during the next week, I'll bet that Il Doofus gets much more credit than Obama will. And Bush 43 couldn't get this guy for over seven years -- in fact, Bush diverted U.S. attention away from bin Laden and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region with his rogue-nation invasion of Iraq. That cost this country countless billions, some of which should have been focused on a terrorist network that actually attacked us. And according to some estimates, it cost over a million Iraqi lives.

I hope that the American people have sense enough to know that this day should have come much sooner, and likely would have, if the country's priorities hadn't been grotesquely and viciously distorted by ruthless, self-serving people.

This post is going to strike some people as irreverent and brutal. Sometimes honesty has an unfortunate way of sounding like that.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Birther' Imbeciles Don't Have Everyone Fooled: They Hate President N****r

2011-04-27T20:22:00.003-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Right-wingers are forever accusing their foes of playing the race card, and thereby crying wolf. But I've been watching the bile being spewed at President Barack Obama for a few years now -- going back to the early days of his 2008 campaign -- and there seems to be no other explanation for all this hatred in the absence of any reasoned discourse.

To phrase it in the most direct way, a lot of people who hate Obama do indeed hate his policies, but what they hate much more is the fact that there's a n****r in the White House.

You'll notice that I'm expurgating that word. Even Richard Pryor and Muhammad Ali weren't doing that in the 1970s. I'm doing it because I respect the fact that, over time, it has become much worse than crude slang. It's an expression of pure, unadulterated hatred for a large group of people.

Bill Clinton was the target of a lot of venom while he was in office, and much of it seemed ridiculous. Remember those bumper stickers with the "C" in Clinton incorporated in a communist hammer and sickle? Hell, I actually knew a couple of misguided people who were avowed communists, and they both thought Clinton was a neoliberal, corporate-friendly jerk.

Obama has governed little different from how Clinton did, and how Hillary would have. The far left doesn't claim him and is more than a little upset with him. But, considering that this is pretty obviously a family man without most of the personal baggage that Bill Clinton had, the attacks on him from the right have been even more ruthless. Race hatred seems to be the only way to explain it.

I don't seem to be alone in this conclusion. Here's a link to a story that appeared after Obama called a news conference to release his long-form birth record.

Now, of course, Donald Trump and others are also questioning Obama's academic record. They are pointing out that he didn't graduate from Columbia University with honors, which means that his cumulative GPA would have been less than 3.3. They are alleging that he could only have gotten into Ivy League schools as an affirmative-action student.

Do these people remember Il Doofus?

I do, and not at all fondly. This is a guy who got into Yale only because of the first, most corrupt affirmative-action program -- the "legacy" one for rich little shits. Bush II was said to have gotten through Yale largely with the help of "gentleman's C's." Then he gets into Harvard Business, where one professor remembered him as a guy who would say something in class quite explicitly and clearly, and then have the nerve to say, just a couple of minutes later, "I didn't say that."

I went to a private college as an undergraduate, someplace about on a par with Occidental College, where Obama went his first two years. I was a straight "B" student most of my first two years -- I didn't go to a good high school, and there seems to be a sort of social grace associated with making "A's" at a tough college that doesn't permit grade inflation. By the time I was a junior I started making the dean's list, but I had made so many "B's" by then that I finished with something over a 3.2 GPA, short of the 3.4 needed to graduate with honors. I can identify very much with a student like Obama probably was.

I would say that, in hindsight, it seems like a terrific investment in human capital that Obama was accepted by Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. He went on to become a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. All that amounts to one hell of a lot more than Il Doofus ever thought of doing.

And as for Donald Trump -- his daddy was the "self-made" man, not him. "The Donald" got a business degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, then followed daddy into the real estate/developer business. Like all the recent Bushes, Trump is a son of a bitch who, as Texas legend Jim Hightower phrased it, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

Trump has always been an opportunist. I doubt that he harbors personal malice toward Obama; he's just "capitalizing" on the vast amount of race prejudice that's out there. Living in Red State America, I've seen and heard ample evidence of it. I can remember standing in line to be seated at a restaurant, and hearing some festering redneck who was leaving talking about "Barack Osama" and the like, on the eve of the 2008 election.

I understand exactly what this is all about. It's about President N****r.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Franklin Graham Interview Reminds Me: Maybe It's Time For God Inc. To Start Paying Taxes

2011-04-25T15:30:00.006-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Did I hear somebody mention the First Amendment after reading that title? Here's the text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I don't see anything in there about religious organizations of any kind being exempt from paying income taxes, or any other taxes.

For literally generations, the Graham family has been lording it over a multimillion-dollar evangelical and charity empire. International though they are, these organizations enjoy the protections and privileges of U.S. corporations. And -- unfortunately, like two-thirds of American-based corporations -- they pay not 1 cent of federal income tax.

I'll give the old man, Billy Graham, credit for having stayed out of partisan politics for his entire career. He has lived comfortably but not opulently, in contrast to many other televangelists, drawing a fixed salary from his enterprises. Although it has certainly come out, such as in his tapes made with Tricky Dick in the early '70s, that he has right-wing political and cultural views, he was shrewd enough to keep his trap shut publicly on certain topics. In the 1970s, he declined to join Jerry Falwell in the Moral Majority, staying admirably above the political fray.

Franklin Graham doesn't have quite the same compass. He ran into problems in the past with his right-wing sentiments, and also with his personal greed. This is from Wikipedia:

In 2001, The New York Times criticized Samaritan's Purse for having "blurred the line between church and state", in the way it had distributed publicly funded aid to victims of the El Salvador earthquake. Residents from several villages stated they first had to sit through a half hour prayer meeting before receiving assistance. In a statement, USAID said Samaritan's Purse had not violated federal guidelines, but emphasized the need for the organization to "maintain adequate and sufficient separation" between prayer sessions and publicly funded activities.

In 2003, Samaritan's Purse was widely criticized after its president, Franklin Graham, stated that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion", leading to opposition campaigns by Islamic leaders. Samaritan's Purse responded to accusations of being anti-Islamic by highlighting their long history of non-denominational cooperation and charity work in Baghdad without attempting to preach or proselytize.

Franklin Graham has also been criticized in the United States, for drawing a full-time salary from Samaritan's Purse, while at the same time receiving a full-time salary from Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Non-profit experts have doubted that one person can do two full-time jobs leading organizations that employ hundreds and spend hundreds of millions around the world.

Now, Franklin seems to have really crossed the line when it comes to partisan politics. Following is an interview that aired yesterday on CNN:

http://youtu.be/lx2E286GAcE

You'll have to watch it using the link, because embedding has been disabled on YouTube by request. I couldn't imagine why.

To hit the high points, Franklin Graham said that President Barack Obama is "a nice man" and "a gracious person," but added that, in political terms, our country is in real trouble. He also seemed to indicate that he could support Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and lent some credence to Trump's embrace of "birther" conspiracy theories.

Our country is in trouble because a lot of rich people don't pay taxes

That includes you, Franklin. And your family's enterprises.

This year, I owed a lot more to the IRS than I expected. I've already paid a big chunk of it -- well, big by my standards -- and expect to be until fall paying off all of it. And I'm offended to find out how many entities that bring in megabucks are paying nothing, and even getting refunds.

That includes you, Franklin. And your family's enterprises.

I'd say, in view of the size of the current deficit, that it's time to revisit this notion that religious organizations should be tax-exempt. There are televangelists and megachurch pastors out there who are fabulously wealthy. Why shouldn't they be willing to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's? (Even if it is merely John "Orange Julius" Boehner?)

Churches and the social safety net

Another area that Franklin Graham got into was the social safety net, which he lamented about becoming so secular in the past century. A century ago, he said, if you were jobless and/or had nothing to eat, you went to the local church, and the pastor would help you. Since government has taken this function over, he said, it would take time to retrain all those people of God out there, so that whey would again know how to do all that.

Pardon me here, preacher -- some years back I happened to read a little book called The Jungle, published in 1906, and heavily based on novelist Upton Sinclair's personal experiences from a couple of years before, observing the Chicago slaughterhouses and such up close. It didn't seem as though churches were doing that much for society's poor back in those days.

In fact, about a third of the American people were living in grinding poverty back then. That was one thing that gave rise to a little something called the Progressive Movement, to try to get some things done in the public arena that churches and private charities obviously weren't succeeding in doing.

In addition to churches, I also seem to recall a little institution, common in those days, usually called the county poor house. The destitute would go there for three hots and a cot, in exchange for whatever they could do -- wash dishes, work in the fields if they were able, etc. It was sort of like a minimum-security prison, and it was supported with taxpayer money at the local level.

Unfortunately, it took until the 1930s for the U.S. to do much at the federal level to make up for what wasn't being done for the poor and the elderly. If you go back and read honest accounts of what was happening back then -- food riots, the churches and private charities being overwhelmed with demand, etc. -- then it becomes pretty clear why the federal government did, and had to, step in.

Franklin Graham and his family will never have to rely on Medicare or Medicaid, or Social Security for that matter, to eat, clothe and house themselves adequately. It's easy for this sanctimonious little SOB to sit back and pontificate thusly. Neither he nor his will ever have to suffer.

Make the pious little shit pay taxes. Now.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Income Tax Day Special: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (And Pay Next To Nothing)?

2011-04-18T14:16:00.010-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

The Republicans just don't get it, and it looks like they won't in the foreseeable future. With 40 cents of every federal dollar spent now being borrowed, they want to give yet more tax bonanzas to the rich while essentially abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.

This isn't what Americans voted for in 2008. A lower percentage of them, those who bothered to vote in 2010, voted for such folly whether they knew it or not.

The numbers cry out for a tax hike on the wealthy. Here's Robert Reich on the issue, courtesy of Truthout.

When one talks to earners at the upper-middle level, they are quick to point out the marginal rate of 35%, arguing that with progressive tax brackets, many of them end up paying more than lower earners as a percentage. (That's what comes of a steady mental diet of Fox News. That stuff rots brains.)

Yet such people seem to get amnesia when one points out that just 10 or so years ago, when the marginal rate was 39.6%, the U.S. was running a surplus. This was no accident. Even with the modest Clinton tax hike on the rich that barely passed in 1993, we didn't have the structural deficit we have now.

And the Mainstream Media are quick to obfuscate, talking to selected economists who keep telling the victims that raising taxes on the rich won't be enough. And who owns the MSM? Giant corporations -- and how much income tax do they pay?

Two-thirds of corporations pay no income tax

That's not news -- the first of the stories broke in 2008. Here's a link to one of them.

