63% of Americans think Mitt Romney's business background would make him more able to manage the economy.
By Manifesto Joe
Yep, that's according to a recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup. Here's a link to the story.
That's in spite of Bain Capital's reputation as a predatory, job-destroying, job-exporting entity, and all the attendant publicity thereof.
And that's in spite of the fact that, according to another poll, 44% of Americans think that Slick Willard isn't releasing his tax returns because there's something damaging there that he wants to hide.
That poll was taken just a few days earlier, by the same organization. Here's a link to that story.
What this means is that a significant number of Americans think that although Romney did something on his taxes that would be politically very damaging, their eyes still glaze over when somebody shows them a rich MF who was the CEO of a big corporation.
Must be smarter than I is, they thinks.
Well, sadly, I fear that this may be so. But just barely.
"Mitt the Twit" Scumney just got through making a ludicrous fool of himself at the Summer Olympic Games in London, so we're pretty sure he's no diplomat. And managing a sleazy enterprise like Bain Capital doesn't make him any economic wizard, either.
A sad feature of the American "mentality" is the equation of intelligence with wealth. "If you's so smart, why ain't you rich?" is an old quotation that sticks in my mind. I have no doubt about the nationality of its origin.
And charlatans have parted many an American from his or her money along the way. One of the most visible nowadays is the contemptible Robert Kiyosaki, "author" of a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad.
This pompous ass apparently did well being a parasite in the real estate market, and is now separating people from their money with classes telling how they, too, can do this.
His biological father was a highly educated man who became superintendent of the Hawaii State Department of Education, but was "poor." In contrast, his alleged mentor (some critics question whether such a person ever existed) was a high school dropout with lesser income who put his money into passive-income investments, such as real estate, and became the "richest" man in Hawaii.
Sounds to me like Kiyosaki's biological father was a stalwart person who actually devoted his life to doing something for the betterment of society as a whole. His "mentor," if such a person does exist, was a parasite who amassed a fortune being some kind of slumlord.
Now back to Slick Willard Scumney. He's spent all summer on the defensive, and I suspect that more gaffes and missteps are on the way.
But in a society stupid enough to fork this much cash over to a mountebank like Robert Kiyosaki, one worries that Scumney might be able to pull in more than, say, 49% of the electorate. The rest of us must fight to ensure that he does not.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Laid Off, And Taking A Short Break
I'll be posting again shortly, but I've gotten word that I'm being laid off from my job. I've been a little preoccupied since hearing that news. The last full day I was unemployed was March 4, 1982, so this will be an experience I haven't had in a long time. I'll be posting again soon -- and maybe I can persuade Geekus to do something, since he hasn't worked in years. -- MJ
Monday, July 9, 2012
Mainstream Media And Corporate Neoliberalism
By Manifesto Joe
Biased toward the left -- and biased toward the right. How can both be true?
Leave it to America's Mainstream Media -- they have somehow managed to give both impressions to different groups of activists, and I think I can explain why.
I will preface by saying that I have a very admitted and open bias toward the left, at least by American standards. And, that's the very reason why I'm writing this blog, as it is clearly a consistent expression of opinion. After nearly 56 years on this planet, I know that the "left" has no monopoly on the truth or on facts. But I find myself agreeing with their world view at least 70% of the time, so I chose sides long ago.
But what one finds upon close examination of the American MSM is a sort of "neoliberal" mind-set that can seem downright radical to a right-wing evangelical Christian, and then like 19th-century apologists for robber barons to progressives and liberals.
Evangelicals tend to be focused on social issues -- and generally anything that has gained much social acceptance since the 16th century or so is something they view with suspicion. To them, abortion is murder, pure and simple, with no gray areas. Women should be content to be second-class citizens and strictly obey their husbands and fathers. Cultural diversity is liberal hogwash, as it in their view ignores the simple "fact" that one's own group, church, race, etc., is always presumed superior to any other.
My bias toward the left tends to include an open mind, at least of sorts, regarding social issues. It runs contrary to my experience for someone to propose that my group, race, or whatever, is in some way intrinsically superior to another person's. And considering the vast holocaust that our society carries out against our partner animals daily, it's hard for me to consider ending the life of a first-trimester fetus that has a tail (and little brain activity) to be the same as homicide. It's a sad and even gruesome thing, but legislating one's religion seems inherently much worse.
Something one does routinely see in the MSM is a mind-set that is center-left on most social issues, at least by American standards. The basic corporate MSM line is:
Diversity ... GOOOOOD
The MSM accept racial equality as a given, are usually sympathetic toward abortion rights, and tout cultural diversity as a thing that people must have been mentally ill cave dwellers to have not embraced decades or even centuries ago. These are assumptions now, and in the eyes of right-wingers, an ironic form of liberal dogma.
And, the MSM won't get too much argument from me about all of the above. True, as a working-class white male, I was passed over for decades for jobs and promotions so that women and minorities could get their feet in the door of the middle class. (And meanwhile, the good ol' boys who REALLY belonged to the club were quite unaffected, because they always had their OWN affirmative-action program.)
OK, fair enough -- the viewpoint of women and minorities would likely be, now at least some of you white male SOBs get just a tiny taste of the kind of shit we had to eat for centuries. I understand that viewpoint well.
But the typical working-class, white American male listening to Rush Lardbaugh doesn't generally share that world view. They cream their pants with glee when Herr Lardbaugh launches into tirades about "femi-Nazis" and continues with barely masked exhibitions of racism.
To them, the MSM have a liberal bias, if only for the reason that Herr Lardbaugh lies just a bit outside of how the MSM usually defines the political mainstream.
Personally, I have few problems with the MSM's mind-set in this regard, whatsoever.
But that's not the whole story.
In particular, study the pages of the U.S. business press, and lots of us can quickly detect a very different sort of bias:
Capitalism and free markets ... GOOOOOOD. Labor unions and big government ... BAAAAAAD.
I remember being asked once if I thought that the MSM outlet that I work for has a liberal bias, because obviously the person who asked the question believed that to be so.
My reply was that, well, if they're so liberal, perhaps they'd let me try to organize the staffers into a union shop. I ventured that I didn't think I'd last very long.
The man asking me the question had no response to that.
The key word here is neoliberalism. It is essentially an acceptance, as a given, of 20th-century attitudes toward social issues -- but accompanied by a strict adherence to 19th-century "classical" economic theory.
Upon close inspection, it becomes apparent that America's business media are generally in the hands of people who grew up in solidly middle-class homes, at least. They and their families could take for granted being able to afford good colleges, and their climb up the journalism ladder was never in much doubt, because they probably knew people who could and would help.
The articles I've seen have referred to an average haircut as costing $45 (where are these people getting their golden locks trimmed?), and about how the thrifty habits of people like Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett have done so much to aid them in amassing vast fortunes, and so forth. Like, they still live in relatively modest homes that they bought decades ago, and some of them don't even own private jets! Wow, such deferment of gratification!
Thinking of such people as being the least bit "in touch" with the lives of ordinary Americans is not unlike portrayals of Mitt "Slick Willard" Romney as some kind of Man of the People.
If you've never been in a grueling, low-paying, exploitative situation with Eddie Haskell types for bosses, then I suppose you would have no reason to understand why someone would want to give 4% of their paycheck to a labor union. (For one thing, you can bet that in a union job, the paycheck would be much bigger even after one pays the dues.)
But you don't find people with that kind of labor experience in the business press, nor does one generally find them among U.S. news executives. From what I've seen, those offices are mainly populated by people who have led very charmed lives. They don't end up being the "grunt" workers of the industry, and they always knew that was never what the profession would hold for them.
So, folks like this get to feel just, oh, so enlightened on social issues, while toeing a primitive company line on anything that's work- or economics-related.
And that, boys and girls, is one of the big reasons why righties call the MSM "liberal" and believe that it is biased that way, while lefties can clearly see that they would quickly land in the unemployment line if they dared to bring an organizer onto the property.
And that is how different groups can somehow call the MSM biased in opposite ways. "Neoliberalism," anyone?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Biased toward the left -- and biased toward the right. How can both be true?
Leave it to America's Mainstream Media -- they have somehow managed to give both impressions to different groups of activists, and I think I can explain why.
I will preface by saying that I have a very admitted and open bias toward the left, at least by American standards. And, that's the very reason why I'm writing this blog, as it is clearly a consistent expression of opinion. After nearly 56 years on this planet, I know that the "left" has no monopoly on the truth or on facts. But I find myself agreeing with their world view at least 70% of the time, so I chose sides long ago.
But what one finds upon close examination of the American MSM is a sort of "neoliberal" mind-set that can seem downright radical to a right-wing evangelical Christian, and then like 19th-century apologists for robber barons to progressives and liberals.
Evangelicals tend to be focused on social issues -- and generally anything that has gained much social acceptance since the 16th century or so is something they view with suspicion. To them, abortion is murder, pure and simple, with no gray areas. Women should be content to be second-class citizens and strictly obey their husbands and fathers. Cultural diversity is liberal hogwash, as it in their view ignores the simple "fact" that one's own group, church, race, etc., is always presumed superior to any other.
My bias toward the left tends to include an open mind, at least of sorts, regarding social issues. It runs contrary to my experience for someone to propose that my group, race, or whatever, is in some way intrinsically superior to another person's. And considering the vast holocaust that our society carries out against our partner animals daily, it's hard for me to consider ending the life of a first-trimester fetus that has a tail (and little brain activity) to be the same as homicide. It's a sad and even gruesome thing, but legislating one's religion seems inherently much worse.
Something one does routinely see in the MSM is a mind-set that is center-left on most social issues, at least by American standards. The basic corporate MSM line is:
Diversity ... GOOOOOD
The MSM accept racial equality as a given, are usually sympathetic toward abortion rights, and tout cultural diversity as a thing that people must have been mentally ill cave dwellers to have not embraced decades or even centuries ago. These are assumptions now, and in the eyes of right-wingers, an ironic form of liberal dogma.
And, the MSM won't get too much argument from me about all of the above. True, as a working-class white male, I was passed over for decades for jobs and promotions so that women and minorities could get their feet in the door of the middle class. (And meanwhile, the good ol' boys who REALLY belonged to the club were quite unaffected, because they always had their OWN affirmative-action program.)
