Blue Dogs: DINOs Could Be More Of A Problem Next Year

By Manifesto Joe

Imagine it's January 2009. A Democratic president has just been inaugurated. In the Senate, the party has won a 60-vote supermajority, enough to invoke cloture on Republican filibuster attempts. For liberals and progressives, it's party time.

But there's one big problem -- by April, it's apparent that a number of crucial bills can't get through the House of Representatives. The problem is the group of lawmakers known to some as the Blue Dogs, to others as Democrats in Name Only (DINOs).

You can recognize them by their voting records. Americans for Democratic Action rates members of Congress on a liberal/conservative dichotomy. When you spot one who's got a voting record like a moderate Republican of old (not the Republicans who are being characterized as "moderates" now), that's a Blue Dog.

The potential for this to become a big problem for any new Democratic administration became clear Thursday during a House fight over GI educational benefits. The Web site Politico reported in its feature called "The Crypt":

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) issued a stern rebuke to a group of fellow House Democrats on Thursday, saying that the behavior of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog coalition was “absolutely shameful,” after the group revolted on Wednesday over the cost of veterans’ educations benefits in a war funding measure, delaying consideration of the $183 billion supplemental spending bill.

“It is absolutely shameful that members of the Blue Dog coalition would vote to take this country into Iraq on false intelligence and lies, repeatedly vote to fund the disastrous military occupation of that country, but choose to turn their backs on the brave members of our armed forces by refusing to support an expansion of education benefits for them when they come home,” Hinchey said in a statement. ...

House Democrats were forced to postpone consideration of the measure after many Blue Dogs objected to the bill, saying a provision to provide education benefits for returning soldiers violates “pay-as-you-go” rules, which require offsetting new spending.

The veterans benefits package was estimated to cost $720 million for the first two years of the program.

Many Blue Dogs argued the GI benefits package was tantamount to creating a new entitlement program and thus should be offset, an argument that did not sit well with Hinchey, who has long opposed the Iraq war.

“This is a slap in the face to our servicemen and women who courageously risk their lives each day in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” Hinchey said.

“The idea that these benefits should be subject to pay-go is ridiculous,” Hinchey said in an interview. Instead, Hinchey argued that providing returning soldiers with a college education is an investment that will benefit the country far more than paying for reconstruction in Iraq. ...

“How can the Blue Dog coalition possibly say that an expansion of education benefits is too costly when their votes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight in Iraq violate the same pay-as-you-go rules they claim to so deeply respect?”

The "fiscally conservative" Bloo Dawgs, among them Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross, not only didn't back down but pushed back. Ross pointed out that a number of Blue Dog caucus members are veterans.

I, for one, was less than impressed with their response, and found Hinchey's comments rather damning. On the scale of federal spending, this is penny wisdom and pound foolishness.

The $3 trillion (estimated cost to the U.S. -- read here) folly known as the Iraq war is arguably the most fiscally irresponsible thing our government has ever perpetrated. And the Blue Dogs are worried about $720 million over two years? That's chump change compared to what they've been complicit in.

But back to next year. Even if the Democrats have wishes come true in November, it's inevitable that many of the returning members of their House majority will be Blue Dog DINOs.

Republican obstruction could turn out to be among the least of the leadership's worries. This underscores the importance of primaries, and of electing real Democrats, not "fiscally responsible" poseurs.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

A Green Zone Of Hotels And Amusement Parks: Six Plagues Over Baghdad

By Manifesto Joe

There is a place, right next door to hell, that stays under regular mortar and rocket fire, and there's no working sewer system. My wife has a first cousin who was a contract worker in the Baghdad Green Zone for a year, and she's been doing the PTSD thousand-yard stare much of the time since she returned.

But developers envision condos, luxury hotels, amusement parks and high-end shopping there -- and in the not-so-distant future. And the Pentagon is with them, all the way and more.

Welcome to the Green Zone of Western dreams. It's an air-conditioned yuppie paradise rising from sun-baked rubble. Starbucks, Macy's, Neiman-Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, an Audi dealership, and a few of those ice bars that are so popular now in oil-rich Arab cities (no booze in Muslimland, of course).

It's everything that a well-paid Halliburton type could ask for, except that the beer, wine and martini gin would come from smuggling or the black market.

Sound crazy? Well, lunacy has been sold more than once within the past seven or so years. It's a real plan, and here are some details, as reported by The Associated Press:

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

"When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time," said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

Karnowski said a deal already has been completed for Marriott International Inc. to build a hotel in the Green Zone. He also said a possible $1 billion investment could come from MBI International, a conglomerate that focuses on hotels and resorts and is led by Saudi Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber.