Although it's not news, many people don't seem to "get it," so it bears repeating, and repeating some more. Most of these "legal persons" are getting a free ride. They use the infrastructure (such as it is now), and have vast resources to fleece ordinary, unsuspecting victims out of many billions, yet they pay nothing.

In case you thought I was joking, here's a link to a more recent story about this, courtesy of Alternet.

In their 1990 book America: What Went Wrong?, investigative journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele cited IRS statistics that show that, in 1959, corporations accounted for 39% of federal tax revenue. By 1989, that was down to 17%. And it's
probably gotten worse since then.

Here's a brief roll call of Corporate America's tax slackers:

General Electric -- Last month, The New York Times reported that, in addition to paying no federal income taxes this year, GE, the largest U.S. corporation, is to get a tax credit of $3.2 billion. GE made $14.1 billion in profits in 2010, $5.1 billion of which came from its U.S. operations. The story was conspicuously absent from NBC News, part-owned by General Electric.

Goldman Sachs -- Bloomberg News, in December 2008, reported that Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, Goldman Sachs said. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern. "This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs," Doggett said. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore."

ExxonMobil -- In March 2010, Forbes magazine reported that the oil giant, "which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS":

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Mother Jones magazine noted that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. It was noted at the Wonk Room that big corporations' tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers.

This list could grow to tedious proportions. You should get the picture by now.

Let's start sharing some sacrifice

Nobody likes to pay taxes. I owed the IRS far more than I expected to this year, and will probably be until fall paying it all off. But when some common slob like me is paying Uncle Sam more, year after year, than GE is, then there must be something dreadfully wrong with this system.

But alas, our Republican brethren still don't get it. They are promoting the idea of still more tax bonanzas for the wealthy. And, although a corporation enjoys the status of a "legal person" in our psychopathic system, two-thirds of them pay nothing, and even get refunds and billions in corporate welfare on top of that.

The latest news on this was from The Associated Press. It's not just corporations that are the problem. About 45% of U.S. households will pay no income tax at all, thanks to all the breaks that people, especially the super-rich, are getting.

It should be clear, if one looks at the numbers honestly, that our structural deficit has much more to do with what needs to be raised than with what needs to be cut.

Yet, the Republicans persist in their policies of the past 30-plus years, to defecate all over ordinary people while cutting sweet deals for their rich campaign contributors. And the Democrats haven't been very much better. Even President Barack "Change you can believe in" Obama hasn't been nearly candid enough on this issue.

So, what is to be done? Giant corporations and the super-rich clearly have politicians by the balls and have been gaming the system accordingly for the past 30-plus years. What can an ordinary person do?

(1) Stop believing the MSM. They obfuscate, and sometimes outright lie. And that shouldn't be surprising, given that they are generally owned by the very corporations that have been getting a free ride.

(2) Vote in the primaries. This is where people can get real Democrats, not just more corporate lackeys, to be candidates in the general election. The one positive that came out of the 2010 midterm debacle was that now, the Democrats left in Congress are more progressive on these kinds of issues. Ironically, it was largely the "Blue Dogs" and Democrats-in-name-only who went down in defeat to Tea Party challengers.

(3) Vote in the general elections. As frustrating as DINOs can be, and as agonizingly placating as Obama has been, we're better off with them than we are now, with right-wing Republican ideologues writing the agenda. President Clinton, Republicrat though he often was, presided over the last balanced federal budget, and that was largely because he demanded that the rich pay at least a modestly higher percentage of their hefty incomes in taxes. And back then, there was little talk of privatizing Medicare.

(4) General strike. In contemporary America, it will be very hard to float this idea. But if most of the work force in this country were willing to "sick out" just one day, and a few spokespeople made clear to the powers that be that this was an organized protest, it might perk up some ears.

This country is far from broke. The trick is going to be getting the rich slackers who have the bucks to fork some of them over. There are people out there who have it -- but they aren't going to let go of any of it without a fight.

Just pay your taxes today, chumps. Serious training starts tomorrow.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

From Joe's Vault: IRS Tax Gestapo Loves To Pick On Poor People

2011-04-11T01:20:00.001-05:00

Originally posted in April 2007.

By Manifesto Joe

"... In 1976, my mother owed $300 in taxes. They were not paid due to the fact that she was diagnosed with cancer and given 12 weeks to live. In May, as she lay dying, two IRS agents showed up at my house where we had moved my mother to take care of her. They told me they were friends and had come to visit. I took them to the room, where they introduced themselves as IRS agents and served her papers to confiscate everything she owned. She was to (sic) weak to sign the paper but did make an X and I signed for her. On that day, they took everything she owned ... even the soda bottles at her place of business! She died within the week. ..."

-- IRS Abuse Report #193, from legalminds.lp.findlaw.com

Those were supposed to be the bad old days of the IRS. After countless complaints like this, in the late '90s there was a bid to reform the service into something BusinessWeek called, a bit facetiously, a "kinder, gentler IRS." The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, signed by President Clinton, was gauged to make "significant structural changes in the management and oversight ..." and strengthen and enhance "the rights of and protections applicable to taxpayers ..."

There were a few meaningful changes in the new law. But it didn't take long for the IRS to revert to stonefaced abuse of poor and financially distressed taxpayers -- while ignoring most of the cheating by the rich.

Under the Bush regime, the working poor have come under special attack over their claims of the Earned Income Credit. This is an especially valuable tax credit for people coming off the welfare rolls and into the low-wage job market, because it can bring a refund of all income tax and Social Security tax withheld from their paychecks. The bottom line: This credit is an incentive for welfare recipients to go to work. Wasn't that what the Right-Wingers wanted when they "reformed" welfare in 1996?

But, being a conservative means never having to say you're sorry. In the conservative world, the poor are a sub-species, basically faceless and worthless. If people are poor, then they must be lazy, drink too much and gamble, rent their kids to pedophiles, or such. It most certainly has to be their fault; and if you honestly try to help them, I'm told that they'll spend the money on a console and play Nintendo all day. So, as the thinking on the Right goes, we might as well kick this sort of gutter trash around a whole lot more.

So, this is where the IRS comes in. David Cay Johnson reported in this story, first published by the New York Times on Jan. 10, 2006, that:

Tax refunds sought by hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have been frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, blocking refunds for years to come, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress today.

The taxpayers, whose average income was $13,000, were not told that they were suspected of fraud, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. The advocate, Nina Olson, said her staff sampled suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.

A computer program selected the returns as part of the questionable refund program run by the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. In some cases, the criminal division ordered that taxpayers be given no hint that they were suspected of fraud, the report said.

Most of the poor people whose returns the computer flagged as fraudulent were seeking the earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor. The credit can return all of the income taxes and Social Security taxes withheld from the paychecks of poor people. Without the credit, many poor people coming off welfare and going to work would receive less money because of taxes taken out of their paychecks and the loss of health benefits, I.R.S. data and other government documents show.

The average refund sought was $3,500, which under the rules for obtaining the credit means that the vast majority of those suspected of fraud were single parents or married couples with children. The maximum benefit for singles is less than $400.

Ms. Olson said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursing questionable refunds by the poor, which she said cannot involve more than $9 billion, than to a $100 billion problem with unreported incomes from small businesses that deal only in cash, many of which do not even file tax returns.

Let's forget any discussion of "small" businesses here. And, going into the way the rich and corporate giants get by without paying taxes is a whole different post. There isn't nearly enough room here.

Suffice it to say that some of us know what this is about, from schoolyard memories. It's a lot easier to pick on little kids than to take on the big ones. The IRS is just one of many bully magnets in our society. I haven't got time or space to describe all the others. It is merely one manifestation of a rising bully culture. And conservatives seem to be leading the swagger.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

From 1944: 'Jammin' the Blues'

2011-04-10T04:06:00.003-05:00

Featuring the great Lester Young on sax and the great Barney Kessel on guitar, among other immortals of the period. Lester's the one with the pork-pie hat who's always got a cigarette going -- it looks like he's going to burn his fingers. (But, having read about Lester, he might not have even realized it.) Barney was the only white dude there, and they kept him in the shadows a lot, sort of a role-reversal.

Dig it, kats.

A Death In The Family

2011-04-01T15:21:00.002-05:00

I lost someone very close to me Wednesday afternoon. This blog is doing pretty well now, and I'm grateful for all the response. But I'm going to have to take some time off. Sometimes a loss like this clarifies things, makes you realize what's important. I think it's having that effect on me. I enjoy doing this, but I think it's going to be a couple of weeks before I can post again. I thank all you visitors, and please do come back.

Hey, Robert Reich: Why We Need Voters Who Will Get Off Their Asses And Go To The Polls

2011-03-28T12:09:00.003-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

Nearly 75 years ago, FDR gave a campaign speech condemning Big Business and its predatory practices in no uncertain terms. Something to recall from history is that he didn't have a hostile House of Representatives or a lot of right-wing Republican governors to face after the midterm elections of 1934.

Economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in an op-ed piece for Truthout, quoted FDR in "Why Governor LePage Can't Erase History, and Why We Need a Fighter in the White House." Here's a link to the entire piece, and following are some quotes:

Big business and Wall Street thought (Labor Secretary Frances) Perkins and Roosevelt were not in keeping with pro-business goals. So they and their Republican puppets in Congress and in the states retaliated with a political assault on the New Deal.

Roosevelt did not flinch. In a speech in October 1936 he condemned "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering."

Big business and Wall Street, he said,

"had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me –- and I welcome their hatred."

Fast forward 75 years.

Well, indeed, let's do exactly that.

Practical politics

FDR, on close examination, wasn't quite what the hardcore left had hoped for in America, either. Granted, he got much more done in his first 100 days than Barack Obama did in nearly two years before taking a "shellacking" at the polls. But in large part, that "shellacking" is precisely the point.

Some 29 million Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't vote in November 2010. Some 19 million McCain voters didn't vote, either, but that left Obama and the Democrats with a deficit of 10 million votes for the midterm election. That was enough to make the difference for the Tea Party. The right-wingers got their base out to vote; the "left," or what there is of it in America, simply didn't.

As a result, Obama now faces a House packed with hardcore right-wingers, enough of them to vote to defund National Public Radio (as though it were a huge contributor to the deficit). He is confronted with right-wing, Tea Party-backed governors all over the country, even in states that he carried comfortably in 2008.

Maine and Wisconsin are two big examples. Obama won those states with something like 56 or 57 percent of the popular vote. In 2010, both states elected Republican governors. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has made busting the state's public employee unions into his life's work. The right wing is touting him as a possible presidential candidate. In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage has ordered state workers to take down a mural at the state labor department depicting Maine's labor history. He's also renaming the conference rooms that had been named for American labor leaders and for Frances Perkins, the U.S. labor secretary who in 1933 became the first woman to serve on the president's Cabinet.