OK, fair enough -- the viewpoint of women and minorities would likely be, now at least some of you white male SOBs get just a tiny taste of the kind of shit we had to eat for centuries. I understand that viewpoint well.
But the typical working-class, white American male listening to Rush Lardbaugh doesn't generally share that world view. They cream their pants with glee when Herr Lardbaugh launches into tirades about "femi-Nazis" and continues with barely masked exhibitions of racism.
To them, the MSM have a liberal bias, if only for the reason that Herr Lardbaugh lies just a bit outside of how the MSM usually defines the political mainstream.
Personally, I have few problems with the MSM's mind-set in this regard, whatsoever.
But that's not the whole story.
In particular, study the pages of the U.S. business press, and lots of us can quickly detect a very different sort of bias:
Capitalism and free markets ... GOOOOOOD. Labor unions and big government ... BAAAAAAD.
I remember being asked once if I thought that the MSM outlet that I work for has a liberal bias, because obviously the person who asked the question believed that to be so.
My reply was that, well, if they're so liberal, perhaps they'd let me try to organize the staffers into a union shop. I ventured that I didn't think I'd last very long.
The man asking me the question had no response to that.
The key word here is neoliberalism. It is essentially an acceptance, as a given, of 20th-century attitudes toward social issues -- but accompanied by a strict adherence to 19th-century "classical" economic theory.
Upon close inspection, it becomes apparent that America's business media are generally in the hands of people who grew up in solidly middle-class homes, at least. They and their families could take for granted being able to afford good colleges, and their climb up the journalism ladder was never in much doubt, because they probably knew people who could and would help.
The articles I've seen have referred to an average haircut as costing $45 (where are these people getting their golden locks trimmed?), and about how the thrifty habits of people like Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett have done so much to aid them in amassing vast fortunes, and so forth. Like, they still live in relatively modest homes that they bought decades ago, and some of them don't even own private jets! Wow, such deferment of gratification!
Thinking of such people as being the least bit "in touch" with the lives of ordinary Americans is not unlike portrayals of Mitt "Slick Willard" Romney as some kind of Man of the People.
If you've never been in a grueling, low-paying, exploitative situation with Eddie Haskell types for bosses, then I suppose you would have no reason to understand why someone would want to give 4% of their paycheck to a labor union. (For one thing, you can bet that in a union job, the paycheck would be much bigger even after one pays the dues.)
But you don't find people with that kind of labor experience in the business press, nor does one generally find them among U.S. news executives. From what I've seen, those offices are mainly populated by people who have led very charmed lives. They don't end up being the "grunt" workers of the industry, and they always knew that was never what the profession would hold for them.
So, folks like this get to feel just, oh, so enlightened on social issues, while toeing a primitive company line on anything that's work- or economics-related.
And that, boys and girls, is one of the big reasons why righties call the MSM "liberal" and believe that it is biased that way, while lefties can clearly see that they would quickly land in the unemployment line if they dared to bring an organizer onto the property.
And that is how different groups can somehow call the MSM biased in opposite ways. "Neoliberalism," anyone?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, July 2, 2012
America The Stupid, Part 3
By Manifesto Joe
I will preface by saying that I don't think Americans are inherently more stupid than any other nationality. Stupidity is something that seems to know no boundaries of nation or group. Daily reading of the international pages of newspapers offers ample evidence of that.
But American stupidity seems less forgivable than that found in other places, because of affluence. And, ironically, it appears that much domestic ignorance is rooted in that very affluence.
Oh, there's certainly a sizable underclass in America. Somebody born to a crack whore for a mother, and who doesn't know who his or her father is, probably doesn't stand much of a chance, decent public schools or not. Income inequality is probably a big factor. And, I can't say that I grew up affluent, at least not by American standards.
But, the middle-class Americans I have known grew up largely taking plenty for granted that can't be taken so elsewhere. Among those things seem to be even the most modest intellectual achievements. Middle-class Americans often grow up complacent, with computer games and Smartphones, generally believing that there will always be "brains" out there who will manage to devise such things. Never mind where they came from. Affluence seems to furnish a path to intellectual laziness.
As Exhibit C, I will offer the findings of Newsweek, which gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. Candidates for citizenship are given a random list of 10 questions from among 100 included in the full test, and they have to get six of them right to pass.
Some 38% of Americans who took that test failed, including 29% who couldn't name the current vice president, and 73% who couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War.
I took the test with a sample of 20 questions, and got 18 of them right. I suppose that's very good, but as a career journalist with over three decades of experience, I should have gotten them all. What did I miss? I guessed that there were 26 constitutional amendments, rather than 27, and I named power to regulate interstate commerce as one of the original powers that the Constitution gives the federal government (that didn't come until later).
Here's a link to an article on the subject, and you can also take a version of the test here.
The big problem here is that a lot of those among the 38% who fail are voters. Are these people you want making civic decisions? I'll leave you to ponder that question.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I will preface by saying that I don't think Americans are inherently more stupid than any other nationality. Stupidity is something that seems to know no boundaries of nation or group. Daily reading of the international pages of newspapers offers ample evidence of that.
But American stupidity seems less forgivable than that found in other places, because of affluence. And, ironically, it appears that much domestic ignorance is rooted in that very affluence.
Oh, there's certainly a sizable underclass in America. Somebody born to a crack whore for a mother, and who doesn't know who his or her father is, probably doesn't stand much of a chance, decent public schools or not. Income inequality is probably a big factor. And, I can't say that I grew up affluent, at least not by American standards.
But, the middle-class Americans I have known grew up largely taking plenty for granted that can't be taken so elsewhere. Among those things seem to be even the most modest intellectual achievements. Middle-class Americans often grow up complacent, with computer games and Smartphones, generally believing that there will always be "brains" out there who will manage to devise such things. Never mind where they came from. Affluence seems to furnish a path to intellectual laziness.
As Exhibit C, I will offer the findings of Newsweek, which gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. Candidates for citizenship are given a random list of 10 questions from among 100 included in the full test, and they have to get six of them right to pass.
Some 38% of Americans who took that test failed, including 29% who couldn't name the current vice president, and 73% who couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War.
I took the test with a sample of 20 questions, and got 18 of them right. I suppose that's very good, but as a career journalist with over three decades of experience, I should have gotten them all. What did I miss? I guessed that there were 26 constitutional amendments, rather than 27, and I named power to regulate interstate commerce as one of the original powers that the Constitution gives the federal government (that didn't come until later).
Here's a link to an article on the subject, and you can also take a version of the test here.
The big problem here is that a lot of those among the 38% who fail are voters. Are these people you want making civic decisions? I'll leave you to ponder that question.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Now Scum-Sucking Right-Winger Scalia Will Have To 'Get Over It'
By Manifesto Joe
Oh, I'm not buying drinks for the house just yet. This was Round 2. There will be many more rounds to go. But the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to uphold almost all of "Obamacare" was significant.
Problem is, on Monday the Supreme Court also came down with a nasty 5-4 decision for the Citizens United grotesquerie for a second time, which means that even the lukewarm compromise that was "Obamacare" is still in danger. (See my previous blog post.) That decision pretty much ensured that American politics will be awash with corrupting money for at least another generation, so there's not really much to celebrate.
But I love to see right-wingers being upset. Especially Antonin "Get Over It" Scalia.
Another big problem is, we've still got an abysmally stupid population here in the Free World's Leading Country. It's really worse than it is in a lot of other places, and that's saying plenty. Last night I was working, but happened to catch a snippet of some talking head on CNN. This woman said something like, "We're not living in some socialist country, like Russia." (And nobody corrected her.)
Wow. For one thing, I'm not sure if this person has ever heard, but the Soviet Union broke up over 20 years ago. Russia now seems to be ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, robber barons and gangsters. (Like, wow, that all sounds very familiar!)
For another thing, even if the Soviets were still around, the comparison is moronic. As I understand the way this is going to work, the private insurance companies can look forward to about 30 million more "customers" (the word I'm thinking of actually starts with an "s"), and with taxpayer subsidies to boot. Sounds a hell of a lot more like corporate welfare than socialism.
I can't blame Obama too much for that, because he seemed to be resigned to just putting over what he believed that he could. And, given how this measure has been getting by on the skin of its teeth, he was probably right.
What's really needed is single-payer -- a system that will get most of the profit motive out of medicine. People are evil enough that nothing will purge the system of that entirely, but a public option that anybody could take would attract millions (including me), and would eventually put private, for-profit insurers out of business.
Mainstream News Media fail pretty often at informing a fundamentally stupid public about some of this. Much hay is made of Medicare fraud, but there isn't much publicity about the fact that Medicare's administrative expenses are generally lower than those found among private insurers. Here's a link to PolitiFact -- let me warn that I don't set much of a factual store by them, but even they concede a "half" truth here.
I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, because the health care system in the U.S. is going to get worse, not better, and "Obamacare" is just patchwork. It doesn't really address the fundamental problem of medicine for profit.
But, I'll repeat, the Supreme Court stood by Citizens United on Monday for a second time, striking down Montana's century-old campaign finance law. Until that shitty decision is revisited, big money will win most of the political battles in the U.S., and that includes almost anything to do with health care. What's "left" of the left will be doing well to preserve most of Obamacare for the next 20 years.
Now, after this ruling, it probably won't require a constitutional amendment to make single-payer a reality here. But it WILL require a quantum leap in the general civic intelligence of Americans.
I won't be holding my breath.
But meanwhile, I'm enjoying the fact that Scalia is probably having a bad night. May he have many, many more.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Oh, I'm not buying drinks for the house just yet. This was Round 2. There will be many more rounds to go. But the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to uphold almost all of "Obamacare" was significant.
Problem is, on Monday the Supreme Court also came down with a nasty 5-4 decision for the Citizens United grotesquerie for a second time, which means that even the lukewarm compromise that was "Obamacare" is still in danger. (See my previous blog post.) That decision pretty much ensured that American politics will be awash with corrupting money for at least another generation, so there's not really much to celebrate.
But I love to see right-wingers being upset. Especially Antonin "Get Over It" Scalia.
Another big problem is, we've still got an abysmally stupid population here in the Free World's Leading Country. It's really worse than it is in a lot of other places, and that's saying plenty. Last night I was working, but happened to catch a snippet of some talking head on CNN. This woman said something like, "We're not living in some socialist country, like Russia." (And nobody corrected her.)