For the moment, however, it's mortars and rockets — not investment money — pouring into the Green Zone, which includes the U.S. and British embassies, key Iraqi government offices and other international compounds. Militants have escalated their shelling of the enclave since Iraqi forces began a crackdown on Shiite militias in late March.

But developers are clearly looking many years ahead and gambling that Baghdad could one day join the list of former war zones such as Sarajevo and Beirut that have rebounded and earned big paydays for early investors.

If it wasn't official before, I think it is now: One can dredge up, just about any place, anytime, wealthy vermin who are more than willing to capitalize on the organic rot of human misery, like maggots feeding on compost. It's so predictable.

And, our government is more than willing to encourage this, but not because of any economic concern for the Iraqi on the street. It's so that they can surround that new U.S. Embassy, the one that is supposed to top out bigger than the Vatican, with lots of swell commerce and housing so that perhaps the neighborhood guerrillas will think twice before shelling it.

Just when I think I've seen and heard it all, damn, I haven't. But wait, there's more:

Last week, a Los Angeles-based holding company for equity firms, C3, confirmed it was starting a $500 million project to build an amusement park on the outskirts of the Green Zone in an area encompassing the Baghdad Zoo. The first phase, a skateboard park, is scheduled to open this summer.

The investors' gamble is that by the time they get Six Plagues Over Baghdad completely open, conditions will have quieted considerably. It's just a matter of time, and staying the course.

Yeah. Like, where have we heard that one before?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 8: Fox News Has Lincoln Debating Frederick Douglass

By Manifesto Joe

The Pythons (as in Monty) couldn't have done better than this. The American history scholars at Fox News aired this Monday, in an attempted reference to Hillary Clinton's debate challenge to Barack Obama. A lot of bloggers and pundits got to the item before I did, but hey, better late than never for something this priceless:



An intern apparently had to take the rap for this screw-up, but the immaculately groomed boobs on the air seemed pretty oblivious as well. The conservative spin would be to blame it on the deficiencies of our public school system. You know, the one that pays so poorly that brighter teachers tend to leave the profession post haste.

Others went on to have fun with this gem:



And more fun still:



When Joseph Pulitzer was asked, what are the three most important things in journalism, he is said to have replied, "Accuracy, accuracy, and accuracy."

Fox must be sharing a fact-checking intern with Rush Limbaugh. They "report." This time, some of us get to deride.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

A Compliment To Jeremiah Wright: Reverend, You're No John Hagee

In perusing YouTube, I found contrasting videos that vividly illustrate something: Barack Obama shouldn't have to be ducking any association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Agree with him or not, Wright is a gifted preacher and a genuine intellectual. "Pastor" John Hagee, who has endorsed John McCain for president, is at best a demented, foolish zealot, and at worst an opportunistic bigot.

McCain has been largely given a news media pass on his association with Hagee, a man who actually said that Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment on that modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, New Orleans. (It's on one of the videos to follow.)

Well, enough from this Jeremiah. Let's go on to the one called Wright. And then, to John the Rubber-Room Baptist. -- MJ



Intermission. Have a barf bag ready.



Any questions, class?

World Food Riots: When The 'Free' Market Starves Many Millions

By Manifesto Joe

"Free" market dogma and stereotypes have long portrayed "socialism" and protectionism as ideologies that bring only poverty and hunger to nations. There is some modest historical evidence for that case. Yet now, after decades of globalization, neoliberalism, deregulation, tearing down trade barriers and such, world food prices are alarmingly inflated. Food riots are erupting all over the developing world.

The Bush administration's response to a suddenly burgeoning crisis has been predictably pathetic. Congress has been ineffectual as well. The modern agricultural marketplace, with aggressive and skewed export policies and overemphasis on "free" trade, has brought the U.S. and the world the latest in a cluster of existential crises.

Well-fed Americans can truly no longer just look the other way while many millions around the globe go hungry. World hunger is a threat to our own national security.

Oakland Institute Executive Director Anuradha Mittal, writing for AlterNet, reports:

World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March - an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks alone - while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.

As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.

Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change have all played a part.

But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices.

Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into a downward spiral.

In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers. Dismantling of marketing boards that kept commodities in a rolling stock to be released in event of a bad harvest, thus protecting both producers and consumers against sharp rises or drops in prices, has further worsened the situation.

Those policies of marketing boards, of keeping commodities in a rolling stock in the event of a poor harvest, sound a lot like Keynesian economics in principle, do they not? It's analogous to, in government fiscal policy, running a surplus in good times and a deficit in bad. That's classic Keynes.