How could you not have known what would happen?

Excuse me, 29 million sometimes-voting Americans who voted for Obama in '08: What the hell did you think you were voting for then? And what the hell did you think was going to happen when 29 million of you sat home last November and let the radical, right-wing Republicans win high office across the land? Are you going to tell me that you're surprised that these things are happening?

To answer the first question myself: I, for one who turned out to vote both times, had hoped that I would get something more. Obama hasn't been what I had hoped. He's no FDR. Instead of enlisting people like Frances Perkins, he's surrounded himself with Wall Street-minted characters like Timothy Geithner.

But to Obama's credit, he did get some important things done for ordinary Americans. Thanks to his credit-card reform law, I'm likely to get a lower interest rate on my credit card very soon. As for the "Romneycare" health-care law that he pushed through at the federal level -- I favor single-payer for everyone, so obviously it's not what I'd hoped for. But if he'd decided to go down fighting for the public option (a compromise in itself), we'd have gotten nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip.

Obama isn't an idealist or a radical, and neither was FDR. Both were and are pragmatic, results-oriented politicians, the kind who actually get elected to high office, and sometimes even live to tell about it. And remember that FDR had "supermajorities" in both houses of Congress to put across his program. Obama, even last year, didn't have that in either house. As a pragmatist, he decided that something was better than nothing.

Yes, I've been disappointed. Like movie star and Inside Job narrator Matt Damon said, "I no longer hope for audacity."

But what I did understand is what would happen when radical right-wing Republicans got their money-grubbing paws back on the levers of power. Some won't openly say it, but they want to privatize the Social Security system that FDR and Frances Perkins fought for and made a reality in 1935. It's been the most effective anti-poverty program in the country's history, and now the right wing wants to gut it and put it in the hands of speculators who won't have to rely on it when the time comes.

The assault on organized labor has been going on for decades, and what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin should be absolutely no surprise. The reactionaries have been telegraphing that punch for many years. The thing that surprises me a bit is how so many "center-left" Americans are now shocked, shocked, that these things are happening, and that the right-wingers actually have the power and votes to get them done.

Why is this so? Because 29 million of you out there sat on your asses last November and didn't vote, in effect handing the country over to them. I sure as hell knew what was going to happen, and that's why I voted. You apparently didn't know, and hence didn't vote?

Obama may well be a Republicrat. But we know now from the Clinton presidency that a centrist Republicrat is better for most Americans than a reactionary, any day. We live in an imperfect republic, and sometimes it's necessary to hold one's nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.

Just remember this in November 2012; and, more importantly, remember this again in November 2014.

Like former Labor Secretary Reich, a lot of people have been disappointed that Obama hasn't shown more fire. But it's a two-way street: It's much harder to be a fighter when so many people are deserting your corner. With more reliable support, he might surprise all of us.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Texas Young Republicans Are Retarded Liars On Teacher-Administrator Ratio

2011-03-20T01:31:00.004-05:00

By Manifesto Joe

I believe that it was the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said something like, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." It would seem that the Texas Young Republican Federation doesn't need facts -- it can just make them up as they go along, and then opine away.

They tried to tell the people of this state that the teacher-to-administrator ratio in Texas has swelled to nearly 1-to-1 (almost one administrator for each classroom teacher). Here's a link to the PR release of this ridiculous right-wing disinformation.

Many people realize that their jobs are at stake as the Legislature considers $9.8 billion in education budget cuts. So, the snot-nosed, trust-fund-suckled Young Republicans should have realized that somebody was going to check up on their "facts."

None other than the Texas Education Agency did just that. Here's the link to that story.

The Young Piss Ants claimed that the teacher-administrator ratio had gone from about 4-to-1, favoring classroom teachers, in Texas in the 1970s to nearly 1-to-1 now. But TEA data show that the actual ratio is now nearly 13-to-1, weighted to the classroom.

Here's how the Young Rethuglicans explained their data:

Kristy Moore, chairwoman of the federation, said the group's statistic includes all nonteaching staffers -- including superintendents, bus drivers and counselors -- who fill "administrative" roles.

So, janitors and bus drivers are now "administrators?" What about crossing guards?

Here's more from that story:

Among those saying the ratio is misleading is Moak, Casey & Associates, an Austin-based school finance consulting firm. The firm notes that the second-largest group of school employees is auxiliary staff, which can include bus drivers and nurses aides.

"I'm not sure why this keeps getting repeated, other than folks trying to beat the drum that schools are overstaffed," said Dan Casey, a partner in the firm.

None of this is shocking, just foolishly predictable. Right-wingers have a nasty habit of "cooking the books" when it comes to their "factual" data.

I recall getting into a strange exchange with some bozo clerking in a cigar store back in the 1990s. He claimed to me that the U.S. had spent "$6 trillion" on welfare in 30 years (since 1965). I told the man that he was misinformed. He went looking for some book, probably by Rush Lardbaugh, to back up his claim. He had a hard time finding the passage -- I think he hadn't actually finished the book and was afraid of losing his place in it. Anyway, I just paid for my smokes and left. The problem with trying to argue with fools is that you may be mistaken for one yourself.

Later, I realized what his bogus "argument" was, because I ran across it again. What his "book" was putting forth was the notion that any and all spending on anything that could be construed as "social welfare spending" at all by the federal government, which would include Social Security and Medicare, would come under the category of "welfare." When I hear someone say "welfare," I think of the specific program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children. He and his "source" were including anything that could be even remotely called "social welfare spending."

The 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill once said something to the effect that, while not all conservatives are stupid people, most stupid people are conservatives. This is how so many common slobs, who have no common interests with the trust-fund babies comprising the Young Republicans, are pathetically demagogued. They read some initial "claim," then don't bother to check the facts in any detail.

What this boils down to is that there are some people who can be believed, and others who can't. The common word for them is liar.

And when they're stupid liars, it seems even worse.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Must Viewing: Jon Stewart Exposes The Lavish Lifestyle Of Teachers

2011-03-13T01:55:00.003-06:00

This should be required viewing!

Please watch.

Seems like Michele Bachmann could have used a better-paid high school history teacher, or at least an effective one. She was in Concord, N.H., and told them that they should be proud to be one of the places where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. (That Concord is in Massachusetts.)

Governor Goodhair, Moron: Says That Texas Teacher Layoffs Are A Local Problem

2011-03-10T17:44:00.002-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry ran for re-election last year on a platform of no new taxes, and many Texans were gullible enough to buy it, casting 55% of the votes for him. Now we're looking at mass teacher layoffs across the state, and Goodhair has the nerve to say at a press conference that it's "a local decision."

This comes as Texas legislators are considering nearly $10 billion in budget cuts to education. The overall proposal would eliminate up to $31.1 billion in state services over the next two years.

According to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Carroll school district Trustee Sue Armstrong described Perry's comments as "comical." She went on:

noting that Carroll has already cut $2 million from its budget, mostly from the central office and via teacher attrition. "The next cuts we're looking at are to our gifted and talented program," Armstrong said.

Goodhair does a lot of talking about jobs. Of course, he's talking out of his ass. For one thing, a new UCLA study shows that Texas extracts more tax money out of its businesses than blue-state California does. Here's the link.

Bear in mind, though, that these taxes are being extracted from middle-class businesses, mostly. Now, he's got the state eating its seed corn so that his very rich friends can be spared any more nasty new taxes -- as though they were paying a lot already. With fewer teachers, less money spent on education, etc., where is this skilled work force going to come from?

Right-wingers would have you believe that merely throwing money at education doesn't improve it. I can tell you firsthand that when it comes to quality of education, money matters. I have a vivid memory of high school biology. We didn't have enough microscopes to serve all the students in the class -- we had to share, and it usually wasn't equal sharing. And the microscopes we had were from about 1948, so even the students who got first dibs at them weren't getting much. My high school graduating class was small -- about 100 -- but I can't remember one, not even one, member of the Class of '74 who ever did well in hard sciences. I didn't even try, because I knew I lacked the background. That's why I ended up a journalist (fool!).

Now Goodhair is going to preside over draconian cuts in education. Of course, his kids and grandkids won't be affected, but millions of young Texans will be. This is what comes of electing to the governorship a right-wing Republican who pulled a 2.3 GPA majoring in animal husbandry at Texas A&M. This stuff gives Aggies a bad name.

Here's the link to the story about Perry's rationalizations.

Well, Texans, I hate to keep saying that I told you so, but I did tell you so. But, of course, this sort of thing is happening all over the country. At least in Wisconsin they have the balls to raise some hell about it. I understand that some Texas teachers are going to Austin this weekend to protest. Good luck -- the Legislature is controlled 2-to-1 by Republicans in a state in which that party is one of the most kook-right of them all. The damage will already be done before you know it.

Just remember that the next time you sit home and don't vote during a midterm election. Even a DINO is usually better than a kook-right, Tea Party Republican. Y'all are fixin' to find that out, the hard way.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Debbie Riddle On Them Illegals: They's Only Good To Mow My Lawn And To Clean My House

2011-03-08T02:25:00.003-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

We have a new nominee for most ignorant person in the world: Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball (Houston area). Riddle has introduced a bill in the Texas Legislature that would hit employers of illegal immigrants with heavy penalties. But she makes a very, very large exception -- for "single-family" employers thereof.

In other words, in the world according to Debbie Riddle (a Tea Party fave, by the way), about one-third of the restaurants in Texas would be forced out of business if they were to comply with such a law. But she could go on hiring nannies, gardeners, cooks, ditch-diggers and maids as long as they are employed by a single family.

Riddle should have known that she was setting herself up for "ridicule" here. In the first place, she resembles a cartoon character. There's a picture of her in an outfit that suggests the Texas flag, with white fences and horses and green pastures in the background. She appears to be about a size 6, but one can guess that she can afford plenty of arugula with her salads, and can't remember ever missing a meal involuntarily. She's a blonde who appears to have spent too much time out in the sun. It's taken a bit of a toll.

I don't recall the subject, but Anderson Cooper apparently tore her another one during an interview a short while back. She admittedly wasn't prepared for a grilling from a more-or-less real journalist.

Now, she comes up with this little legislative gem, House Bill 1202. Here's a link to a recent report from the Houston Chronicle.

I could find no biographical information on Riddle, other than that she's listed as a "horse breeder" by profession, and that her husband, Mike, is a lawyer. Oh, and she apparently attended Southwestern University. If that's the one in Georgetown, Texas, I remember it as a private school that's mostly the domain of rich kids.