Wow. For one thing, I'm not sure if this person has ever heard, but the Soviet Union broke up over 20 years ago. Russia now seems to be ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, robber barons and gangsters. (Like, wow, that all sounds very familiar!)
For another thing, even if the Soviets were still around, the comparison is moronic. As I understand the way this is going to work, the private insurance companies can look forward to about 30 million more "customers" (the word I'm thinking of actually starts with an "s"), and with taxpayer subsidies to boot. Sounds a hell of a lot more like corporate welfare than socialism.
I can't blame Obama too much for that, because he seemed to be resigned to just putting over what he believed that he could. And, given how this measure has been getting by on the skin of its teeth, he was probably right.
What's really needed is single-payer -- a system that will get most of the profit motive out of medicine. People are evil enough that nothing will purge the system of that entirely, but a public option that anybody could take would attract millions (including me), and would eventually put private, for-profit insurers out of business.
Mainstream News Media fail pretty often at informing a fundamentally stupid public about some of this. Much hay is made of Medicare fraud, but there isn't much publicity about the fact that Medicare's administrative expenses are generally lower than those found among private insurers. Here's a link to PolitiFact -- let me warn that I don't set much of a factual store by them, but even they concede a "half" truth here.
I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, because the health care system in the U.S. is going to get worse, not better, and "Obamacare" is just patchwork. It doesn't really address the fundamental problem of medicine for profit.
But, I'll repeat, the Supreme Court stood by Citizens United on Monday for a second time, striking down Montana's century-old campaign finance law. Until that shitty decision is revisited, big money will win most of the political battles in the U.S., and that includes almost anything to do with health care. What's "left" of the left will be doing well to preserve most of Obamacare for the next 20 years.
Now, after this ruling, it probably won't require a constitutional amendment to make single-payer a reality here. But it WILL require a quantum leap in the general civic intelligence of Americans.
I won't be holding my breath.
But meanwhile, I'm enjoying the fact that Scalia is probably having a bad night. May he have many, many more.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
'Citizens United' Ruling May Be Much Worse Than Strikedown Of 'Obamacare'
By Manifesto Joe
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to reject Montana's case challenging Citizens United. This could actually be a death knell for democracy in America, and something much worse than a high court strikedown of "Obamacare," which could come Thursday.
Tossing the health care law could actually work in the Democratic Party's favor, and even result in some kind of single-payer system in the foreseeable future. Well, I'll amend that to say that it could have had that effect. Since the "justices" essentially ruled yesterday that government entities can be bought by the highest bidder, even the broad public outrage that will inevitably result from a strikedown on Thursday will run up against an iron wall of corporate money.
In America, we can kiss democracy goodbye, at least for the foreseeable future. It's a plutocracy now, and there's no doubt.
I always thought things were going to have to get worse here before they can get better. Now, we're going to see them get a LOT worse, and it will probably be a generation or two before anything can really be done about it.
We saw with the Equal Rights Amendment how a very determined and well-funded minority can thwart the will of a solid majority in this country. It takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to send a proposed constitutional amendment to state legislatures, and then three-fourths of the legislatures have to approve the amendment for it to become law. The Equal Rights Amendment looked like a no-brainer for a while. But it was stalled, and eventually "lost."
If the same 5-4 right-wing majority of justices votes to overturn "Obamacare" on Thursday, it would probably take a constitutional amendment to establish something to the effect of Medicare-E (Medicare for everybody).
Now, with yesterday's decision, we might as well sit back and wait for the next glacier to move through. I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, but the corporate money will likely be too much for any groundswell in this country to defeat. Now my generation will not see single-payer, of that I'm all but certain.
Problem is, a constitutional amendment for reasonable campaign finance reform in the U.S. will have to be enacted first. Health care would have to follow, and it's going to take an enormous groundswell of public will to get rid of Citizens United first.
I'll be 56 next month, and so this probably guarantees that I'm going to be writing a blog for the losing side of American politics for the rest of my days. That takes a lot of the joy out of it. But many of us will carry on -- I've got nothing better to do with my spare time. Just get ready for at least 20 more years of The New Gilded Age.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to reject Montana's case challenging Citizens United. This could actually be a death knell for democracy in America, and something much worse than a high court strikedown of "Obamacare," which could come Thursday.
Tossing the health care law could actually work in the Democratic Party's favor, and even result in some kind of single-payer system in the foreseeable future. Well, I'll amend that to say that it could have had that effect. Since the "justices" essentially ruled yesterday that government entities can be bought by the highest bidder, even the broad public outrage that will inevitably result from a strikedown on Thursday will run up against an iron wall of corporate money.
In America, we can kiss democracy goodbye, at least for the foreseeable future. It's a plutocracy now, and there's no doubt.
I always thought things were going to have to get worse here before they can get better. Now, we're going to see them get a LOT worse, and it will probably be a generation or two before anything can really be done about it.
We saw with the Equal Rights Amendment how a very determined and well-funded minority can thwart the will of a solid majority in this country. It takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to send a proposed constitutional amendment to state legislatures, and then three-fourths of the legislatures have to approve the amendment for it to become law. The Equal Rights Amendment looked like a no-brainer for a while. But it was stalled, and eventually "lost."
If the same 5-4 right-wing majority of justices votes to overturn "Obamacare" on Thursday, it would probably take a constitutional amendment to establish something to the effect of Medicare-E (Medicare for everybody).
Now, with yesterday's decision, we might as well sit back and wait for the next glacier to move through. I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, but the corporate money will likely be too much for any groundswell in this country to defeat. Now my generation will not see single-payer, of that I'm all but certain.
Problem is, a constitutional amendment for reasonable campaign finance reform in the U.S. will have to be enacted first. Health care would have to follow, and it's going to take an enormous groundswell of public will to get rid of Citizens United first.
I'll be 56 next month, and so this probably guarantees that I'm going to be writing a blog for the losing side of American politics for the rest of my days. That takes a lot of the joy out of it. But many of us will carry on -- I've got nothing better to do with my spare time. Just get ready for at least 20 more years of The New Gilded Age.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, June 18, 2012
'Tres Hombres' Inside Album Art
ZZ Top's Tres Hombres (1973) was a fantastic album, but the inside art made it even better. Yum!
An afterthought: One thing I always wondered about was -- how could those dudes keep their beards out of the food? -- mj
An afterthought: One thing I always wondered about was -- how could those dudes keep their beards out of the food? -- mj
Sunday, June 17, 2012
America The Stupid, Part 2
I can't say that I've always agreed with everything I've ever heard come out of Gore Vidal's mouth, or with everything that he's written. But, sadly, I think he's got the American people pegged quite well. This is a 2008 interview with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman:
The past 12 years have done more to convince me of an epidemic of American stupidity than all of the previous 44 years I've been alive. Is it something in the water? -- mj
Postscript: The secondary videos are good, too. Look for the interview he did with Joy Behar, apparently around 2010.
The past 12 years have done more to convince me of an epidemic of American stupidity than all of the previous 44 years I've been alive. Is it something in the water? -- mj
Postscript: The secondary videos are good, too. Look for the interview he did with Joy Behar, apparently around 2010.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
America The Stupid
For the past day or so, I've been listening to people wringing their hands about why Wisconsin voters would have voted to keep Gov. Scott Walker in office in a recall election.
Watch this video, and there should be no more room for doubt. It's the unspoken truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r1IcY1pv0
Americans are stupid!
Please watch the related videos, too, if you have time. Even the Fox News one is unintentionally funny. (The shopping is fantastic!) -- MJ
Watch this video, and there should be no more room for doubt. It's the unspoken truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r1IcY1pv0
Americans are stupid!
Please watch the related videos, too, if you have time. Even the Fox News one is unintentionally funny. (The shopping is fantastic!) -- MJ
Sunday, June 3, 2012
10 Biggest Lies Of The Right Wing
By Manifesto Joe
About 40 years ago, a neocon named Arnold Beichman, (1913-2010) a man who pretty much spent his life being an anti-communist crusader, wrote and published a book called Nine Lies About America. At the end of his life he was a research fellow for the Hoover Institution and a columnist for the then-Moonie-financed Washington Times. The man had started out as a Columbia grad and journalist for publications such as PM and Newsweek, so he seemed to keep increasingly bad company as he aged.
When Nine Lies was published, around 1972, the Western world's left wing was admittedly engaged in some excesses that lefties have lived to regret over the years. So, there may have been some reason for the wide popularity of this book.
But from what I've seen since that book came out, while I was still in high school, the Western world's right wing has arguably become even more excessive, promulgating what I refer to in the title of this essay. Here are 10 lies of the right wing, categorized by subject:
Poverty
I have spent much of my nearly 56 years on this planet being relatively poor (you know, by American standards), so I know something about this firsthand. To hear right-wingers tell it, being poor is mostly a self-inflicted wound. One's advancement up the economic ladder is mainly a question of individual self-improvement, deferment of gratification, and so on.
These are certainly important considerations and traits. But anyone who has worked in the corporate world for any significant length of time has surely seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Humans are pack animals, and that holds true in the workplace. Bosses often tend to make decisions about promotions more according to personality than performance. Then, as observed by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, co-author of the famous 1969 book The Peter Principle, the promoted toady tends to advance to what finally becomes his or her level of incompetence -- and stays there, generally to screw things up for years and years.
Conversely, Peter observed another phenomenon in the workplace -- the supercompetent underling. This is from Wikipedia:
In addition, Peter suggested the idea of “Super-Competence” in an inappropriately low position. He proposed that this employee will have two paths dependent upon their leadership. Competent People Managers will promote this employee for the betterment of the company. Incompetent People Managers will most likely feel intimidated and/or threatened by this employee. This employee is a disruption to their perceived natural order and will almost certainly drive them to set this employee up for failure and/or dismiss them. Organizations with poor leadership cannot handle this type of disruption to their hierarchical structure. A Super-Competent employee “…violates the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved…”
From what I've seen, this employee is highly competent and intelligent, but doesn't usually "suck up." The person's stellar performance is not rewarded, and managers will actually resort to making things up to either hold them down or, preferably, fire them.
In America, the "social safety net" is so porous and flimsy that losing a job means almost certain poverty, at least in relative terms, for most people to whom this happens.