Regulation and planning, when done judiciously, moderately and in the genuine public interest, are suddenly looking very wise. Too bad so few people have been heeding that viewpoint for the past 30 years.

From The Washington Post, we have a report on what the Beltway People are doing. The report:

The Bush administration and Congress have been caught flat-footed by rapidly escalating global food prices and are scrambling to respond to a crisis that they increasingly view as a threat to U.S. national security, according to government officials, congressional staffers and human rights experts.

(Never mind all those hungry bellies. National security is Job One.)

The White House released $200 million in emergency wheat stores for developing countries last week ...

Top Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are pressing the White House to devote more money to emergency food aid ...

But administration officials and legislative aides acknowledge that they have only recently begun to focus on the severity of the problem, and humanitarian groups fear that assistance from the United States, which supplies about half of the world's total food aid, may come too late to provide much benefit in the near term.

It is an especially horrible problem in Haiti, one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest countries. Local rice production has been gradually undermined by "market" preference for exports from Florida, rendering the nation much less able to feed its struggling population than ever before. The crisis recently cost Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job.

Poor people down there are literally eating cookies made partially from mud. I'm not joking; there are stories and photos about this. Impoverished Haitians are really doing anything, and everything, that can be done to fill empty bellies.

Welcome to the New World Order -- it's a lot different from the one advertised 15 or 20 years ago. Most of the world literally got f**ked on the altar of "free" enterprise and globalism.

Mittal goes on to make what seem like very sane suggestions to prevent mass starvation:

First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.

Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.

To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give.

Amen, bro. Now try telling that to American Republicans, and in particular to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. You know, one of the three people from among whom we will choose the next U.S. president. That's a chilling thought.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Belated Appreciation For The Insanity Of Captain Beefheart

Here's a video incorporating Don Van Vliet's surrealist song titled Tropical Hot Dog Night (1978), posted by flowerpunkchip on YouTube:



For those who prefer, here's a more straight-up rendition:



Madness, on occasion, can be exquisite. -- MJ

Blast From The Recent Past: Olbermann Calls Il Doofus A Fascist

I missed this when it came out in February, after that "spontaneous" Republican walkout from the House. It's a good enough comment to do a redux now, many weeks later. This was posted on YouTube on Valentine's Day by CSPANJUNKIEdotORG.

Just how long the media moguls are going to let Keith Olbermann do this sort of thing on MSNBC is a question to ponder. In many places, he would not merely be suspended or fired. He would go to a concentration camp, or perhaps just disappear. The Pinochet regime in Chile had a trick, I've read, where they would just fly a plane off the coast, with a suspected dissident on board, then just eject the person over open water. Like, we'll let the sharks do the rest.

Well, on with the show, this is it. -- MJ:

Cornyn Watch: The Apparatchik Has Mucho Dinero, So Noriega Vs. Cornyn Will Be David Vs. Goliath

By Manifesto Joe

In Texas, we've gotten used to perennially uneven contests. They reflect a dysfunctional plutocracy, and then the beneficiaries try to pass it off as "democratic."

The latest on Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas and shill supreme for Il Doofus, is that he's floating (not swimming -- that actually takes work) atop a veritable ocean of donations. According to the April 20 "PoliTex" blog of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

The first-term Republican announced this week (now last) that he has raised $1.6 million since winning the March primary in a walk. That gives him $8.7 million in the bank for his race against Democratic state Rep. Rick Noriega. ...

Noriega's camp said the Houston Democrat raised $478,548 for the first quarter of 2008 and has about $329,000 on hand.

It's easy to understand why Texas isn't the best place to go up against the smug forces of evil plutocracy in America. It's practically Ground Zero for that: all those oil and natural gas thieves, reactionary agricultural interests, unregulated scam businesses, practitioners of the new sex slavery, human trafficking, sweatshops ... you name it, we've got it.

A fight for decency has got to start somewhere.

John Cornyn, with his laissez-faire Republican philosophy, represents, at best, an ineffectual, privileged status quo. At worst, he is a de facto mouthpiece for the very people who brought the underground Third World here. As one of the typical "conservatives" of his generation who demonizes government, he always played into the hands of the wealthy who routinely hired undocumented gardeners and maids because they worked cheap. But now, the monied ones are unseemly indignant when the restaurant help can't speak a lot of English. Such an inconvenience.

Enter state Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston. This is a man who embodies the greatness of Texas' Hispanic heritage, one who could show us the path to a far better state. If Rick can get the crucial backing he needs, I think he has a real chance to topple our reigning Ken Doll in November.