Anyway, Riddle is being "ridiculed" widely for this stupid bill, which she depicts as a common sense approach to the problem of illegal immigration. A fellow Republican House member, one who happens to be Hispanic, explained that if no such exceptions were made, a pretty substantial portion of the Texas population (and rich 'uns, too, I will add) would go to jail.

I suppose that an "all or nothing" approach to this problem wouldn't be practical. But Riddle's solution is, at the very least, patronizing, and at worst just flat-out racist. Her lawn man and her housekeeper would be OK to stay. (Well, as long as they themselves weren't caught.) Just don't expect your fajitas to be as fast or as cheap the next time you visit a Tex-Mex eatery -- those that are still there. And the cost of car washes and roofing will go through the roof.

It's time to face reality about this. About 1.6 million illegal immigrants currently live in Texas, by one estimate. They are an integral and rather permanent part of the economy. Scholarly studies have indicated that their effect on wages here is very slight, and there are actually some kinds of businesses (car washes and lawn care come to mind) that could not even exist without their cheap labor.

So, where is Riddle coming from? This quote from a 2003 interview with the El Paso Times is a good indication:

"Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell. And it's cleverly disguised as having a tender heart. It's not a tender heart. It's ripping the heart out of this country."

Well, Debbie, I hate to break this to you, but none of that stuff is free in Moscow, and it never has been free here, either. People have to pay taxes for it -- except, of course, in Debbieland. In Debbieland (2011 America), the rich pay little or no tax, because they are the ones who create jobs -- for maids, gardeners, nannies, housekeepers, lawn men, etc. Preferably, those with brown skin.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Michele Bachmann: Sarah Palin With A Brain? Paleeeeaze ...

2011-02-28T22:13:00.007-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

It appears that some Republican activists are beginning to see U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., as a better presidential alternative to fading GOP star Sarah Palin. Believe it or not, one such person described Bachmann as "Sarah Palin with a brain." Here's the link.

To quote John McEnroe, "You can't be serious!" Whose brain would that be?

Bachmann is the imbecile who cited the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" as an example of bad economic policy, and she alleged that it was passed during FDR's watch and was part of his policies. (It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, named after Sen. Reed Smoot and U.S. Rep. Willis Hawley, passed in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover.)

There's even more ludicrous nonhistory in this C-Span footage of Bachmann speaking on the floor of the U.S. House:

Dumb and dumber?

Bachmann is, to anyone who has any real knowledge of U.S. history, a drooling idiot who has no business even being in the House of Representatives, let alone under any serious consideration as a presidential contender.

One thing that worries me is that we've already had at least one semiliterate fool in the White House (Il Doofus), and it was very recently. Given the rank ignorance of the current American electorate, it isn't outside the realm of imagination that someone even worse could soon find their way there.

I wish Joe could say it ain't so.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Funniest Monty Python Ever

2011-02-26T06:03:00.000-06:00

It probably helped that, back in 1975, I was stoned at the time.

I just watched it straight, and it seemed funny then, too.

Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 11: Mr. Magoo Wins The Cold War

2011-02-21T02:46:00.003-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

Revisionist history has it that Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War" by, in essence, outspending the Soviet Union on a military buildup. Those evil commies just couldn't compete, the myth has it, and they were suddenly forced to fold their empire all over the world.

What utter right-wing hogwash.

Let's look a bit more closely at the situation as it really was in those days. The U.S., typically, has spent perhaps as much as 6% of its GDP on the military. The old Soviet Union often spent as much as 25% of its GDP on military outlays, depriving its civilian population of many basic needs so that lonely, unhappy young men could sit around on military bases in the Soviet part of the world, getting sick on boiled carp and bad vodka.

I remember all the right-wing alarmist BS of the time. I read in the National Review in 1985 (that was when I could still read that rag without tossing my cookies and making the pages stick together) that the Red Army was arguably the most formidable fighting force that the world had seen up to that time.

We know now that, around 1985, the Soviet military was a large, but largely ineffective, fighting force, ill-equipped and with miserable morale. Hell, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan kicked 100,000 of their asses for years and years, finally forcing them out of the country. (And yet, nobody now seems to be arguing that U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, won the Cold War. The argument seems at least as plausible.)

After the Soviet Union collapsed, conservatives all of a sudden crowed about the superiority of American fighting forces over those hapless commies. The story kept changing whenever it was convenient. So, which was it, right-wingers? The most formidable fighting force the world had ever seen, or a bunch of homesick clowns who couldn't beat a ragtag guerrilla force in one of the world's poorest countries?

The Soviet economy was at the root of the empire's decline, and it had been in trouble for a very long time. Its centrally planned economy was stagnating by the mid-1970s, when Reagan was still sticking his foot in his mouth as governor of California. Here's a passage from answers.com that summarizes this pretty well:

The vigorous Soviet economy of the late-1960s and early 1970s quickly fell victim to the very factors that had contributed to its success, central planning and raw materials allocation. Brezhnev recognized that the Soviet economy was slowing, and attempted to patch problems rather than completely overhaul the system. His efforts failed. Even if Brezhnev had attempted to overhaul the Soviet economy, the highly entrenched special interests that made their living by manipulating the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy could have defeated Brezhnev's efforts.

Throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union's GNP and industrial output continued to increase, but at a lessening pace, eventually leading to economic stagnation. The Ninth Five Year Plan (1970–1975) saw a growth rate of approximately 3%. The period of 1975–1980 experienced a growth rate of between 1% and 1.9%, depending on whether revised Soviet numbers or the West's estimate is examined. Likewise, 1980–1985 saw a further decline in economic growth, between 0.6% and 1.8%. Declining economic growth rates were not confined to the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe, with its economies intertwined with the Soviet Union's, suffered a similar fate.

This declining growth rate in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in the Soviet Union receiving a diminishing rate of return on capital investment. This proved disastrous for the Soviet economy, because by 1980, the Soviet Union was spending nearly one-third of its GNP on capital investment, with most of the sum dedicated to the military. The military was consuming such a large portion of the Soviet economy for two reasons: the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the arms race with the United States. These two events would weigh heavily in the Soviet economic demise and lead to its inevitable fall. A weak economy prevented the Soviet Union from reacting appropriately to each experience.

Now, what Reagan admirers would have one believe from this is that the U.S. military buildup of the 1980s was what "won" the Cold War. The Cold War had been going on for about 35 years by the time Reagan even took his first oath of office. Did he hasten the Soviet collapse by a year or two? Perhaps -- but it's pretty clear from what we now know that the Soviet Union's economy was already, in essence, a dead man walking by 1980. Just a basic maintenance of the U.S. military for another 11 years was quite sufficient to see them run out of gas.

I've read that when one says something to Russian economists nowadays about Reagan winning the Cold War, they are unable to restrain their laughter. Everybody knew what the problems were in those days, they would say, and they were all right here.

Does this demonstrate the superiority of capitalism? Well, yes and no. Many of those who led the U.S. through the Cold War were Democrats, who advocated a mixed economy and were regarded by capitalism's right-wing ideologues as heretics. The Democrats weren't fans of the Soviet command economy, either, or of its police state. But they recognized a need for a reformist approach to capitalism, which one would be at a loss to explain to the typical Tea Party activist of 2011.

Now, less than 20 years after the final collapse of the Soviet Union, it looks like it is capitalism that is in trouble all over the world, and that seems largely for similar reasons -- its apparent inability to reform itself. For over 30 years in the U.S., wealthy individuals and giant corporations have insisted on gaming the political system to evade taxes, and on demagoguing much of the public into believing that any sort of tax increase will ultimately be a tax increase on them.

We now have the vantage point of seeing, from the second term of the Clinton administration, that it is quite possible for the federal government to raise enough revenue to run comfortably in the black without damaging the economy. But one wouldn't know that, if one listens to rich people and Corporate America, and takes their swill seriously.

Back to the Cold War -- it came to an end because of a general collapse of the Soviet economy, and that was something that was many years in the making. A military empire has to be paid for, and the Soviet empire had their system overextended long before Reagan became president. Less than 20 years later, it looks increasingly like something similar is happening here.

Years ago, there was a saying that the U.S. didn't win the Cold War -- Japan won it. Now I'd say it's looking more and more as though China was the real winner. The U.S. is so deeply indebted to them, and largely because of war expenses, that we aren't likely to get out of that debt within any living American's lifetime.

Now, as for Reagan and Mr. Magoo

Ronald Reagan was apparently an inspirational leader for many people. In contrast, what I generally saw for 8 years was a "Teflon" presidency and the amusing rightness of his critics' comparison to the cartoon character Mr. Magoo.

For those perhaps too young to remember, Mr. Magoo was a cartoon character whose life span was from about 1949 to 1965. The late character actor Jim Backus was his voice. Mr. Magoo doesn't get a lot of retro TV airplay nowadays, because I think he's regarded as far too politically incorrect, sort of like comedian Bill Dana's character Jose Jimenez or advertising's The Frito Bandito. I'll explain.

Mr. Magoo was a rich old dude who had poor eyesight and was hard of hearing, yet he insisted on continuing to drive his outdated flivver and to stroll through life as though there were nothing wrong. He would instigate catastrophes everywhere he went, but would himself walk away unscathed and oblivious about anything that had happened. People who had impaired eyesight and hearing were eventually offended by the character, so despite great popularity in his day, Magoo had a pretty short shelf life on the rerun circuit.

Compare this to a president who cut and ran after hundreds of Marines got blown up in Lebanon, yet today few call him a coward. (If it had been Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, there would have been all kinds of editorial comments about how yellow is not a color that goes with the decor of the Oval Office.)

Compare this to a president who was basically giving his blessings to a tradeoff with terrorists of arms for hostages -- and yet now few seem to remember this.

Compare this to a president whose policies led to the most expensive failure of U.S. financial institutions since the Great Depression. Not many seem to remember that, either.

Compare this to a president who created record deficits by cutting taxes broadly on wealthy Americans and big corporations, so much that now you can't reason with the average shithead on the street about how these people are looting the store and pushing the burden onto him or her.

This is a litany that could go on a long time -- but finally, compare this to a president who just happened to be sitting there, on the edge of dementia, at the time that Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the Soviet system was no longer workable. And now, right-wing revisionist historians are strutting about, posturing as though this were a feat that Reagan pulled off all by himself. Few seem to recall the reality of the situation -- they just remember glittering speeches about the myth of some "shining city on a hill."

Mr. Magoo, I sez. The senile old fool walked away from multiple disasters unmarked. And he's still doing it posthumously.