There are also factors such as catastrophic illnesses, and of course the sheer luck of the draw at birth. I've seen "well-born" people do all kinds of things like flunk or drop out of college, lose job after job, get busted, etc., then finally clean up their act and start taking advantage of opportunities by the time they are 30 or so.
If, on the other hand, a person is not "well-born" but instead has "losers" for parents, that person usually can't afford to blow one, not even one, of the rare opportunities life will present to them at a tender age. If they do, by the time they are 30, it's usually far too late. Such people rarely have second chances.
In short, the right wing's depiction of poverty and its causes is pretty much a lie.
Welfare
In the 1990s, when I was in a shop, a clerk who had apparently been reading books by Rush Limbaugh, and taking them seriously, tried to tell me that since 1965, the U.S. had spent $6 trillion on welfare. I told him he was sadly mistaken. He started trying to find a passage in that silly book. It was taking too long, so I just left with my merchandise.
Later I realized where Limbaugh, or some other right-wing demagogue, had come up with that figure and was getting the rubes to believe it. He was including ALL federal social spending since 1965, which would include Social Security (which operates not like welfare, but rather like an insurance policy), Medicare, Medicaid, and all others.
When somebody says "welfare" to me, I think of the program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which was actually a very small and restricted program that was in operation from 1935 to 1996. That year, Congress replaced it with the program that is now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
For the sake of brevity, I won't delve into whether what Molly Ivins famously called the "welfare deform" of 1996 was a good idea, dependence, unwed motherhood, and such. I'm sticking to the unfortunate fact that millions of ignorant Americans believe that the federal government has blown trillions of dollars on "welfare."
In 1996, spending on AFDC peaked at $24 billion. Even if you presumed that the government spent that much in real dollars in each of those years since 1965 -- and it damn sure didn't -- multiply that times 30, and what you get is $720 billion, a far cry from the alleged $6 trillion.
These are lying assholes, and they lie deliberately to gullible rubes.
Health Care
The right has been persistently lying about this for many decades to keep the U.S. from "socializing" medicine. They consistently invoke "free market" arguments on this issue.
Even if one presumes the superiority of "free markets" -- and that's a big presumption -- health care has never met the "free market" model. When you are sick, do you get to shop around for ambulance services or hospitals, like some Arab trader? Ultimately, I don't even get to choose my own doctors. They have to belong to the "network" that my private insurance covers.
The invocation of "free market" arguments on health care has been one of the right's most pernicious and toxic lies, for it has resulted in the denial of affordable health care to millions upon millions of Americans. They don't even tell you that you often end up paying higher taxes and premiums, anyway, because uninsured people go to charity hospitals for care.
Health care doesn't meet the criteria of the "free market" model, and it never has. They lie, and lie, and lie some more.
Say's Law
This is still a staple of classical economic theory, and it's the biggest crock of bullshit in the right-wing economist's arsenal. It is, in short, that supply creates its own demand.
My understanding is that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was that supply simply outstripped the capacity of consumer demand to absorb it. Wall Street could afford to keep factories producing ever-greater numbers of cars, but Main Street was falling behind and couldn't afford the payments. So, inventory stacked up, people got laid off, they could afford even less, and a vicious downward economic cycle was set into motion.
In recent years, we've seen similar things, to wit in what we now call the Great Recession. There's no problem with productivity -- the U.S. economy doubled in size since 1980. Problem was, wages and salaries were stagnant, so people either couldn't buy what they were producing or had to go deeply into debt to afford the stuff.
It's time to put Say's Law on the ash heap of history, where it belongs. But it remains as a lie on the pages of economics textbooks.
The Invisible Hand
You know this one -- Adam Smith's amazing self-correcting capitalist economy. Problem is, it only works when you have a lot of competitors in a given sector, few barriers to entry, and honest price competition. Absent those things, there's a reason why the hand is invisible -- it probably isn't there.
Oh, but sometimes it is. I've felt that invisible hand a few times. Always felt more like a fist to me.
Jail
I recall having an argument with a person who was working in some area of law enforcement. The person was basically in favor of putting each and every lawbreaker in prison and throwing away the key. The person was also in favor of making prisons a lot tougher. They were supposed to be too much like country clubs.
I've never been in prison myself, but I've known a few people who have been there, and none of them ever described it like any country club you'd want to belong to. They are nasty, ugly places, with many cell blocks actually run by the worst prisoners themselves while corrupt guards turn a blind eye. The word "punk" originated from the term for kids who were forced to submit regularly to sodomy by older and tougher convicts.
OK, suppose we've settled the matter that prison isn't a place where any sane person wants to go. The U.S. has nearly 2.3 million adults incarcerated. Taxpayers are already paying to have 1% of all American adults in some sort of jail. Can one seriously think that they are going to pay more? Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject.
Then there is a basic human-rights issue involved here. When you put a person in jail, even for a night, you have taken away this person's freedom. I don't know how you think of that where you're from, but to me that's always seemed like a pretty big deal. To a sane person, the burden of proof seems to be on society as a whole. Society had better have a damn good reason to deprive me of freedom and levy fines -- not just because I chose to smoke something other than tobacco.
Capital punishment
The idea that it deters crime hasn't borne up historically, and now, in the age of DNA testing, we're finding that it probably has led to the execution of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.
But even presuming guilt, does a person about to commit murder think in sane terms about deterrence? Would they do it if they didn't think they could get away with it?
As Gallagher says, it don't make no sense.
American exceptionalism
This, again, is from Wikipedia:
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the United States is like the biblical "shining city on a hill," and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.
Since the 1960s, postnationalist scholars have rejected American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States had not broken from European history, and has retained class inequities, imperialism and war. Furthermore, they see most nations as subscribing to some form of exceptionalism.
With the events of recent years, the proponents of "American exceptionalism" are finding out the hard way that our Japanese, Chinese and Russian competitors regard it as nonsense.
War
A man I knew in the 1980s presented to me the extraordinary idea that war is often a very good thing. He explained to me that his parents met because of World War II, and besides, sometimes you need a war once in a while so that bad elements of society can be eliminated -- as though criminal types are the only people who get killed in wars.
At the time, I was practically speechless. If I heard that man repeat this today, I'd urge him to go visit the nearest VA hospital and take a good look at the basket cases. He might also want to visit a homeless shelter and look at all the amputees, many of whom would not have survived past conflicts. Nearly half of veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are filing disability claims, promising an enormous burden on the taxpayers of the future.
It's never been worth it. And, it's a monstrous lie.
"Socialism"
Most right-wingers don't even seem to have a clear understanding of what socialism is.
All dictionary definitions refer to it as an economic system in which the MEANS OF PRODUCTION is predominantly owned either by the government or cooperatives, not by private concerns.
To right-wingers, the criterion is "redistribution of wealth." I have news for them. Every time government, at any level, taxes and appropriates money for projects of any kind, wealth is redistributed. It is strictly a question of to whom. They seem to object only when the beneficiaries are relatively poor, not when they are rich. In the latter case, it's viewed as "smart business."
I suppose it's a lot like Stephen Colbert's definition: A socialist is anybody who wants to spend government money on something you don't like.
Well, that's 10 lies, I believe. Until next time ...
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
About 40 years ago, a neocon named Arnold Beichman, (1913-2010) a man who pretty much spent his life being an anti-communist crusader, wrote and published a book called Nine Lies About America. At the end of his life he was a research fellow for the Hoover Institution and a columnist for the then-Moonie-financed Washington Times. The man had started out as a Columbia grad and journalist for publications such as PM and Newsweek, so he seemed to keep increasingly bad company as he aged.
When Nine Lies was published, around 1972, the Western world's left wing was admittedly engaged in some excesses that lefties have lived to regret over the years. So, there may have been some reason for the wide popularity of this book.
But from what I've seen since that book came out, while I was still in high school, the Western world's right wing has arguably become even more excessive, promulgating what I refer to in the title of this essay. Here are 10 lies of the right wing, categorized by subject:
Poverty
I have spent much of my nearly 56 years on this planet being relatively poor (you know, by American standards), so I know something about this firsthand. To hear right-wingers tell it, being poor is mostly a self-inflicted wound. One's advancement up the economic ladder is mainly a question of individual self-improvement, deferment of gratification, and so on.
These are certainly important considerations and traits. But anyone who has worked in the corporate world for any significant length of time has surely seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Humans are pack animals, and that holds true in the workplace. Bosses often tend to make decisions about promotions more according to personality than performance. Then, as observed by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, co-author of the famous 1969 book The Peter Principle, the promoted toady tends to advance to what finally becomes his or her level of incompetence -- and stays there, generally to screw things up for years and years.
Conversely, Peter observed another phenomenon in the workplace -- the supercompetent underling. This is from Wikipedia:
In addition, Peter suggested the idea of “Super-Competence” in an inappropriately low position. He proposed that this employee will have two paths dependent upon their leadership. Competent People Managers will promote this employee for the betterment of the company. Incompetent People Managers will most likely feel intimidated and/or threatened by this employee. This employee is a disruption to their perceived natural order and will almost certainly drive them to set this employee up for failure and/or dismiss them. Organizations with poor leadership cannot handle this type of disruption to their hierarchical structure. A Super-Competent employee “…violates the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved…”
From what I've seen, this employee is highly competent and intelligent, but doesn't usually "suck up." The person's stellar performance is not rewarded, and managers will actually resort to making things up to either hold them down or, preferably, fire them.
In America, the "social safety net" is so porous and flimsy that losing a job means almost certain poverty, at least in relative terms, for most people to whom this happens.
There are also factors such as catastrophic illnesses, and of course the sheer luck of the draw at birth. I've seen "well-born" people do all kinds of things like flunk or drop out of college, lose job after job, get busted, etc., then finally clean up their act and start taking advantage of opportunities by the time they are 30 or so.
If, on the other hand, a person is not "well-born" but instead has "losers" for parents, that person usually can't afford to blow one, not even one, of the rare opportunities life will present to them at a tender age. If they do, by the time they are 30, it's usually far too late. Such people rarely have second chances.
In short, the right wing's depiction of poverty and its causes is pretty much a lie.
Welfare
In the 1990s, when I was in a shop, a clerk who had apparently been reading books by Rush Limbaugh, and taking them seriously, tried to tell me that since 1965, the U.S. had spent $6 trillion on welfare. I told him he was sadly mistaken. He started trying to find a passage in that silly book. It was taking too long, so I just left with my merchandise.