More about Rick, from his Web site:

Rick was raised in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in 1976 and attended Alvin Junior College on a Rusk athletic scholarship. It was during these formative years that he learned to work hard to get far in life.

In 1984, Rick completed his undergraduate education with the help of an ROTC scholarship at the University of Houston, receiving his commission in the United States Army. He went on to earn a Master's Degree in Public Administration in 1990 at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was an editor of the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy.

Rick felt compelled to answer the call and serve in the U.S. Army in the wake of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. He was an airborne school and service commander of the 143rd Infantry Detachment (Long-Range Surveillance), an aide to Brigadier General David Heuer, and aide-de-camp to General Samuel Turk, Adjutant General of the Texas Army National Guard.

But Rick's service in the Army did not end there. He became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard, and served as deputy garrison commander of the KMTC training facility in Kabul, Afghanistan after 9/11. Rick was deployed in Afghanistan for a total of 14 months until August 2005, and he was also the Laredo Border Sector Commander in Operation Jump Start during the summer of 2006.

Upon his return from Afghanistan, Rick was tapped by Mayor Bill White as Incident Commander of Houston's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts at the George R. Brown Convention Center. His leadership with the military, as well as his record in community service, was crucial as the GRB was transformed into a virtual city that cared for nearly 30,000 evacuees, and was then dismantled in the course of less than a month. At the center, Rick coordinated medical, employment, travel, housing and food services for more than 2,000 evacuees living on-site.

There's a lot more here. I don't think anybody is going to give this man any shit if he forgets to wear a flag lapel pin some Monday morning on the campaign trail. (But, looking at his resume, he's probably the sort of guy who will always remember to do that.)

Noriega represents a unique chance for a Democrat to win statewide office in Texas, for the first time since 1990. I hope he can get some out-of-state money; Cornyn has most of the Lone Star State high-rollers lined up. It's high damn time Texas had someone besides the usual plutocrats representing us in Washington.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

The Debate, And The West Texas Sect: American Media Have Reached A Historic Nadir

By Manifesto Joe

For decades it has been noted that a highly effective device that characterizes modern ruling-class America -- (crypto-fascism, that smiley-face wearing a flag lapel pin) -- is news media that confuses and trivializes issues, ever digressing from substance and toward the most contemptible sideshows.

It's been a few days since the astonishing ABC News mishandling of the Democratic Pennsylvania Primary debate, so everyone's had a chance to watch YouTube and then just calm down a bit. But in hindsight, this remains one of the most obvious examples of a corporate media con job.

We got a great deal of time from moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous, you know -- going over the Rev. Wright, Hillary's Bosnia account, flag lapel pins, and so forth. This was a lot of time that could have been spent talking about the Iraq war (turning for the worse lately), health care, taxes, spying on citizens, and other issues of at least marginally greater importance. I really wish Hillary, and especially Barack Obama, would have, or could have, told these fools in so many words just how completely full of shit they are.

I suppose this shouldn't pose any surprise for people who have been watching the American media situation for a good while.

To digress a bit myself, the other day I was watching CNN Headline News -- my God, what tabloid trash that channel has become -- and heard one of their model-ish happy faces "ask," regarding the story of the West Texas polygamist ranch: Why is there so much fascination with this story? And this model-ish woman didn't even snicker.

This story is a prime example of how U.S. media usually serve the purpose of distracting the public, getting them to think about anything, yes, but anything, other than what really counts.

The focus of the polygamist ranch story, so far, has been largely lascivious. Dirty old men forcing "marriage" and rape upon 13-year-old girls, and so forth.

Largely ignored amid all this was a story in the April 13 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, one that I got around to about a week later. That's how good our national media are at getting to the marrow of things.

The headline on Page One was "Federal money helped finance polygamist sect." This illustrates how easy it really is to get a no-bid military contract. Here are excerpts from the story:

American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts. ...

... New Era Manufacturing in Las Vegas, has been awarded more than $1.2 million in federal government contracts, with most of the money coming in recent years from the Defense Department for wheel and brake components for military aircraft.

A large portion of the awards were preferential no-bid or "sole source" contracts because of the company's classification as a small business, according to online databases that track federal government appropriations.

It's bad enough that this sect was functioning, sanctifying statutory rape, and eventually kicking a couple of thousand teenage boys out onto the road (you know, less competition for the smelly old men for the young girls) and so forth. Yes, it's all very contemptible.

But lost in all this was the use of taxpayer money to actually subsidize this outlaw sect's existence. And, nobody was even minding the store when it came to handing out these no-bid military contracts. (Hey, at least Halliburton doesn't allow its employees stationed in the hard-core Muslim Mideast to practice the four-wives custom. That's about all I would give them credit for.)