"Magoo, you've done it again!"

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

More Evidence That Fox News Is Like Soviet State TV

2011-02-18T00:48:00.004-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

I have sincerely tried to keep an open mind about this. I tried to watch it. The straight news seemed credible for short periods, but would be followed quickly by brazen opinion, with no transitions or labeling. The coverage of Barbra Streisand's brief involvement in politics a few years back was most revealing. The "crawls" leading up to the story said things like "Babs' babble," and "Has Yentl gone mental?" 'Scuse me -- "Fair and balanced"?

Now we're seeing more. Here's the latest on the right-wing answer to Soviet state television:

Here's the link.

I have to admit that I saw a few things on CBS News back in the 1980s that I couldn't say were entirely balanced. But two wrongs don't make a right, especially when the second "wrong" is so baldfaced and blatant. Fox "News" should have absolutely no credibility now. This is the result of the right wing ruthlessly grabbing control of the debate about broadcast news so single-mindedly that they have totally lost any sense of objectivity. Clearly, these people will do anything to advance "the agenda." The bias is now blatantly and shamelessly on the other side of the spectrum.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Great Soul For The Weekend, From The Most Excellent Sam and Dave, Part II

2011-02-12T04:12:00.001-06:00

When soul was soul!!

Great Soul For The Weekend, From The Most Excellent Sam and Dave

2011-02-12T04:11:00.000-06:00

When soul was soul!!

Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 10: Reagan Is Still 100

2011-02-07T17:07:00.001-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

OK, plus one day. Cut me some slack -- I had to work on Super Bowl Sunday.

Ronald Reagan's presidency seems to have become bogus nostalgia for some people. I suppose that for some, it's appropriate. If you hate labor unions and love union-busting, you'd love Reagan. If you hate poor people and think they ought to be punished for being poor, Ronnie was your man. If you think keeping a country in a state of perpetual war is good for it, then Reagan would happily oblige you.

Let's look at some of the real Reagan legacy.

Supply-side economics

It's not hard to see that the timing for supply-side theory was right. The America of the late 1970s and early '80s was suffering from demand-pull inflation -- too many dollars chasing too few goods. A correction was needed.

What we got was an overcorrection. The misery index of, at one point, 13% inflation and 21% interest rates gave Reagan what he needed to sell a large dose of snake oil to the public. Economist Arthur Laffer's supply-side theory was that cutting taxes would actually increase federal revenue, because (1) with lower rates, more of the wealthy and big corporations would be willing to pay rather than seek tax shelters or be scofflaws, and (2) the resulting economic growth would in itself create revenue.

Well, in 1981, taxes were cut broadly, with the rich and corporate America as the main beneficiaries. So, we sat back and waited. And waited. Almost 30 years later, I'm still waiting for my trickle-down from the first time. It generally felt more like "tinkle-down."

What this did in reality was create a structural deficit, with too many government obligations (including Reagan's defense buildup that amounted to a 40% increase in military spending) versus too little federal revenue. Deficits ballooned to record numbers.

The second year, 1982, Reagan and members of Congress led by Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas overhauled Social Security, raising taxes on it and thereby mitigating some of the revenue-anorexic effects of the tax cuts of the previous year. At least Social Security would be sound enough for another generation or so. But the effect was to raise taxes on less affluent people, and in a way that most of them had no clue thereof. The Social Security tax, you see, is regressive, ceasing after a certain level of income. Rich people don't pay it past a certain income figure. Apparently this was once gauged as a way of getting them on board with the program. But de facto, when Social Security taxes are raised, it's the working class that pays most of it.

Anyway, we kept waiting, and the deficits just got bigger. All that extra revenue that was supposed to come in -- well, it didn't. Supply-side just turned out to be a massive fraud that greatly enriched the wealthy while the incomes of ordinary people stagnated. The mantra we kept hearing from Reagan was simply that "Congress spends too much."

Looking back, there was method in this madness. If you're a laissez-faire economic conservative, you want, as Grover Norquist said, government to be shrunk down to the size that it can be "drowned in the bathtub." That's one good way of accomplishing that.

Self-fulfilling prophesies

Despite the Democratic House of Representives' insistence that much of the social safety net be preserved, big cuts did ensue. The financial deregulation that began during the Carter presidency accelerated under Reagan. Government subsidies for housing and the like were slashed -- the HUD budget ended up something like 40% of what it had been, in real dollars. And regulation of any kind was curtailed as too expensive. What that did was essentially tell all the foxes that the henhouse was theirs for the taking.

Thus, the bromides about government being so inept, being so unable to function efficiently, etc., gain credibility of sorts. Naturally, when you put inept and inefficient political appointees in charge of diminished government regulation, you're going to get inept and inefficient "regulation." With such an approach, government indeed becomes the problem, not the solution, as Reagan famously said.

Rampant corruption

Reagan appointees became notorious, producing a federal government that had more officials either indicted or under investigation than any in recent memory. I believe that the count was over 100 at one point. With the foxes in charge of all the henhouses, how could we have expected anything different?

But obviously, many Americans don't remember any of that now. What they remember, with hazy nostalgia, is a telegenic actor-president who spoke to them about "a shining city on a hill." Some of us -- unfortunately, not enough -- remember that this hill had a curious odor of dung about it.

The savings-and-loan scandal

I'll lift a bit of material from Wikipedia to cover this:

The deregulation of S&Ls gave them many of the capabilities of banks, without the same regulations as banks. Savings and loan associations could choose to be under either a state or a federal charter. Immediately after deregulation of the federally chartered thrifts, state-chartered thrifts rushed to become federally chartered, because of the advantages associated with a federal charter. In response, states such as California and Texas changed their regulations so to be similar to federal regulations.[citation needed]

More important, however, was the moral hazard of insuring already troubled institutions with public dollars. In the view of a savings and loan president or manager, the trend line was fatal over the long haul, thus to get liquid, the institution had to take on riskier assets, particularly land. When the real estate market crashed, the S&Ls went with it. By insuring the risk, the government guaranteed that desperate S&L owners and managers would engage in ever more risky investments, knowing that if they were successful, the institution would be saved, and if unsuccessful, their depositors would still be bailed out.

The S&Ls went on to do a lot of imprudent real estate lending (sound familiar?), among other things that led to the failure of 747 of them. The Resolution Trust Corp. was created to clean up the mess. We have a family friend who worked for the RTC, taking possession of failing S&Ls on behalf of the government. She told us that at one site, she went to the second floor and found a well-stocked wet bar with cut-glass nudes and such decorating the place. Things like this had been apparently done with depositors' money.

Not all of this occurred on Reagan's watch. But for eight years, he championed the sort of deregulation that led to such gross abuses.

More from Wikipedia:

The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government via a financial bailout under the leadership of George H.W. Bush. The remainder of the bailout was paid for by charges on savings and loan accounts —- which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.

Bogus nostalgia for "Doctor Feelgood"

People like to be told bright, glittering things by politicians, and Reagan was undoubtedly a master of that. My wife and I never quite understood the appeal. She hated him as an actor in his Hollywood days, and always commented on that turkey neck. I saw him similarly to Gore Vidal, who bemusedly called Reagan "grandmotherly."

Sadly, the man was almost all shine and very little substance. I understand that President Obama would like to pick up some of that shine, so as to rally faltering support for his programs. But Obama has the misfortune of being an intellectual, so despite also being a fine speechmaker, he usually ends up telling people a lot of grim truths that they don't want to hear. Reagan, about as far from an intellectual as it gets, never had that problem, and that was a major reason for his political success.

Coming soon: Reagan is still 100, third chapter.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 9: Reagan Turns 100

2011-02-06T02:18:00.002-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

I remember the time well. It was the 1980s, the prime of my young adulthood. He was supposed to be rebuilding America, and millions of jobs went overseas or to Mexico. Suddenly there were all these homeless people on the streets, hitting on you for spare change -- in 1980 they had either been living in Section 8 housing or were in mental asylums. You could see Reaganvilles beneath the bridges and underpasses in every city, with tents pitched and fires burning in garbage cans. He was supposed to be a fiscal conservative, but the deficit ballooned to record numbers. Yet, I noticed that I was suddenly paying more tax for Social Security than I was before.

He was supposed to be this badass patriot, yet hundreds of Marines were blown up in a defenseless position in Lebanon, and then we tucked tail and ran out of there. Arms appeared to be traded to terrorists for hostages. The example of Cold War conquest was overrunning some little halfass country called Grenada, where they found a cache of commie weapons that were, like, World War I vintage.

This is the guy we're supposed to be honoring on what would have been his 100th birthday?

Not the sharpest pencil in the box

We've certainly discovered that it isn't necessary for a U.S. president to be an intellectual of any sort. But Ronald Reagan lowered the bar a lot, and paved the way for the likes of Il Doofus, and now Klondike Hottie, to parade about on the national stage. Here is what some notables (and Reagan himself) said about Uncle Ronnie, courtesy of the website, "The Reagan Years":

"I never knew anything above Cs."
--President Reagan, in a moment of truthfulness, describes his academic record to Barbara Walters, November 27, 1981

"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was.... They said he wouldn't come to work--all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
--Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan's underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88

"Reagan's only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile] throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution."
--Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) interviewed by Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

"This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days."
--Columnist Richard Cohen

"What planet is he living on?"
--President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.

"During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times--during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope--that they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'"
--Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency

"He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."
--David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist

"an amiable dunce"
--Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)

"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

"...like reinventing the wheel."
--Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House

"The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."
--Columnist David Broder

"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
--Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father, The Way I See It

"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."
--Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error

"President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
--former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984

"Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy."
--James David Barber, presidential scholar, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard

"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
--Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986

Sage words from the Gipper himself

These quotes are from the same source:

"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), cited in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)

"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, cited in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980. (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, cited in Time, May 17, 1976

"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April 19, 1985. ("In costume" is more like it. Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)

"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)

"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)

Well, that's enough to digest for one day. But wait awhile -- there's more.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Glenn Beck's Self-Serving Recklessness Endangers Professor's Life

2011-02-05T12:36:00.000-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

Frances Fox Piven is a lefty academic, a sociologist who advocates reforms of welfare in the U.S. that would eventually lead to a guaranteed annual income for all Americans. I've read one of the professor's books, and can't say that I agree with her entirely.

But now that TV-radio demagogue Glenn Beck has put her in his ludicrous right-wing crosshairs, I find that I must come to her defense. Because the 78-year-old professor urges a certain level of militancy among America's unemployed, in the form of mass protests, Beck has made her a verbal target, and some of the lunatics who hang on his toxic words appear to be cleaning and oiling their firearms.