Later I realized where Limbaugh, or some other right-wing demagogue, had come up with that figure and was getting the rubes to believe it. He was including ALL federal social spending since 1965, which would include Social Security (which operates not like welfare, but rather like an insurance policy), Medicare, Medicaid, and all others.
When somebody says "welfare" to me, I think of the program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which was actually a very small and restricted program that was in operation from 1935 to 1996. That year, Congress replaced it with the program that is now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
For the sake of brevity, I won't delve into whether what Molly Ivins famously called the "welfare deform" of 1996 was a good idea, dependence, unwed motherhood, and such. I'm sticking to the unfortunate fact that millions of ignorant Americans believe that the federal government has blown trillions of dollars on "welfare."
In 1996, spending on AFDC peaked at $24 billion. Even if you presumed that the government spent that much in real dollars in each of those years since 1965 -- and it damn sure didn't -- multiply that times 30, and what you get is $720 billion, a far cry from the alleged $6 trillion.
These are lying assholes, and they lie deliberately to gullible rubes.
Health Care
The right has been persistently lying about this for many decades to keep the U.S. from "socializing" medicine. They consistently invoke "free market" arguments on this issue.
Even if one presumes the superiority of "free markets" -- and that's a big presumption -- health care has never met the "free market" model. When you are sick, do you get to shop around for ambulance services or hospitals, like some Arab trader? Ultimately, I don't even get to choose my own doctors. They have to belong to the "network" that my private insurance covers.
The invocation of "free market" arguments on health care has been one of the right's most pernicious and toxic lies, for it has resulted in the denial of affordable health care to millions upon millions of Americans. They don't even tell you that you often end up paying higher taxes and premiums, anyway, because uninsured people go to charity hospitals for care.
Health care doesn't meet the criteria of the "free market" model, and it never has. They lie, and lie, and lie some more.
Say's Law
This is still a staple of classical economic theory, and it's the biggest crock of bullshit in the right-wing economist's arsenal. It is, in short, that supply creates its own demand.
My understanding is that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was that supply simply outstripped the capacity of consumer demand to absorb it. Wall Street could afford to keep factories producing ever-greater numbers of cars, but Main Street was falling behind and couldn't afford the payments. So, inventory stacked up, people got laid off, they could afford even less, and a vicious downward economic cycle was set into motion.
In recent years, we've seen similar things, to wit in what we now call the Great Recession. There's no problem with productivity -- the U.S. economy doubled in size since 1980. Problem was, wages and salaries were stagnant, so people either couldn't buy what they were producing or had to go deeply into debt to afford the stuff.
It's time to put Say's Law on the ash heap of history, where it belongs. But it remains as a lie on the pages of economics textbooks.
The Invisible Hand
You know this one -- Adam Smith's amazing self-correcting capitalist economy. Problem is, it only works when you have a lot of competitors in a given sector, few barriers to entry, and honest price competition. Absent those things, there's a reason why the hand is invisible -- it probably isn't there.
Oh, but sometimes it is. I've felt that invisible hand a few times. Always felt more like a fist to me.
Jail
I recall having an argument with a person who was working in some area of law enforcement. The person was basically in favor of putting each and every lawbreaker in prison and throwing away the key. The person was also in favor of making prisons a lot tougher. They were supposed to be too much like country clubs.
I've never been in prison myself, but I've known a few people who have been there, and none of them ever described it like any country club you'd want to belong to. They are nasty, ugly places, with many cell blocks actually run by the worst prisoners themselves while corrupt guards turn a blind eye. The word "punk" originated from the term for kids who were forced to submit regularly to sodomy by older and tougher convicts.
OK, suppose we've settled the matter that prison isn't a place where any sane person wants to go. The U.S. has nearly 2.3 million adults incarcerated. Taxpayers are already paying to have 1% of all American adults in some sort of jail. Can one seriously think that they are going to pay more? Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject.
Then there is a basic human-rights issue involved here. When you put a person in jail, even for a night, you have taken away this person's freedom. I don't know how you think of that where you're from, but to me that's always seemed like a pretty big deal. To a sane person, the burden of proof seems to be on society as a whole. Society had better have a damn good reason to deprive me of freedom and levy fines -- not just because I chose to smoke something other than tobacco.
Capital punishment
The idea that it deters crime hasn't borne up historically, and now, in the age of DNA testing, we're finding that it probably has led to the execution of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.
But even presuming guilt, does a person about to commit murder think in sane terms about deterrence? Would they do it if they didn't think they could get away with it?
As Gallagher says, it don't make no sense.
American exceptionalism
This, again, is from Wikipedia:
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the United States is like the biblical "shining city on a hill," and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.
Since the 1960s, postnationalist scholars have rejected American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States had not broken from European history, and has retained class inequities, imperialism and war. Furthermore, they see most nations as subscribing to some form of exceptionalism.
With the events of recent years, the proponents of "American exceptionalism" are finding out the hard way that our Japanese, Chinese and Russian competitors regard it as nonsense.
War
A man I knew in the 1980s presented to me the extraordinary idea that war is often a very good thing. He explained to me that his parents met because of World War II, and besides, sometimes you need a war once in a while so that bad elements of society can be eliminated -- as though criminal types are the only people who get killed in wars.
At the time, I was practically speechless. If I heard that man repeat this today, I'd urge him to go visit the nearest VA hospital and take a good look at the basket cases. He might also want to visit a homeless shelter and look at all the amputees, many of whom would not have survived past conflicts. Nearly half of veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are filing disability claims, promising an enormous burden on the taxpayers of the future.
It's never been worth it. And, it's a monstrous lie.
"Socialism"
Most right-wingers don't even seem to have a clear understanding of what socialism is.
All dictionary definitions refer to it as an economic system in which the MEANS OF PRODUCTION is predominantly owned either by the government or cooperatives, not by private concerns.
To right-wingers, the criterion is "redistribution of wealth." I have news for them. Every time government, at any level, taxes and appropriates money for projects of any kind, wealth is redistributed. It is strictly a question of to whom. They seem to object only when the beneficiaries are relatively poor, not when they are rich. In the latter case, it's viewed as "smart business."
I suppose it's a lot like Stephen Colbert's definition: A socialist is anybody who wants to spend government money on something you don't like.
Well, that's 10 lies, I believe. Until next time ...
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, May 28, 2012
This Memorial Day, No Millionaire Left Behind
U.S. disparity of income is setting records by some measures
It's 2012 -- the financial crisis happened over four years ago, and the Great Recession is supposed to have been over long ago. After all this time, the American people, or at least the ones with the most juice, don't seem to have learned a thing.
Corporate profits hit record levels in 2011, and with that increase, compensation for CEOs went up about 6% as well. The CEO of a typical public company made (off with) $9.6 million in 2011, as CEO pay was largely in the form of stock awards tied to "performance."
For more particulars about this report, here's a link to an online story in The Seattle Times.
The way some fools have spun this is that shareholder activists can claim a victory of sorts, because the corporate boards aren't just shoveling over as much "pay for pulse" as they once did. More of CEO compensation is tied to "performance," in the form of higher profits.
The U.S. business press, in its usual myopia, does not perceive the hideous structural problem that this represents. The CEOs making a killing now, it appears, are the ones who run their corporations in such a way as to squeeze the maximum profit from American consumers that they possibly can. Bleed them white, milk them dry, and you get more stock awards!
The shareholders are then happy, I suppose. But what of the consumers? Do those schmucks even matter? It would appear that they matter only to the extent that they pay up, to the max -- even if they have to go heavily into debt. And then, of course, the banking companies can own their very souls. It's like a modern version of the company store.
The Seattle story did touch upon the fundamental problem here:
CEOs managed to sell more, and squeeze more profit from each sale, despite problems ranging from a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to an economic slowdown in China and Europe's debt crisis.
Still, there wasn't much immediate benefit for shareholders. The S&P 500 ended the year unchanged from where it started.
Including dividends, the index returned a slender 2 percent. ...
And the main concern of many shareholders -- that pay is just too much, no matter what the form -- has yet to be addressed.
"It's just that total (compensation) is going up, and that's where the problem lies," says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.
The main problem is that, even after the sobering experiences of a financial crisis CAUSED by the misconduct of financial institutions themselves, and the Great Recession, the U.S. economy continues to grow top-heavy, prolonging a disturbing (and for most people, painful) trend that's been going on since the late '70s and early '80s.
An illustration of the dilemma lies in a labor anecdote involving UAW legend Walter Reuther (1907-70). A Detroit automaker wheel was showing Reuther the new robots that could perform tasks on the assembly lines.
"Let's see you try to get one of these robots to join your union," the wheel told Reuther with amusement.
Reuther's reply: "Let's see you try to get one of these robots to buy one of your cars."
The further these predators keep pushing ordinary Americans into debt, and the less they pay them, eventually the ordinary schmucks can't afford car payments, or fall behind on them. Then what happens to profits -- and then ultimately, CEO compensation?
A pungent Japanese observation about U.S. corporations is that they think in terms of the next 10 minutes (well, perhaps the coming quarter), while in Japan they think in terms of the next 10 years. Popular depictions are that the Japanese economy hasn't fared well in recent years -- but still, it might be wise to start thinking, as they do, more long-term. Their CEOs certainly don't make even remotely what their American counterparts do, and they pay their common workers comparatively well. They can't claim to have achieved utopia, but their way may ultimately prove more sustainable, long-term, than ours.
In any case, it should be clear by now to "the 99 percent" that what we've got going on here -- capitalism reverted back to its most primitive and cannibalistic forms -- can't go on much longer.
As a parting Memorial Day thought, I suppose there are plenty of "patriotic" Republican types out there who will be honoring those who died, and who returned as basket cases, (please check out this link) on and from the deserts and mountains of the Middle East. Yeah -- they got shot to pieces and blown up so that corporate CEOs could rake in $9.6 mil a year, buy their Montecristo cigars by the box and their single-malt Scotch by the case. Such sacrifice.