Back to the Democratic debate: No, it should come as no surprise that our news media have become the source of bread and circuses for a multitude of fools. Clearly, this seems to have become their job. But, in what could be the most crucial presidential campaign in U.S. history, we have people figuratively in polka-dot bloomers and red rubber noses who are more or less in control of the largest, most influential channels of public discourse.

I can only hope that the eventual Democratic presidential nominee will somehow persevere.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you wish -- but I suspect that most of this has come about somewhat by corporate design. The goal has been to create toothless, diversionary TV news monoliths for the masses. I am sure that Edward R. Murrow, or even Walter Cronkite, couldn't get a decent gig in today's media. ("Dudes, you're too homely. And Ed, you smoke too much. Get a job at a newspaper. If you can find one.")

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

More Evidence: IRS Bullies Pick On Little Folks, Let Fatcats Skate

By Manifesto Joe

OK, it's April 15, so a skewering of the IRS is de rigueur. And The New York Times has furnished just the skewer for the job.

NYT reports that, according to a new study, big corporations have less to fear from the IRS than at any time in the past 20 years. The study was released Sunday by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research group affiliated with Syracuse University.

The study cited "a historic collapse in audits" of Corporate America. And it wouldn't surprise me if there are some unofficial Bush administration policies lurking in the woodpile.

According to The Times:

It found that major corporations -- defined as those with assets of at least $250 million -- have about a 1-in-4 chance of being audited, down from about 3 in 4 in 1990.

In contrast, audits of smaller businesses, defined as those with between $10 million and $50 million in assets, increased from 12.3% in 2005 to 15% in 2007. The comparable figures for increasingly larger corporations went like this:

-- $50 million to $100 million in assets, 16.4% in 2005, 11.4% in 2007.
-- $100 million to $250 million, 17.5% in 2005, 12.1% in 2007.

Detect a pattern here? Some in the tax profession do. Again from The Times:

The IRS focus on smaller companies upset some tax professionals. "I'm still trying to find my jaw on the ground from the finding that audit rates for the big boys are plummeting," said Dean Zerbe, managing director of Alliant Group, a tax planning company.

What does the IRS have to say about this, considering all their tough talk about enforcement in recent years? The Times, again:

... IRS officials ... said Friday that TRAC had misinterpreted a basic shift in corporate America in recent years, saying that companies of all sizes -- and some wealthy individuals -- have embraced the use of partnerships and other opaque entities in an effort to minimize taxes.

I just checked, and my wallet is still in my back pocket.

If you've had the experience of dealing with the IRS as a little fish, you know that the fillet knife is usually wielded to scale. The big fish are much harder to handle, and the trend seems to reflect this.

And, given the Gilded Age, robber-baron sensibilities that our executive branch of government has exhibited for seven-plus years, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the IRS has changed its focus in this way.

Congress investigates a lot of things, and the IRS has been called on the carpet in the past over other abuses. Maybe it's time for our intrepid reps to find out why, when audit time comes, the tax Gestapo now tends to bully smaller companies while turning a blind eye to Cayman Islands tax dodgers. Inquiring minds should want to know.

For more on the subject, here's a link to my post from last April.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Obama Vs. Strawmen: Barack Knows Some Of The Context, But ...

By Manifesto Joe

Nobody got very tough with Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker during Tuesday's questioning by senators on the Iraq disaster. That really wasn't to be expected, not even from presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. John McCain, of course, aped the banal Republican rah-rahs that were anticipated from him.

But Obama did show a shining moment of clarity during a round of questioning. He took a couple of minutes to make a flat statement: In essence, the decision to invade Iraq was a massive strategic blunder -- one that he opposed from the start. He laid out some historical context of this fiasco -- but unfortunately, not all.

Understanding that he's running for president, that's probably as candid a statement as could be expected from Obama. For pragmatic reasons, he had to stop short of certain arguments: That the Iraq war is, at its core, about oil, as the U.S. and other powers would not have worried about a local despot like Saddam Hussein had he not been sitting atop the world's third-largest reserve; that this was clearly an invasion, an act of aggression, arguably in violation of international law; and that the rest of the world has widely regarded the U.S. as a rogue superpower ever since.

Obama pointed out that the particular terrorist "threats" in Iraq exist because of the invasion, and did not exist prior to it. He said there is really no hope for stabilizing the region without the involvement of neighboring Iran, so we're going to have to talk with them sooner or later.

He acknowledged that the men he was questioning were not the ones who made the decision to invade. They are simply the ones left to "clean up the mess."