Wikipedia summarizes the controversy thusly:

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has repeatedly criticized Piven, labeling her references to the May 2010 Greek protests a call to violence. Beck stated that she is an enemy of the Constitution, and that the Cloward-Piven strategy would "intentionally collapse our economic system", which in turn has led to multiple death threats against her. Comparing Beck to 1930s fascist broadcaster Charles Coughlin, Piven has replied that her references to riots are "not a call for violence"; that her critics are using "a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent."

When somebody gets on Beck's shitlist, threats often follow. The Care2 Petition Site reported:

After Beck's outrageous remarks against Piven, threatening comments surfaced on his website, including:

"Somebody tell Frances I have 5,000 rounds ready and I will give my life to take our freedom back"

"we should blow up Piven's office and home"

The irony, of course, is that Piven now appears to be a target of potential violence, after Beck drew attention to her by accusing her of advocating violence.

It's not news that Beck is a reckless and dangerous demagogue. The development here is the obvious chilling effect that a braying jackass like him can have on any kind of opposition rhetoric. When an emotionally disturbed man with the power of a mass broadcaster can incite an army of right-wing goons to potential violence, that smells of de facto fascism.

By the way, I'm sure Care2 would be happy for you to sign their petition to Roger Ailes, president of the neo-fascist propaganda TV network also known as Fox News. Here's the link to the petition site.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bertha Lewis Was Right: Tea Party Is "A Bowel Movement"

2011-02-02T01:30:00.001-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

I hate to break it to all you Tea Partiers out there, but even after the results of the demagogued 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party isn't doodley-squat in Washington. In the Senate, it appears to be some kind of crude joke.

The Chicago Tribune reported that "The first meeting of the Senate Tea Party Caucus on Thursday (last week) attracted just four senators willing to describe themselves as members."

Newly minted Rethuglican senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, passed on the meeting.

Predictably, the first meeting of this "caucus" was organized by Rand Paul of Kentucky. He persuaded three other senators to attend. This sounds like decent news to me, considering what young Mr. Paul wants to do. According to the Tribune, "He recommended gutting the Interior and State departments, eliminating the Energy Department and cutting all funding for public radio and television and the National Endowment for the Arts."

I think somebody left out killing the Department of Education, and also gutting and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Fortunately, in view of the Senate turnout, few are taking much of this seriously. The Tea Party attracted a lot of attention just with its smell. I doubt that it's going to have much staying power in Washington.

It's hard to witness mass stupidity and not call it by its rightful name.

Regarding the title of this piece, here's a link to a "fair and balanced" account from Fox News of former ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' speech last April. Read on, but prepare for resulting bowel movements. And don't say I never left a link to a Fox News article.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Hey, America -- Soon It May Be Time To Walk Like An Egyptian

2011-02-01T18:27:00.000-06:00

More Among Ample Evidence That Lardbaugh Is A Fool: Speaking Gibberish Chinese

2011-01-29T03:08:00.000-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

It's hard to understand how this ridiculous tub of lard can still command an audience of millions, yet Herr Lardbaugh can and does. His latest faux pas was speaking infantile Chinese on the air while the Chinese president was in the country, saying stuff like "ching, chong, chang."

Asian-American legislators called on him to apologize, but Herr Lardbaugh is having none of it. Comic license is his defense, even if his comedy wouldn't even play well to most junior-high audiences.

I can't say I'm a fan of the authoritarian Chinese government, but a guy in Herr Lardbaugh's position in life should show a bit more class than this. Of course, he has no clue thereof.

Here's the link to a post from ThinkProgress. Not only did Lardbaugh decline to apologize, one of his listeners sent several racist death threats to the office of an Asian-American legislator this week.

If it hadn't been clear that Herr Lardbaugh is a political bottom-feeder, playing to the prejudices of the pond scum of the reich-wing, it should be obvious now.

Plus, he stopped being funny decades ago. The act is silly and ancient. You don't do stupid better than anybody else does, Rush. Your remaining audience is trailer trash.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rather Than Raise Taxes On Rich, Texas Republicans Set To Ruin Economy

2011-01-23T11:28:00.004-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

This session, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature is facing a two-year budget shortfall that could run as high as $27 billion. The reaction from Governor Goodhair and the others who are essentially on the corporate payroll has been predictable: slash and burn.

Texas already has a well-earned reputation for being one of the most piss-poor places in the U.S. for social services and other public initiatives. We're already 49th out of 50 states in spending on mental-health services, yet officials in that sector are bracing for marrow-deep cuts. That doesn't make much sense, especially when you consider what just happened earlier this month in Tuscon, Arizona. A bit of mental-health intervention might just have helped that situation some.

Regressive taxation

One of the biggest reasons that state services here are so anorexic is because the revenue base is so narrow. It's estimated that nearly 80% of Texas' revenue comes from sales and excise taxes -- i.e., taxes on poor people and the middle class. And then, the fastest-growing source of revenue in this state is the lottery. That's yet another tax on poorer people, albeit a voluntary one. I've heard it called "a tax on people who are bad at math."

According to one 2009 analysis, Texas is the fifth-worst state in the U.S. for taxes levied on the bottom 20% of earners. And then, since taxes on the upper 80%, and on big corporations, are so low, that bottom 20% gets some of the most feeble social services in the country.

I smell fundamentalist Christians here. The attitude among many of them is that the rich are that way because they are living right. If you're poor, you must be doing something sinful, like drinking and gambling too much, for which God is punishing you. And that fuels the vicious cycle of rich getting richer and poor getting poorer.

All of the above has been going on in Texas for a very long time, even when Democrats were in power. That's not too surprising -- I've met some "Democrats" who seemed more right-wing than some of the Republicans I've encountered here, and that's saying a lot. The GOP state platform that's assembled here every four years reads about like that of the John Birch Society.

But now, the state's entire economy could hang in the balance. Experts are warning that the proposed meat-ax budget cuts, involving as many as 8,000 state employees, could have a very large ripple effect throughout the entire Texas economy.

Governor Goodhair's perennial demagoguery

With Governor Goodhair beginning his 11th year in office, this was predictable. Rick Perry never met a rich dude whom he didn't consider a potential campaign donor. He's all about reverse Robin Hood government, shifting burdens down onto those who can least afford it and openly subsidizing "job-creating" corporations that already rake in unprecedented profits.

Someone with common sense and a minimum of political courage might suggest a state income tax on households with incomes over $100,000. Not Goodhair, who's busy being a demagogue on bogus issues like "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants.

But, the voters here re-elected him last November with 55% of the tally, so the masochism of middle-class Texans seems to be continuing unabated. Bubba gets mad, buys a new gun and joins the Tea Party movement whenever he hears anything about a state income tax, but then quietly and tamely pays higher and higher sales taxes when he visits Walmart.

And last year, he elected Republicans to the state Legislature 2-to-1 over Democrats, something that hasn't happened here since Reconstruction. And then, he's going to be surprised when, in two years, his daily life is that much harder and his money doesn't go as far?

I'm indulging in stereotypes, of course. But it's hard not to picture such things while living amid this degree of stupidity.

I don't need a Ouija board to tell you what's going to happen. The state budget will be slashed dramatically, to the delight of Tea Party Republicans. Then, localities will have to raise property taxes and such to keep from cutting into the bare bones of what they provide. Education, already an obvious problem here, will suffer all the more. A new Associated Press report says:

Analysts say schools would lose $9.8 billion and 100,000 jobs over the next two years. Hospitals and doctors are facing $2.8 billion in Medicaid cuts. And sheriffs are worried about cuts to mental health programs that inmates need.

Texans, brace yourselves for the worst. And, about 55% of you who voted last year pretty much brought it on yourselves.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Alabama Governor's Bigoted Remark Shouldn't Surprise Anyone

2011-01-22T11:38:00.005-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

Christian exclusivism is certainly nothing new. It's what most "conservative" Christians believe -- that only those who have accepted Christ as their savior will go to Heaven.

So, the only thing that should be surprising about what Gov. Robert Bentley, R-Ala., said in an address on the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday holiday is that a practicing politician said it so openly. And even that should only be mildly surprising, given the atmosphere of bigotry that so pervades American life now.

Here's what the Chicago Tribune reported:

Speaking to a large crowd Monday at Montgomery's Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church — where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached — Bentley said that "if you're a Christian and you're saved ... it makes you and me brother and sister," according to a report in the Birmingham News.

"Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he added, according to the paper. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

By Tuesday, the comments were reverberating beyond Alabama. David Silverman, president of Cranford, N.J.-based American Atheists, called the remarks "outrageous."

"He is a governor, not a mullah," Silverman said. "This is a diverse nation with a secular government. If he doesn't like it, he shouldn't be governor."

Atheists weren't the only people who were offended. The Daily Mail (U.K.) later reported:

Today (Wednesday) he was forced to issue an apology for his outburst after a critical letter from Rabbi Jonathan Miller. ...

Rabbi Miller, from Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama, wrote that Jews were
"faithful people" who pay their taxes and send children to state schools.

He said in a letter to the Governor: "Our great nation, by law and tradition, provides us with religious freedom. And even though we do not believe exactly alike we ought to see each other with brotherly affection, and as equals in conscience and human worth."

A spokesman for the Hindu American Foundation said the comments on Monday were "intolerant, repulsive and wholly unacceptable."

But they don't appear to be hurting Bentley any among Alabamans. Here's a link to an Associated Press report that pretty much says that most people there agree with what the governor said. Some just think he was unwise to say it openly.

Christian exclusivism, again, is very old doctrine, and certainly not unprecedented among many prominent U.S. politicians. Il Doofus, a Methodist, is said to have professed this belief privately but declined to discuss it openly.

I'm sorry to disappoint some of my agnostic or atheist colleagues on the political left, but I've had a few subjective experiences that have led me to believe that there is a deity. But at 54, I remain unchurched, and one of the main reasons for that is Christian exclusivism. Where I live, that tenet tends to be the rule, not the exception, in Christian churches of almost all kinds.

And it simply defies common sense. A Muslim who has spent his or her entire life in Islamabad is very, very unlikely to be persuaded by any Christian missionary. This person may be more virtuous, by any measure, than a given Christian in Alabama. But he or she is very likely, perhaps almost certain, to cling to the religion in which he or she was raised. That's how the typical human mind works -- and an all-knowing God, if such a being exists, would surely know that.

For another example, suppose that a bright child in Alabama is brought up in a Southern Baptist church, and applies common sense to theological questions. And, this child discovers that there are scores of hypocrites in this church. By the time he or she is a teenager, the person is pretty likely to run away, fast and far, and never, ever go back. Perhaps the person will become a believer again, but not that kind of believer.