Postscript: I forgot to mention that two-thirds of U.S. corporations are effectively paying no income tax. Perhaps these patriots could ante up a little better, given all the glorious profits they are making, so that we could cut that deficit!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It's 2012 -- the financial crisis happened over four years ago, and the Great Recession is supposed to have been over long ago. After all this time, the American people, or at least the ones with the most juice, don't seem to have learned a thing.
Corporate profits hit record levels in 2011, and with that increase, compensation for CEOs went up about 6% as well. The CEO of a typical public company made (off with) $9.6 million in 2011, as CEO pay was largely in the form of stock awards tied to "performance."
For more particulars about this report, here's a link to an online story in The Seattle Times.
The way some fools have spun this is that shareholder activists can claim a victory of sorts, because the corporate boards aren't just shoveling over as much "pay for pulse" as they once did. More of CEO compensation is tied to "performance," in the form of higher profits.
The U.S. business press, in its usual myopia, does not perceive the hideous structural problem that this represents. The CEOs making a killing now, it appears, are the ones who run their corporations in such a way as to squeeze the maximum profit from American consumers that they possibly can. Bleed them white, milk them dry, and you get more stock awards!
The shareholders are then happy, I suppose. But what of the consumers? Do those schmucks even matter? It would appear that they matter only to the extent that they pay up, to the max -- even if they have to go heavily into debt. And then, of course, the banking companies can own their very souls. It's like a modern version of the company store.
The Seattle story did touch upon the fundamental problem here:
CEOs managed to sell more, and squeeze more profit from each sale, despite problems ranging from a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to an economic slowdown in China and Europe's debt crisis.
Still, there wasn't much immediate benefit for shareholders. The S&P 500 ended the year unchanged from where it started.
Including dividends, the index returned a slender 2 percent. ...
And the main concern of many shareholders -- that pay is just too much, no matter what the form -- has yet to be addressed.
"It's just that total (compensation) is going up, and that's where the problem lies," says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.
The main problem is that, even after the sobering experiences of a financial crisis CAUSED by the misconduct of financial institutions themselves, and the Great Recession, the U.S. economy continues to grow top-heavy, prolonging a disturbing (and for most people, painful) trend that's been going on since the late '70s and early '80s.
An illustration of the dilemma lies in a labor anecdote involving UAW legend Walter Reuther (1907-70). A Detroit automaker wheel was showing Reuther the new robots that could perform tasks on the assembly lines.
"Let's see you try to get one of these robots to join your union," the wheel told Reuther with amusement.
Reuther's reply: "Let's see you try to get one of these robots to buy one of your cars."
The further these predators keep pushing ordinary Americans into debt, and the less they pay them, eventually the ordinary schmucks can't afford car payments, or fall behind on them. Then what happens to profits -- and then ultimately, CEO compensation?
A pungent Japanese observation about U.S. corporations is that they think in terms of the next 10 minutes (well, perhaps the coming quarter), while in Japan they think in terms of the next 10 years. Popular depictions are that the Japanese economy hasn't fared well in recent years -- but still, it might be wise to start thinking, as they do, more long-term. Their CEOs certainly don't make even remotely what their American counterparts do, and they pay their common workers comparatively well. They can't claim to have achieved utopia, but their way may ultimately prove more sustainable, long-term, than ours.
In any case, it should be clear by now to "the 99 percent" that what we've got going on here -- capitalism reverted back to its most primitive and cannibalistic forms -- can't go on much longer.
As a parting Memorial Day thought, I suppose there are plenty of "patriotic" Republican types out there who will be honoring those who died, and who returned as basket cases, (please check out this link) on and from the deserts and mountains of the Middle East. Yeah -- they got shot to pieces and blown up so that corporate CEOs could rake in $9.6 mil a year, buy their Montecristo cigars by the box and their single-malt Scotch by the case. Such sacrifice.
Postscript: I forgot to mention that two-thirds of U.S. corporations are effectively paying no income tax. Perhaps these patriots could ante up a little better, given all the glorious profits they are making, so that we could cut that deficit!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Fracking Could Turn Much Of America Into A Wasteland
By Manifesto Joe
They've already seen a lot of this in rural areas -- the dumping of industrial waste, the fouling of well water, the loss of bucolic hills and trees. But it's not something that just happens in sparsely populated rural areas anymore. It's come to the city.
"Fracking" -- the hydraulic fracturing technique of drilling for fossil fuels -- is now an urban phenomenon. My wife and I live in a large city, and we've got fracking wells less than half a mile from where we live, and in two different directions.
There's still much debate going on about the side effects of this technique, with the Environmental Protection Agency right in the middle. Where we live, what they're exploring for is mainly natural gas, and the gas industry denies any effect on drinking water, and any significant pollution in general.
I've noticed very strong petroleum-like odors in our neighborhood when drilling activity is hot. Also, we've got a large holding pond next to a gas field that's not too far from our house. I haven't noticed any of the neighborhood children trying to go skinny-dipping in that thing.
I suspect that the people who live next to that holding pond have seen their property values plummet, probably far more than any perks they got from selling their subsurface mineral rights. ... Which brings me to another topic.
My wife and I were among the last "holdouts" in our neighborhood. We ignored the landmen for a couple of years, and were getting all sorts of offers in the mail. There's a certain economic logic to this, because we ended up getting about twice as much for our mineral rights as did the schmucks who took the first offer they got.
I wasn't happy about the idea of having gas drilling this close to where I live, anyway. But in Texas, the way I understand the laws governing mineral rights, if you are the last SOB standing in the way of a company's extraction of fossil fuels -- well, in essence, they can just TAKE it from you. If all your neighbors have signed on -- and I know that ours did -- the company has the law on its side to just run right over you.
So, after a long holdout, we signed a lease. Now I almost wish I hadn't done it, since some unpleasant facts about the side effects of "fracking" are coming out.
I don't know very much about the technical end of this, but some areas of America are seeing some very ugly sides of the "fracking" bonanza. Truthout has been doing a lot of good reporting on the subject. Here's a link to one of their most recent posts on this.
A few years into the boom, we're finally seeing city councils and neighborhood associations getting concerned and involved, but in many ways it's far too late. The Trojan Horse, so to speak, is already in the city. I can't understand where a lot of these whiners were when the gas company landmen were tossing all that money around.
There have been serious, lethal explosions result from gas drilling. We're having earthquakes happen all over Texas now, in places that never had them before. People are reporting well water that they can set on fire with a lit match. But to hear the companies tell it, this is all nonsense.
You see, it's common knowledge that rural Texas is rife with rabble-rousing Marxists who live to destroy the lush fruits of unbridled capitalism. They are all making this stuff up, just because they hate to see anybody making a profit.
Well, it's not just in the country anymore. City slickers have gas wells nearby, too. I look at a couple of sites every time I drive to work.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
They've already seen a lot of this in rural areas -- the dumping of industrial waste, the fouling of well water, the loss of bucolic hills and trees. But it's not something that just happens in sparsely populated rural areas anymore. It's come to the city.
"Fracking" -- the hydraulic fracturing technique of drilling for fossil fuels -- is now an urban phenomenon. My wife and I live in a large city, and we've got fracking wells less than half a mile from where we live, and in two different directions.
There's still much debate going on about the side effects of this technique, with the Environmental Protection Agency right in the middle. Where we live, what they're exploring for is mainly natural gas, and the gas industry denies any effect on drinking water, and any significant pollution in general.
I've noticed very strong petroleum-like odors in our neighborhood when drilling activity is hot. Also, we've got a large holding pond next to a gas field that's not too far from our house. I haven't noticed any of the neighborhood children trying to go skinny-dipping in that thing.
I suspect that the people who live next to that holding pond have seen their property values plummet, probably far more than any perks they got from selling their subsurface mineral rights. ... Which brings me to another topic.
My wife and I were among the last "holdouts" in our neighborhood. We ignored the landmen for a couple of years, and were getting all sorts of offers in the mail. There's a certain economic logic to this, because we ended up getting about twice as much for our mineral rights as did the schmucks who took the first offer they got.
I wasn't happy about the idea of having gas drilling this close to where I live, anyway. But in Texas, the way I understand the laws governing mineral rights, if you are the last SOB standing in the way of a company's extraction of fossil fuels -- well, in essence, they can just TAKE it from you. If all your neighbors have signed on -- and I know that ours did -- the company has the law on its side to just run right over you.
So, after a long holdout, we signed a lease. Now I almost wish I hadn't done it, since some unpleasant facts about the side effects of "fracking" are coming out.
I don't know very much about the technical end of this, but some areas of America are seeing some very ugly sides of the "fracking" bonanza. Truthout has been doing a lot of good reporting on the subject. Here's a link to one of their most recent posts on this.
A few years into the boom, we're finally seeing city councils and neighborhood associations getting concerned and involved, but in many ways it's far too late. The Trojan Horse, so to speak, is already in the city. I can't understand where a lot of these whiners were when the gas company landmen were tossing all that money around.
There have been serious, lethal explosions result from gas drilling. We're having earthquakes happen all over Texas now, in places that never had them before. People are reporting well water that they can set on fire with a lit match. But to hear the companies tell it, this is all nonsense.
You see, it's common knowledge that rural Texas is rife with rabble-rousing Marxists who live to destroy the lush fruits of unbridled capitalism. They are all making this stuff up, just because they hate to see anybody making a profit.
Well, it's not just in the country anymore. City slickers have gas wells nearby, too. I look at a couple of sites every time I drive to work.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
More Computer Problems -- Hope To Be Back Very Soon
Joe's suspicious that new contributor Geekus Maleekus had something to do with this. He's a confessed computer saboteur.
Hope to have this issue resolved by next week. Hang in there, loyalists! -- MJ
Hope to have this issue resolved by next week. Hang in there, loyalists! -- MJ
Saturday, April 28, 2012
With Slick Willard, Republicans Are About To Nominate Thurston Howell The Third For President
By Manifesto Joe
I confess to being a little stunned when I read what Slick Willard Romney's advice was for young Americans struggling with the job market: Take risks, and don't be shy about borrowing money from your parents.
Um, it's a great big world out there, Willard, and not everybody has a trust fund. What if your parents are dead, or what if they are actually worse off than you are?
The slick one's example was Jimmy John of the renowned sandwich chain, who he said borrowed $20,000 from his parents and started a swell new business that's now a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Like wow, Willard! If my parents had ever had $20,000 to lend me, I could have gone to an Ivy League school and become part of the elite, too! Forget about the entrepreneurship, let's go with what's tried and tested and proven. One of those Harvard or Yale degrees can get you a pretty far piece, from what I've seen.