A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq seems to have been ruled out by all concerned, including Obama.

The Illinois senator seems to appreciate some of the context of this predicament, but perhaps not all.

I am just old enough to have started following public affairs as a tween/teen during the late '60s and early '70s. I, for one, do not love the smell of napalm in the morning -- it smells much like defeat, not victory. It smells like the Vietnam War, and all those familiar rationalizations for the U.S. to just stay, and stay, and stay some more, year after bloody year.

The historical context that Obama doesn't grasp, or at least feigns not to, is that there really isn't going to be a quick way to "clean up" a mess this big. Ultimately, the Iraqis will have to do that themselves, and it won't be easy. The wounds will still be there in 50 years, maybe even 100.

As Yogi Berra said, it's deja vu all over again. I vividly remember the "de-Americanization" and "Vietnamization" of the war of 40 years ago. The escalation, and how that buildup of troops was supposed to eventually pacify the country. I recall Richard Nixon on TV many nights, telling us about how we had to stick it out and "win the peace."

I remember being told how much more competent, how much less corrupt, how much more democratic the South Vietnamese puppet government was becoming. How the South Vietnamese were going to control their destiny, as soon as those communist villains were beaten back into the jungle holes where they belonged.

There are different words for all this nowadays. Instead of escalation, we have the "surge." We have "progress," "sustainable security," and the like. And of course, we have a time frame for these things that, listening to Petraeus and Crocker, seems without end.

Obama did go so far as to suggest that a timetable for withdrawal would be pressure that the current Iraqi government may need if it is ever to become truly viable. If he's thinking anything beyond that, he was careful not to let on, and I expected that.

Barack Obama was born in 1961 (and I honestly don't hold that against him). But consequently, he was a first-grader during the Tet offensive. He would have been an eighth-grader when America saw video of a helicopter being pushed off the side of an aircraft carrier headed out of a lost Vietnam. What he knows about the parallels between then and now would mostly have to come from history lessons.

I hope he was a great student of that subject, and knows more about this than he's letting on just now.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Job Market 2009: A Video Forecast

The meaning of this video, recently posted on YouTube by Hillbillycuzz, seems ambiguous. Looked at one way, one could consider it xenophobic. But I found the role-reversal humor irresistible. Regardless of your viewpoint on immigration policy, this is funny. --MJ

Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 7: Bush Turns Masher

There's been a news report that German Chancellor Angela Merkel does not plan to attend the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing because of China's human rights record.

George W. Bush, the report said, plans to be there. It's my theory that Merkel isn't going to show because she doesn't want another of those shoulder massages like Bush gave her a couple of years ago at the G-8 Summit.



I wonder, did he call her Merkie-Merk? -- MJ

Unofficial Economic Indicator: Food-Stamp Use At Record Levels

By Manifesto Joe

Food stamps have been distributed in the U.S. since the 1960s. I'm fortunate enough to have never needed them -- although my family had a very close scrape, when my dad became terminally ill and disabled when I was 11. One thing I've learned is that things have to go very badly, for a while, for one to even qualify for the program.

Those who follow business news have no doubt heard the bad news about economic indicators such as retail sales, durable goods orders and the like. I propose to add one to the list: food stamp use. It is projected to reach, this year, its highest level since the program started over 40 years ago. I'll repeat -- just qualifying for this program is tough. So this is a very significant economic development.

This is from today's New York Times:

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years along with economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which led to a spike in the South.

But recent rises in many states appear to be resulting mainly from the economic slowdown, officials and experts say, as well as inflation in prices of basic goods that leave more families feeling pinched. Citing expected growth in unemployment, the Congressional Budget Office this month projected a continued increase in the monthly number of recipients in the next fiscal year, starting Oct. 1 - to 28 million, up from 27.8 million in 2008, and 26.5 million in 2007.

Federal benefit costs are projected to rise to $36 billion in the 2009 fiscal year from $34 billion this year.

"People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut," said Stacy Dean, director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December.

One example is Michigan, where one in eight residents now receives food stamps. "Our caseload has more than doubled since 2000, and we're at an all-time record level," said Maureen Sorbet, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Human Services.

Officially, U.S. unemployment isn't very high now. To wit, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on March 7:

Nonfarm payroll employment edged down in February (-63,000), and the
unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 4.8 percent, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Employment
fell in manufacturing, construction, and retail trade. Job growth continued
in health care and in food services.