To hear it told in most Christian churches in these parts, any such people are surely hellbound. I don't profess to know the mind of God, but I hope those who would say such things are in for some surprises.

Religious exclusivism of any kind betrays yet another habit of the human mind, and a very pernicious one. It's the desire to be part of some "chosen" group. "My group, my community, my church, my political party, everything I belong to is absolutely right, and I am certain beyond a doubt that everybody else is wrong." That's what comes out of the mouths of many people, and it doubtlessly makes them feel better about themselves, that they're special. (Ever hear any of this from conservatives?)

Inclusivism isn't new either, nor is it radical

Even among conservative-to-moderate Christians, there is a differing view. Consider these three statements:

C. S. Lewis - "We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him."

John Stott - "I have never been able to conjure up (as some great Evangelical missionaries have) the appalling vision of the millions who are not only perishing but will inevitably perish. On the other hand… I am not and cannot be a universalist. Between these extremes I cherish and hope that the majority of the human race will be saved. And I have a solid biblical basis for this belief."

Billy Graham - "And that's what God is doing today, He's calling people out of the world for His name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they've been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don't have, and they turn to the only light that they have, and I think that they are saved, and that they're going to be with us in heaven."

Not exactly religious liberals, any of these fellows, let alone radicals. And they are all considered evangelical Christian icons.

But, at long last, no one should really be surprised that a major Republican politician would make such a statement. Even after the apology, something tells me that Bentley's views are unchanged. He was simply being candid about them at an inappropriate moment.

Given the atmosphere of bigotry and intolerance that the American right wing has resurrected, there's nothing shocking here at all.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Decent Thing For Palin To Do Would Be To Retire From Politics

2011-01-12T01:42:00.005-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

No, she didn't shoot anything, at least nothing with any more civil rights than a moose has.

But last year she had a map of 20 congressional districts with "crosshairs" over them, and one of them was the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., now recovering from being gravely wounded by a gunman.

It was already quite evident that Sarah Palin is just too f***ing stupid to be a presidential contender. She was too stupid to have been governor of Alaska, or even the mayor of a town. I considered Il Doofus perhaps the dumbest SOB who ever held the highest office in the land, but even he looks substantially brighter than Klondike Cutie.

I've held off for a few days on posting anything on the Saturday shooting in Tuscon, for a variety of reasons. It's hard to know what to say about a hideous event like this, so I thought it would be good to just let the facts unfold for a few days before commenting.

I have enough of a political bias to admit that I'd anticipated that the suspect would be some sort of Tea Party poster boy. He's pathologically anti-government, but his political profile is like, all over the place. Like some other nut cases I've run across in my time, the suspect apparently could be a Marxist one minute and a Nazi the next.

One thing that's clear, though, is that he was attracted to extremes, and to violence. Although the far right certainly has no patent on extremism, they've cornered the market on it in contemporary America. Just listen to AM radio on any given afternoon.

And politicians like Sarah Palin have been shameless demagogues, ruthlessly exploiting ignorant bigots for their own gain. There have been many offenders, but Palin has been the most high-profile of them, raking in big bucks while cynically promoting herself to Tea Partiers with overactive prostate glands.

With the blood of a federal judge, and nearly that of a once-promising young member of Congress, at hand -- no, not directly on HER hands, but -- I'd still say that in view of Palin's violent rhetoric, it would be proper penance if she would simply go home to Wasilla and stay there.

We've seen a bit too much of this kind of behavior in recent years in America, and much of it was during the midterm election campaign. Giffords was on Palin's "hit list," and she was the target of death threats, vandalism and harassment. Elsewhere, in Kentucky, we saw a Rand Paul supporter stomp on the head of an opposition activist, giving her a concussion. And then, the stupid SOB wanted HER to apologize to him.

Enough with the brown-shirt act. For one thing, the right doesn't have a monopoly on that -- they just have been producing the most obvious examples of it. Other people are quite able to fight back, but they may have a lingering fantasy that there is still a process of civil debate alive in the U.S.

Sarah Palin is the one politician I can think of who has consistently gone beyond the boundaries of any civility. If there's going to be a Judas goat in this thing, she looks like the obvious one.

Go home, Sarah, and stay there.

For one thing, you're far too ignorant to have come this far in life. I have seen one person before who used the word "ravished" instead of "ravaged," like you did in an e-mail or tweet or some such thing to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindall during the oil-spill crisis.

But that person wasn't potentially running for president. The guy I think of who actually did that (at a newspaper I worked for in 1979) was a penis-headed ad salesman who drove a 1960s Volkswagen "bug." It almost got in the paper as a banner Page One headline. ("Storm ravishes county") I had been out all day, and then in the newsroom, writing about storm damage. Then, just before they sent the page, I saw that. It didn't surprise me to have to correct him -- but he clearly couldn't even run his own desk, let alone a small state.

Go home, Sarah. And stay there. You are just too goddamned dumb to be in this arena.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Happy 100th, Gypsy Rose Lee

2011-01-10T10:26:00.003-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

Saturday would have been the 100th birthday of Rose Louise Hovick (1911-1970), better-known by her stage name of Gypsy Rose Lee. Daughter of a certifiably crazy stage mom and sister of the child star who later became actress June Havoc, Rose spent her youth on the Vaudeville road. Along the way, she discovered that audiences responded delightfully to a Burlesque "stripper" who actually talked to them and made jokes rather than just doing the old bump-and-grind.

By 1931, she was a headliner in New York Burlesque theaters. For four years she was a main attraction at the Minsky brothers' famous theaters. By 1936 she was "mainstream" enough to be in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, and a personality on NBC radio. Rose finally hit the wall after going to Hollywood in 1937. She was likely a victim of the "code" back then, as the producers out there wouldn't even let her use her stage name. (They billed her as Louise Hovick.) The movies didn't pan out well, so she returned to New York. By the early 1940s she was a bestselling novelist and playwright, while continuing to do her stage act for as long as she had the body and looks.

Because I was born in 1956, my main awareness of Gypsy Rose was as a comic TV personality in upper middle age, one of those quick wits who was a regular on the daytime game show Hollywood Squares in the late 1960s. I also saw the movie version of Gypsy, the musical based on Rose's famous 1957 memoir. It was much later that I learned more of the story behind this one-of-a-kind showbiz legend, who in the 1930s counted H.L. Mencken among her many fans. She was a much more complex and troubled person in private than her public ever knew.

Here's a link to an NPR piece about a much-reviewed new book, Karen Abbott's American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare — The Life And Times Of Gypsy Rose Lee.

And, you can actually catch a clip of her very sanitized act on YouTube. Here goes:

Something tells me that the routines she did at Minsky's were a lot more risque. (She was arrested at least once.) But even with that in mind, you could see a whole lot more nowadays, 24/7, in any pole-dance joint in Dallas -- and perhaps not be as entertained.

Here's to you, Rose.

(P.S.: For readers expecting more serious and political content here, never fear. There's one like that coming soon, on a subject you can likely guess.)

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Income Disparity Is A Growing Problem

2011-01-03T16:05:00.003-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

Socialism for the rich? It looks more and more that way, upon close examination. I remember a job interview (I'm a newspaper journalist) in which the publisher of a medium/small paper talked briefly about competition. "We're all for competition. But not in our particular business. If somebody starts up a paper to compete with us, we're going to do all we can do to beat them and run them out of business."

Fine -- that's the marketplace. You can lose in competition, and the inefficient do. But that points to an inherent contradiction of capitalism. In theory, capitalists laud competition; but in practice, every capitalist wants a monopoly.

But even with that contradiction in mind, the way capitalism is being practiced in America and elsewhere is that many "competitors" are shielded from the rigors of the marketplace. History shows again and again that concentrations of wealth cannot be divorced from political influence: They tend to be parallel. Rich people and giant corporations can afford to hire more and better lobbyists than those who advocate for the poor, labor unions, etc., can ever hope to. It's always been that way, and it probably always will be.

According to journalist David Cay Johnston, over the past 30 or so years, rich people and big corporations have been so lavishly subsidized that they always win. And, subsequently, you, little man and woman, always lose.

Here's a link to articles about Johnston's new book, and to an interview with him.

If you follow the news, it shouldn't be lost on you that cities, counties and states across America are giving subsidies, either in the form of tax breaks or outright payments, to already-rich companies to relocate there, or to expand. What they get in tax breaks, or in flat payments, you have to make up the difference for.

It's reality that a significant number of jobs are generated this way, at least in those localities, as Johnston grants. But the effect on the nation as a whole is nothing short of devastating. The most recent federal deficit figure was $1.3 trillion, a bill we're going to stick future generations with. On the structural deficit, this is the "trickle-up" effect.

Income redistribution doesn't work just one way. The rich are much better at it, and contrary to the prophesy of Karl Marx, history has seemed to be on their side.

The efficiency of the "free market" depends on that which is purely economic functioning independently of political influence. That may have been somewhat possible in Adam Smith's day, but it didn't take long after that for economic power to translate directly into political power. In the halls of Congress or any legislature, money talks; bullshit walks.

How has this affected daily life in the U.S.? Here's another link that illustrates the problem. American workers are vastly more productive than they were in the 1970s, but have gained little in real wages compared to those raking in profits from politically advantageous positions.

So, in practical terms, how can this problem be remedied?

Make the bastards pay

I'm realist enough to know that there's never going to be a real solution to the problem of capitalist success translating directly into political influence. This is one point on which Marx was absolutely correct: There's never going to be any divorce between the two spheres. The only way to address it is to revive the concept of progressive taxation.

There seemed to be a time in America in which many working people more or less understood that capitalism is an insider's game, played with great duplicity. "Traditional" capitalists do plenty of talking about the "free market," but all the while they have Washington and the state capitols overrun with lobbyists seeking all manner of perks. And they get most of them, no matter which major political party is in power. They fare better with Republicans; but Democrats, as we have seen since January 2009, merely talk a better game and usually end up swimming in the same polluted water. Their politicians have to have quid, and plenty of it, to keep their gig going.

Progressive taxation is the only practical answer. Hey, rich guy: You want various governments to subsidize you? Realistically, that's bound to happen. But with that in mind, you must pay commensurately for it, so as to stop shifting the burden down upon those who can least afford to pay.

Let's face the fact that the "free market" is, and has generally always been, a duplicitous sham. The hogs have pretty much always been slopping at the trough, and the biggest ones get the most. It's only when the smaller ones band together that real change is forced upon them.