Another example, one that Slick Willard's wife was supposed to have brought up in an old interview, was that Slick sold some stocks that Daddsy bought for him so that he and wifey could live while they were college students.
Man, too bad I couldn't have sold my stock and traded it in for a meal ticket at the college cafeteria! But, man does not live by Frito pie alone.
To turn more serious, what keeps coming up here is Slick Willard's total disengagement from how the vast majority of people, even reasonably affluent Americans, have to live. From what I've read, Daddsy George had his ups and downs as a youth, and had to do a bit of his share of ass-busting to get ahead in life. But it doesn't appear that he communicated any of this to Sonny Mitt.
I'm not completely confident about this situation, because the American people were stupid enough to "elect" Il Doofus, and his daddy, too. But Romney seems to have a total disconnect with life as it has to be lived by us commoners. The Republicans will nominate him at their own peril.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I confess to being a little stunned when I read what Slick Willard Romney's advice was for young Americans struggling with the job market: Take risks, and don't be shy about borrowing money from your parents.
Um, it's a great big world out there, Willard, and not everybody has a trust fund. What if your parents are dead, or what if they are actually worse off than you are?
The slick one's example was Jimmy John of the renowned sandwich chain, who he said borrowed $20,000 from his parents and started a swell new business that's now a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Like wow, Willard! If my parents had ever had $20,000 to lend me, I could have gone to an Ivy League school and become part of the elite, too! Forget about the entrepreneurship, let's go with what's tried and tested and proven. One of those Harvard or Yale degrees can get you a pretty far piece, from what I've seen.
Another example, one that Slick Willard's wife was supposed to have brought up in an old interview, was that Slick sold some stocks that Daddsy bought for him so that he and wifey could live while they were college students.
Man, too bad I couldn't have sold my stock and traded it in for a meal ticket at the college cafeteria! But, man does not live by Frito pie alone.
To turn more serious, what keeps coming up here is Slick Willard's total disengagement from how the vast majority of people, even reasonably affluent Americans, have to live. From what I've read, Daddsy George had his ups and downs as a youth, and had to do a bit of his share of ass-busting to get ahead in life. But it doesn't appear that he communicated any of this to Sonny Mitt.
I'm not completely confident about this situation, because the American people were stupid enough to "elect" Il Doofus, and his daddy, too. But Romney seems to have a total disconnect with life as it has to be lived by us commoners. The Republicans will nominate him at their own peril.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Geekus Doesn't Get Why Dogs Have Become A Big Campaign Issue
By G.M.
Dudes and dude-ettes, don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't love dogs. I have one for breakfast every day! (Just kidding, PETA fanatics!)
But like, now, all of a sudden, dogs are a big deal in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney apparently strapped one in on the roof of his car when he was on vacation, then freaked out when brown seep started coming down on his windshield. Like, you couldn't have figured on that happening, after 14 hours?
And then, the Republicans found something in Obama's book about his younger life in which he says he ate stuff like dog and grasshoppers and such, at the urging of his Indonesian stepdad. Dog was sort of tough, and he reported that the grasshoppers are a little crunchy.
Please, please, people, get a life. An 8-year-old kid is going to eat anything that Daddy puts in front of him. As for Mitt Romney, that didn't sound too good, but a common thing among rednecks (yes, they have them in the North, too) is that they don't regard animals as similar to people in any way. You know, like, they're just these idiot things with absolutely no feelings. But, it's not like Mitt would be the first presidential hopeful who ever had that attitude about stuff. There must have been plenty of others. How else could you get elected? -- GM
Dudes and dude-ettes, don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't love dogs. I have one for breakfast every day! (Just kidding, PETA fanatics!)
But like, now, all of a sudden, dogs are a big deal in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney apparently strapped one in on the roof of his car when he was on vacation, then freaked out when brown seep started coming down on his windshield. Like, you couldn't have figured on that happening, after 14 hours?
And then, the Republicans found something in Obama's book about his younger life in which he says he ate stuff like dog and grasshoppers and such, at the urging of his Indonesian stepdad. Dog was sort of tough, and he reported that the grasshoppers are a little crunchy.
Please, please, people, get a life. An 8-year-old kid is going to eat anything that Daddy puts in front of him. As for Mitt Romney, that didn't sound too good, but a common thing among rednecks (yes, they have them in the North, too) is that they don't regard animals as similar to people in any way. You know, like, they're just these idiot things with absolutely no feelings. But, it's not like Mitt would be the first presidential hopeful who ever had that attitude about stuff. There must have been plenty of others. How else could you get elected? -- GM
Sunday, April 22, 2012
For Geekus Maleekus, One More Boring Saturday Night
By G.M.
Dudes and dude-ettes, things just aren't what they used to be here on Planet Grapevine, especially on Saturday nights.
I used to be able to score lots of bitchin weed, but my source got busted, so now I have to settle for MD 20/20. Bummer.
The politics and shit used to be more interesting, too. I used to get cracked up when Bush would say all those stupid things. We just don't have any good fools to put on Wolf Blitzer's TV show anymore.
I mean, look at the people who are going to end up running for president. Obama is just too fucking polished. Everything he says sounds like he's practically had a chance to see video of it first. And then there's Mitt, the Arrow shirt dude. I used to enjoy watching those debates, back when it looked like Al Gore was actually walking over to Bush and acting like he was going to start punching him out and shit. The debates between these two, this fall, are going to be, like, serious yawners. No good sound bites, no UFC action, nothing.
Ron Paul sometimes acts like he's going to start some kind of shit, but he's too old and wimpy. When he gets excited, his voice gets as high as my grandma's. And Newt's just too fat. The only kind of fight he could win would be as the captain of the GOP Eating Team.
Clinton was fun to have around, because you never knew who it would come out that he'd porked. I don't remember times being so bad while he was president. I could get plenty of good weed back then, and Wolf Blitzer's show was always a lot more interesting, at least if you were stoned. But Clinton's not on the tube much anymore, and Hillary just isn't up to being a summer replacement. That woman was just too set on being valedictorian of every fucking thing to be very interesting. Although, it was funny to see her swilling a brewski and cutting up down in South America. That was the most fun I've ever seen Hillary have.
Ted Nugent used to be a bitchin guitar hero, but he's too redneck now. And way too serious.
Another boring Saturday night on Planet Grapevine. -- GM
Dudes and dude-ettes, things just aren't what they used to be here on Planet Grapevine, especially on Saturday nights.
I used to be able to score lots of bitchin weed, but my source got busted, so now I have to settle for MD 20/20. Bummer.
The politics and shit used to be more interesting, too. I used to get cracked up when Bush would say all those stupid things. We just don't have any good fools to put on Wolf Blitzer's TV show anymore.
I mean, look at the people who are going to end up running for president. Obama is just too fucking polished. Everything he says sounds like he's practically had a chance to see video of it first. And then there's Mitt, the Arrow shirt dude. I used to enjoy watching those debates, back when it looked like Al Gore was actually walking over to Bush and acting like he was going to start punching him out and shit. The debates between these two, this fall, are going to be, like, serious yawners. No good sound bites, no UFC action, nothing.
Ron Paul sometimes acts like he's going to start some kind of shit, but he's too old and wimpy. When he gets excited, his voice gets as high as my grandma's. And Newt's just too fat. The only kind of fight he could win would be as the captain of the GOP Eating Team.
Clinton was fun to have around, because you never knew who it would come out that he'd porked. I don't remember times being so bad while he was president. I could get plenty of good weed back then, and Wolf Blitzer's show was always a lot more interesting, at least if you were stoned. But Clinton's not on the tube much anymore, and Hillary just isn't up to being a summer replacement. That woman was just too set on being valedictorian of every fucking thing to be very interesting. Although, it was funny to see her swilling a brewski and cutting up down in South America. That was the most fun I've ever seen Hillary have.
Ted Nugent used to be a bitchin guitar hero, but he's too redneck now. And way too serious.
Another boring Saturday night on Planet Grapevine. -- GM
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Introducing Joe's New Contributor: Geekus Maleekus
By G.M.
Hey, dudes. I guess I'd better introduce myself. I don't spell too good, but Joe takes care of that for me.
I was born in 1976 in Grapevine, Texas. I graduated from high school with a 2.01 GPA. I was high most of the time, but I do remember seeing that movie of Hamlet with Mel Gibson. At least I didn't have to read the fucking Shakespeare book. Mel's pretty cool, as long as he stays off those Christian snuff movies. It was pretty boring watching that Jesus dude getting fucked over, hours upon hours.
I got an associate's degree in computer science from the local community college. Worked for a while as a tech, fixing PCs, then got fired. Moved back in with Mom and Dad, and spent most of my unemployment checks on piercings and tattoos. Everybody says they're most cool.
I know how to do computer viruses and other cool shit like that. I will gladly fuck up your computer Tuesday for a hamburger today.
More later, dudes. -- GM
Hey, dudes. I guess I'd better introduce myself. I don't spell too good, but Joe takes care of that for me.
I was born in 1976 in Grapevine, Texas. I graduated from high school with a 2.01 GPA. I was high most of the time, but I do remember seeing that movie of Hamlet with Mel Gibson. At least I didn't have to read the fucking Shakespeare book. Mel's pretty cool, as long as he stays off those Christian snuff movies. It was pretty boring watching that Jesus dude getting fucked over, hours upon hours.
I got an associate's degree in computer science from the local community college. Worked for a while as a tech, fixing PCs, then got fired. Moved back in with Mom and Dad, and spent most of my unemployment checks on piercings and tattoos. Everybody says they're most cool.
I know how to do computer viruses and other cool shit like that. I will gladly fuck up your computer Tuesday for a hamburger today.
More later, dudes. -- GM
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Why Isn't Ted Nugent In Jail Now?
By Manifesto Joe
I don't seriously believe that Ted Nugent ought to be in jail now, because that would confer on him martyr status that he doesn't deserve.
But it's a question to ponder, since the heavy-metal bad boy turned NRA poster boy seems to have threatened the president of the United States during time of war.