With a 4.8% jobless rate, there is now more food stamp use, both in totals and in percentage of the population, than during the now-underestimated recessions of the mid-'70s and the early '80s. Back then, joblessness sometimes topped 10 percent. I recall those recessions well -- I was in college working summer jobs during the first, and a recent M.A. graduate looking for work during the second. I think there's something wrong with this picture. Why wasn't food-stamp use greater then than it is now?

Let's read between the lines. "Employment fell in manufacturing, construction, and retail trade. Job growth continued in health care and in food services."

A lot of this probably has to do with the types of jobs people can get now, and how the U.S. economy has been essentially restructured for wage- and salary-busting.

Fewer jobs in unionized manufacturing -- they're being rapidly offshored to nonunion and lower-wage settings. Fewer jobs in construction -- those jobs tend to pay well while they last, but when they're not there, times get tough. Retail -- people have to have money to buy things.

On the plus side: health care? I've spent enough time monitoring elderly people at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities to know that many of the workers are barely getting minimum wage. Food services? Forget it. In college, I had a girlfriend who was a waitress, and she complained about the pay and tips even back then, in a college town. You won't make much unless you're a certified chef, or better still, if you own that relatively rare asset that is a successful eatery.

As for the unemployed -- the stats reflect only those we know about. Not reflected are those who have, in despair, quit looking for work. Nor do they include those who have found some niche in the underground economy.

I would dare say that another factor is the so-called "welfare reform" by the Congress in 1996. The welfare rolls are indeed down sharply -- but people still feel the urge to eat. Forced to work in low-wage jobs, the erstwhile recipients generally still need the food subsidy. And, by the way, with all those new people dumped into the low-wage labor pool over the past 12 years, is it surprising that wages have declined? And with that, food-stamp use has increased?

And of course, let's not forget what effect the subprime mortgage crisis has probably had on millions of family situations. I suspect it hasn't helped.

I've had enough dealings with the business press to know that my proposal here will never fly. But I'll have a go at the windmill anyway. Food-stamp use should be included on the list of leading economic indicators. Perhaps our business-page readers should know how things are going for the bottom 10 percent, not just the fat cats.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Manifesto Joe's Star Search

This kid's great. This is Pasquale Ale Strizzi, playing Hallucinations, by the great bop piano virtuoso Bud Powell.



Look out for the Europeans on the jazz scene. They're beating Americans at what should be our game. -- MJ

One More Reason To Be Very Afraid Of A McCain Presidency: John Hagee

John McCain used to be admired by some people to the left of him politically for his seeming recognition of how dangerous the Religious Right is. But now that the presidency is within McCain's reach, he is shamelessly sucking up to Kook Right televangelist John Hagee of San Antonio, Texas, the man who is helping with the "awakening" of the "Christian Zionist movement."

Journalism legend and fellow Texan Bill Moyers, on this video, takes a look at the extremist element McCain is now pandering to.


If McCain is elected, the world can kiss any real Mideast peace process goodbye for yet another four years. -- MJ

Postscript: This isn't the first video I put here. I appear to have been sabotaged -- well, in some way. We'll see if it was more than just coincidence.

Bush's Bully-Boy Antics Cost U.S. Dearly Among Allies In Iraq Run-Up

By Manifesto Joe

Here's yet another signpost of the worst U.S. presidency in 150 years. According to a forthcoming book by leading Chilean diplomat Heraldo Munoz, the Bush administration threatened trade sanctions -- among other things -- against allied governments that, during the run-up, declined to support a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The threats of reprisals, the spying, and all the other little nasties, Munoz wrote in a book due out next month, have cost the U.S. very dearly in credibility, good will, and leadership standing among our allies since war drums started beating back in 2002.

The Washington Post report was, in part, as follows:

UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Munoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Munoz writes.

But this schoolyard-bully act couldn't go on indefinitely. After the invasion, when the war situation just kept getting worse, Bush had to wag his tail like a sniveling cur
and suck back up to all the "allied" governments he had pissed off in such a cavalier manner. More from WaPo:

But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Munoz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

The U.S. was already running short of friends in Latin America, for reasons that go back over a century in our respective histories. I suppose a hardened cynic might think that those south of the border should be used to American intervention by now. Our Marines have been in Nicaragua so many times, they should perhaps rename the country "Camp LeJeune South."

Anyway, in a time when leftist, anti-American (well, at least anti-Bush) governments are ascendant in the region, the high jinks over Iraq couldn't have helped matters.

You can read the entire WaPo story here.

This administration's problem -- well, one among an infinite number -- is that they keep goosestepping through the pasture in their jackboots, expecting others to follow, and even for the others to do the wiping up after the mess is made.