The people of Dallas-Fort Worth, here in Texas, should be able to see the dilemma quite well. The taxpayers anteed up a pretty penny for Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, subsidizing fabulously wealthy Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in the bargain. What they got this football season was an NFL team that went 6-10, and that was largely because of Jones' mismanagement, if sports columnists are to be believed. The taxpayers didn't get much of a return on their silly investment.

I don't see an end to such nonsense anytime soon. But I'd like to see Jerry's taxes, and those of others like him, raised dramatically, for all the "little people" to settle up for the price of Jerryworld.

I've got a couple more links that more or less address this subject. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was a dissenter in the Senate on the recent Obama compromise on taxes. Here's some of what he had to say on the subject.

Here's more of what Bernie said, courtesy of Truthout. It's pretty astonishing that the American people are still taking it up the keester so happily while ExxonMobil rakes in $19 billion in profits, and not only pays no income tax, but gets back a $156 million refund from the IRS.

Bernie is an avowed socialist, the only one now in Congress, to my knowledge. I'm sorry to disappoint some out there, but I'm not a true-believing socialist, and therefore I don't think there's ever going to be a way to effectively stop big corporations and wealthy campaign contributors from twisting the arms of lawmakers. I'd say that's especially true since our Supreme Court recently struck down limitations on campaign finance.

The only answer is what can be done to wake people up. A political groundswell is the sole solution, and it's got to start soon. The sole reason for optimism here is that once people start really being hit in their pocketbooks, that's when they actually do something. The best time for that was in 1985, but it still may not be too late.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Three Nights At The Movies: The New 'True Grit' Is Excellent

2010-12-30T01:25:00.005-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

I've been studiously ignoring politics until the New Year arrives. Being the hardworking sort that I am, I don't make it to the cinema nowadays as much as I once did. But lately I've been going a little more.

True Grit

I was very pleasantly surprised that the new True Grit is an excellent movie. This is the one they should have made in the first place. The old one, with John Wayne and directed by Henry Hathaway, seems like Hollywood gloss in comparison. This one, by the Coen brothers, has a very "gritty" and authentic feel to it.

Jeff Bridges' take on Rooster Cogburn is most interesting. Rooster is a 53-year-old drunk with a literal hair-trigger temper, a guy who has obviously spent about as much time on the bad side of the law as on the good. Matt Damon pretty well matches him as LeBeauff (sp?), the Texas Ranger. He comes across as a lot more authentic than Glen Campbell (In the 1969 flick, I remember Glen still having that perfect hairstyle, mutton chops and all, when he's supposed to be dead of a head injury).

And when it comes to the 14-year-old girl, there's no comparison. Hailee Steinfeld is great, totally lacking the stilted pomposity of Kim Darby. A star may be born here.

The Black Swan

This one is an art film that's doing far better at the box office than art films usually do in America. I thought it was decent. My wife was far less impressed.

The gist is that Natalie Portman plays a ballet dancer who gets cast as the lead dancer in Swan Lake, but must tap into the dark reaches of her psyche to be able to dance as the dark side of the lead character. She's just not ready for it, and becomes hallucinatory and unbalanced as she has to reach into that side of herself. I won't tell more so as not to spoil it for those who want to see it. My wife and I both mused that the only thing this lacks that would gratify film snobs is the subtitles.

Being male, it did not escape my attention that Mila Kunis, in a supporting role, is a very sexy woman.

And, the music from Swan Lake, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is an earwig in the best sense of the term.

Boxing Gym

Frederick Wiseman is one of America's great documentarians. He's going on 81, so this may well be his last film.

He took his camera to Austin, Texas, to film at a boxing gym owned and operated by Richard Lord, a one-time pro boxer who also happens to have a degree from the University of Texas. Lord's gym is open to anyone who can pay $50 a month. There were people there who were obviously just trying to lose weight. Fred does most of his work in the cutting room, so he gradually builds a crescendo up to a gym war between two of the pros who work out there.

Meanwhile, you get a good slice of life. Lord tells a person who's becoming a member that, basically, everybody is welcome there. One woman who comes in here is 68, he says, and she hits the speed bag better than some of our pros do.

Wiseman has made many superb documentaries, but is perhaps best-known for Primates in 1974. I remember that one for the disturbing images. They have a box on top of a research monkey's head, with electrodes that penetrate his brain. Activating the electrodes induces all kinds of behavior. They can make him fuck, then stop; fuck, then stop; and so on. By the time the movie is over, you'd like to join the animals in a revolution to kill all the researchers. But, Wiseman never judges -- he just records.

His camera is very unobtrusive. At one point in Primates, he's in a boardroom with the researchers, with a couple of them raising objections and asking if this sort of research is really necessary.

Anyway, Boxing Gym is a good one, as all of Fred's are. Catch it if you can. It's pretty much an art house film.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

A Brief Thought On Commonality

2010-12-21T18:52:00.003-06:00

It occurred to me, after the fact of my latest post, that I mentioned that FDR and LBJ perhaps did more for the common people of this country than any other presidents.

I have an IQ that actually got me into the Mensa Society. (Although, admittedly, I am a relatively dumb Mensan. I got in by all of 2 points.) Anyway, some people would ask me, why in the hell I would want to identify with common people? Shouldn't I regard myself as above them?

I certainly haven't found a position in life that has been above them. I generally work for people who I know are not nearly as smart as I am. Perhaps their EQs (emotional quotients) are higher than mine. I've taken a test on that, and my EQ is very average.

Life is a strange and fascinating journey, and you never know where you're going to end up. God, if he's there, blessed me with high intelligence. But I sense that he also blessed me with a life in which I began poor, and then saw what poor people have to run up against in their struggles for a better life. This, too, was sort of a blessing, and it's a major reason why I trudge on, writing this blog.

There, but for the grace of God, go you. There, perhaps with the grace of God, I have gone. -- MJ

Bring On The Bitch And Boner Show

2010-12-21T14:36:00.005-06:00

By Manifesto Joe

The 112th Congress will take office in just a couple of weeks, and America's Millenial Generation may be getting a harsh civics lesson in the bargain. I suspect that some of our young folks may wish they hadn't been texting while the political science teacher was discussing the powers of the legislative branch.

Pardon me for indulging in stereotypes here. But sometimes those can be appropriate and descriptive. William John Cox, writing for Truthout last month (here's a link), went over the numbers that show abysmal participation among young voters since they went overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

Cox discusses the disappointment that many young voters feel about Obama, who (surprise, surprise!) has turned out to be a compromising politician, not a crusader for unwinnable causes. A good many of the 18-through-29 folks just didn't vote because they now regard Obama as a sellout. They see him making deals that ultimately benefit Wall Street moguls and corporate CEOs much, much more than they help jobless or underemployed twentysomethings. That's understandable.

I have still another theory about the poor turnout. Because of the failures of our schools, and arguably more so, those of our culture at large, many people, among them the young, are too ignorant and politically illiterate to know how much power the legislative branch can wield over the federal government. Because of my work hours, I was seldom home in recent years during the time when Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segment of the Tonight Show would be on, but I recall seeing a bit of video in which typical men or women on the street would be at a loss to answer tough questions like, "Who was the first president of the United States?"

So, it's my suspicion that a great many younger people didn't vote in the 2010 midterm elections because they were simply unaware of their importance.

I've got news for the less experienced out there: The president is not a dictator. In our system, change often comes about gradually and as a result of wheeler-dealer compromises. FDR and LBJ got a whole lot more done for the common people of this country than Jimmy Carter. Why? Because they knew how the system works -- how to wheel and deal and compromise when necessary to get something done. Even Bill Clinton was much more effective than Carter, though they were philosophically about the same (neoliberals).

Cox, in his Truthout op-ed article, wrote:

Leading up to last week's election, an October McClatchy-Marist Poll found that only 11 percent of registered voters under 30 were "very enthusiastic" about voting, compared to 48 percent of voters over 60 years of age. An earlier Rock the Vote poll in September found 34 percent of young voters favoring Democrats with another 28 percent rooting for a Republican takeover - but, significantly, 36 percent believed it did not matter which party controlled Congress.

An estimated 20.4 percent of young people voted on November 2, representing about a million fewer than voted in 2006 and less than half of the youth turnout for the 2008 presidential election.

You're about to find out why it matters

The most significant number I glean from this is that 36% who don't think it matters which party controls Congress.

This is where our grim little civics lesson comes in, boys and girls. The Bitch and Boner Show commences in just a couple of weeks. Brace yourselves.

The 112th Congress, featuring Senate Minority Leader Mitch "The Bitch" McConnell of Kentucky and incoming House Speaker John "The Boner" Boehner, takes office bright and early next month. There's already a movement under foot, apparently very well-bankrolled by special interests, to repeal the watered-down Obama health care reforms. Judging from the TV ads with Mike Huckabee, you would think that there was an immense groundswell behind this, but polls show that only about 37% of respondents want outright repeal.

A reflection of our confused electorate is that polls also show that about as many Americans -- 36%, I recall -- have a completely different problem with Obamacare. They don't think it goes far enough.

But the next U.S. House has a solid Republican majority, and assorted court battles are under way. You're going to see a blitz for total repeal of that messy compromise that Obama got, for the next 22-plus months. I have no doubt that the House will vote on it, and then it will be up to Obama and the Senate to block repeal.

You're going to see the Obama presidency hamstrung by numerous House committees and investigations. I'm not sure exactly how they'll do it, but bet on an effort to impeach Obama within the next 18 months. I'd wager on that coming to a head around October 2012, just before the presidential election.

Cox, in the Truthout piece, continued, anticipating the agenda of the more right-wing Congress:

The corporate artillery is lined up and the guns are locked and loaded with high explosive shells. Here are the announced targets: campaign finance reform, consumer-protection laws, expiration of tax cuts for the wealthy, environmental controls on businesses, workers'ability to organize unions, health care reform, unemployment insurance, social security and Medicare.

As Samuel Johnson famously said, "Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging." The young people of America are being hung out to dry politically, and they will continue to flap in the wind as the new Congress rolls back even the modest gains of the Obama administration.

I can well understand many people's disappointment. It's demoralizing to have to choose, time after time, between one party that has turned agonizingly center-right, versus what Bill Maher has called the "crazy party." (A further observation by Maher: "Over the last 30 years, the Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved into a mental hospital.")

But it definitely matters which party controls Congress, and our Millenials are about to learn that lesson the hard way.

Bring on the Bitch and Boner Show.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

They Don't Make Music Like This Anymore: Be-Bop Deluxe, 1974

2010-12-18T00:37:00.000-06:00

No Trains to Heaven

With the great Bill Nelson on lead guitar.