Columnist LZ Granderson of CNN.com put it this way:
Nugent's words were: "If Barack Obama is elected, I'll either be dead or in jail this time next year," which sounds to me like he's open to directing his disapproval of Obama in a way that is violent and unlawful. When you see that statement next to Nugent comparing Obama and his colleagues to coyotes that needed to be shot, as well as the need to "ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November," I don't see how that rant cannot be looked upon as a threat on the president's life.
Here's a link to the entire commentary.
Not much has generally happened to people in cases like this before. But it's worth noting that in 2007, a federal judge refused to throw out a case in which an Indian national was alleged to have urged the assassination of then-President George W. Bush and threatened other administration officials. Here's a link to that story.
In that case, Vikram Buddhi was sentenced to 57 months in prison.
Perhaps as scandalous as the double standard that may lurk here is the wishy-washy response from Slick Willard Romney's presidential campaign. Nugent has endorsed Slick Willard despite the latter's support for an assault-weapons ban while he was governor of Massachusetts. Nugent explained that at the time, Romney wasn't in America, he was in Massachusetts.
"Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from," said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul. "Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil."
Here's a link to a Washington Post commentary, with more detail on exactly what Nugent said.
Again, I wouldn't want Nugent to have the kind of martyr status he would have if he's charged with a crime over his remarks. But it may be a question worth pondering.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I don't seriously believe that Ted Nugent ought to be in jail now, because that would confer on him martyr status that he doesn't deserve.
But it's a question to ponder, since the heavy-metal bad boy turned NRA poster boy seems to have threatened the president of the United States during time of war.
Columnist LZ Granderson of CNN.com put it this way:
Nugent's words were: "If Barack Obama is elected, I'll either be dead or in jail this time next year," which sounds to me like he's open to directing his disapproval of Obama in a way that is violent and unlawful. When you see that statement next to Nugent comparing Obama and his colleagues to coyotes that needed to be shot, as well as the need to "ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November," I don't see how that rant cannot be looked upon as a threat on the president's life.
Here's a link to the entire commentary.
Not much has generally happened to people in cases like this before. But it's worth noting that in 2007, a federal judge refused to throw out a case in which an Indian national was alleged to have urged the assassination of then-President George W. Bush and threatened other administration officials. Here's a link to that story.
In that case, Vikram Buddhi was sentenced to 57 months in prison.
Perhaps as scandalous as the double standard that may lurk here is the wishy-washy response from Slick Willard Romney's presidential campaign. Nugent has endorsed Slick Willard despite the latter's support for an assault-weapons ban while he was governor of Massachusetts. Nugent explained that at the time, Romney wasn't in America, he was in Massachusetts.
"Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from," said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul. "Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil."
Here's a link to a Washington Post commentary, with more detail on exactly what Nugent said.
Again, I wouldn't want Nugent to have the kind of martyr status he would have if he's charged with a crime over his remarks. But it may be a question worth pondering.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Allen West Proves That Joe McCarthy Still Lives!
By Manifesto Joe
Preface: Glad to be back online. Was down with PC issues for over a month. What has the experience taught me? I'll summarize. Outsourcing is one of the most evil and STOOPID things Corporate America ever did, especially where computers are concerned. You people may have thought you were being smart, getting foreign help on the cheap, but it's ended up costing you. There are plenty of Americans who need jobs, and outsourcing just ends up costing the big boys lots of money through poor customer service. But: People don't like to admit when they've made mistakes, and therefore many corporations are still stubbornly pushing ahead with their bad past decisions. Dudes and dude-ettes, it was a monumental fuckup! Please, please, admit it, at long last. And most importantly, CHANGE.
Now, on to the subject.
Rep. Allen West, R-Florida, is a freshman lawmaker who is also a Tea Party poster child. He alleges that somewhere around 80 House Democrats are communists.
Even the actual communists themselves thought that this was absurdly moronic. Here's a link to what they had to say about this:
Click here!
I may be dating myself here -- I'm 55, going on 56 years old. Joe McCarthy was even before my time -- he died of a pickled liver when I was about a year old. But old Joe cast an enormous shadow over Cold War politics of the era. The consensus of hindsight is that, no, he wasn't wrong about EVERYTHING. There was a certain amount of Soviet espionage that reached some higher levels of the U.S. government. (My wife had an uncle who worked for the CIA, and from what he said, it's not like this wasn't working two ways.)
But, McCarthy's foolish allegations were always empty of evidence, and they were always changing. Was it 205 commies in the State Department? Or was it 57? How about 81? He was tossing enough numbers around to have a fair chance at winning the Mega Millions.
The astonishing thing here is that, well over 20 years after the end of the Cold War, we have a fool in the U.S. House who is enough of a shithead to re-enact the follies of Joe McCarthy.
One of the disheartening things about the contemporary U.S. political scene is that we DON'T have any significant radical left here anymore. I've never been much of a joiner, so I'm not a person who could ever be counted in. But given what's been happening in U.S. society at large for over three decades, and especially what's been happening since 2001, there damned sure ought to be a lot more firey, ready-for-battle types out there. The "Occupy" movement is the closest thing we've seen to that, and it seems to be in a nadir right now.
There are no Vito Marcantonios in Congress right now. Bernie Sanders says he's a socialist, "little s," and he's the closest thing we have. And it was questionable that even an old lefty like Vito was a real commie. People speculated that he was, but I don't think there was ever any solid evidence.
What we're seeing here is the electability of right-wing half-wits to high office. Not that the far, far left has never had any half-wits, but when was the last time you heard of one of them getting elected to truly high office? (And please, right-wing kooks, don't suggest Obama. The far left doesn't claim him, and never has. Anybody who thinks Obama is a "socialist" doesn't know what one is. Plus, if you think that a constitutional scholar like Obama is some kind of village idiot, what does that suggest about you?)
No, there are no Marcantonios -- but, it would appear, plenty of Joe McCarthys. Allen West proves that Tail Gunner Joe lives!
A postscript -- I'm going to miss Sanitarium!
Not that there was ever any doubt in my mind that the dude is batshit crazy -- but the Republican show is going to be much more boring without Sanitarium. On a purely personal level, he was always a much more engaging candidate than Slick Willard, the guy who forever reminds you of that well-groomed little Sunday School boy that everybody detested. Rick's demented, but he always came across like a regular guy who actually believed all that far-right Catholic bullshit.
It's going to be a much duller "race" without Sanitarium.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Preface: Glad to be back online. Was down with PC issues for over a month. What has the experience taught me? I'll summarize. Outsourcing is one of the most evil and STOOPID things Corporate America ever did, especially where computers are concerned. You people may have thought you were being smart, getting foreign help on the cheap, but it's ended up costing you. There are plenty of Americans who need jobs, and outsourcing just ends up costing the big boys lots of money through poor customer service. But: People don't like to admit when they've made mistakes, and therefore many corporations are still stubbornly pushing ahead with their bad past decisions. Dudes and dude-ettes, it was a monumental fuckup! Please, please, admit it, at long last. And most importantly, CHANGE.
Now, on to the subject.
Rep. Allen West, R-Florida, is a freshman lawmaker who is also a Tea Party poster child. He alleges that somewhere around 80 House Democrats are communists.
Even the actual communists themselves thought that this was absurdly moronic. Here's a link to what they had to say about this:
Click here!
I may be dating myself here -- I'm 55, going on 56 years old. Joe McCarthy was even before my time -- he died of a pickled liver when I was about a year old. But old Joe cast an enormous shadow over Cold War politics of the era. The consensus of hindsight is that, no, he wasn't wrong about EVERYTHING. There was a certain amount of Soviet espionage that reached some higher levels of the U.S. government. (My wife had an uncle who worked for the CIA, and from what he said, it's not like this wasn't working two ways.)
But, McCarthy's foolish allegations were always empty of evidence, and they were always changing. Was it 205 commies in the State Department? Or was it 57? How about 81? He was tossing enough numbers around to have a fair chance at winning the Mega Millions.
The astonishing thing here is that, well over 20 years after the end of the Cold War, we have a fool in the U.S. House who is enough of a shithead to re-enact the follies of Joe McCarthy.
One of the disheartening things about the contemporary U.S. political scene is that we DON'T have any significant radical left here anymore. I've never been much of a joiner, so I'm not a person who could ever be counted in. But given what's been happening in U.S. society at large for over three decades, and especially what's been happening since 2001, there damned sure ought to be a lot more firey, ready-for-battle types out there. The "Occupy" movement is the closest thing we've seen to that, and it seems to be in a nadir right now.
There are no Vito Marcantonios in Congress right now. Bernie Sanders says he's a socialist, "little s," and he's the closest thing we have. And it was questionable that even an old lefty like Vito was a real commie. People speculated that he was, but I don't think there was ever any solid evidence.
What we're seeing here is the electability of right-wing half-wits to high office. Not that the far, far left has never had any half-wits, but when was the last time you heard of one of them getting elected to truly high office? (And please, right-wing kooks, don't suggest Obama. The far left doesn't claim him, and never has. Anybody who thinks Obama is a "socialist" doesn't know what one is. Plus, if you think that a constitutional scholar like Obama is some kind of village idiot, what does that suggest about you?)
No, there are no Marcantonios -- but, it would appear, plenty of Joe McCarthys. Allen West proves that Tail Gunner Joe lives!
A postscript -- I'm going to miss Sanitarium!
Not that there was ever any doubt in my mind that the dude is batshit crazy -- but the Republican show is going to be much more boring without Sanitarium. On a purely personal level, he was always a much more engaging candidate than Slick Willard, the guy who forever reminds you of that well-groomed little Sunday School boy that everybody detested. Rick's demented, but he always came across like a regular guy who actually believed all that far-right Catholic bullshit.
It's going to be a much duller "race" without Sanitarium.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
On Vacation, Courtesy Of My PC
I can't do much posting for a while. My PC is down, and it may be down for a couple more weeks. Thanks to all who visit the blog, and please don't give up on me. I expect to be back by the end of the month.
One thing I have learned from this experience -- don't trust ANYTHING that computer geeks tell you. From three different ones, you can get three entirely different stories (and I did). Oh, and never buy anything from Dell.
Plan to be back ASAP. -- mj
One thing I have learned from this experience -- don't trust ANYTHING that computer geeks tell you. From three different ones, you can get three entirely different stories (and I did). Oh, and never buy anything from Dell.
Plan to be back ASAP. -- mj
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