Most of the world could see the utter foolishness of the Iraq invasion before the fact. Bush, buoyed by pathological liar VP Dick Cheney and groveling high-class prostitute Colin Powell, led the U.S. and some of the rest of the world into this, sound advice be damned.

This is just one more chapter in the travesty. But I hope Munoz's account will circulate and somehow hasten an end to the grotesque chapter in world history that the Iraq war has been.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Five Years And Counting In The 100 Years Iraq War: Thoughts On Bush And Saddam

By Manifesto Joe

Il Doofus, a man with a unique ability to invent his own reality every day, gave a speech at the Pentagon on the fifth anniversary of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." If you take Bush at face value, he's still very convinced of the rightness of his decision. Here's the report from McClatchy Newspapers.

Presuming that we can take this man at face value, let's just, for purposes of argument, do the same regarding the late Saddam Hussein. Saddam seemed quite convinced, to his last hour, that he was the man who "built Iraq." He cussed judges, cussed his guards; he was defiant to the very end. If there was any fear of perdition lurking in the man's heart, he never let it show.

Mind you, there's no doubt in my mind that if there is a hereafter and a God who judges, Saddam is probably in a pretty awful place now. By any objective standard, he was a murderous dictator of the Stalinist type.

But there is the perverse possibility that he really didn't see himself as an evil man. Could it be that he simply embraced that nasty little idea that making an omelet means breaking eggs? (Yes, it's a bad analogy. But it isn't mine.) In other words, that the ends justify the means?

Saddam was guilty of direct and arbitrary enormities that Bush will never match. I know there are lefties out there who may object to that statement. But the very fact that they are blogging, organizing, and able to do any of the above should illustrate the distinction. Even if the contemporary U.S. can be characterized as crypto-fascist -- I think there's a good argument for that -- at least they aren't summarily executing the likes of me, waterboarding me, or opening camps. (Well, not yet.)

It is apparent, though, that Bush & Co. have been personally responsible for a whole lot of death and suffering. Pointing out the nearly 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq is typical U.S. ethnocentrism. It's as though the Iraqi deaths, estimated by some sources as close to 700,000, are secondary.

Yes, Saddam was a homicidal thug. The U.S. foreign policy establishment knew that while they were supporting and arming him in the '80s, during his foolish eight-year war with Iran and his genocidal suppression of the Kurds. It wasn't until he started getting uppity against U.S. interests that anybody appears to have had a problem with him being a career sociopath.

A comparison of Saddam with Bush is a long stretch. It's like comparing a seasoned hit man to a dude in an Armani suit who had an underling hire a few killings, then pretended he just didn't know.

But there is the possibility that both men were firmly convinced of their rightness. After five years of preventable tragedy, that may be the saddest part of the story.

The killing will go on for at least another year. And if McCain is elected ... (see post title).

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

There Will Be No Florida Revote

This came in Monday, and it seems official enough. It creates more chaos in a space where more order is desperately needed. Here's the Florida Democratic Party speaking:

The situation was already bad. This is something recent from YouTube, posted by TPMtv:



Do you want John McCain to be our next president?

If not, then we Democrats need to do everything we can to mend all this ugliness, and quickly. I plead for reconciliation, and soon. -- MJ

Cayman Islands Tax Dodgers: Max Baucus Is Coming After You

By Manifesto Joe

For many years, we've read that the Cayman Islands are the place to be for a company seeking a tax haven. Now some members of Congress are finally trying to peel some layers off the onion to find out what's inside.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and others are trying to get to the bottom of this. S. 681, the proposed Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, was referred to Baucus' committee in February 2007. More recently, congressional investigators went to the islands the first week of this month to check into allegations that over $100 billion in uncollected federal income taxes are related to corporate tax havens.

CNN.com reported March 4:

By establishing bogus headquarters in the British territory and in other nations, some American businesses are avoiding paying their share of federal taxes, according to the Senate Finance Committee, which requested that Government Accountability Office investigators visit the Caribbean islands. ...

As much as $300 billion a year in taxes goes uncollected by the government, and by some estimates more than a third of this may be related to corporations' reliance on offshore tax havens, according to some lawmakers.

"We know that some of the gap is the responsibility of entities breaking the law by funneling money to offshore locations at the expense of honest, hard-working Americans who pay their taxes," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, said in a statement. "We need the GAO to determine fairly what's really happening with U.S. companies going offshore."

However, the GAO has noted problems with investigating offshore tax compliance in the past. In May, the investigative arm of Congress reported that such investigations were so time-consuming that they often outlasted the three-year statute of limitations for taxpayers involved in offshore financial activity.

The GAO suggested in the report that Congress make an exception to the statute of limitations for these types of probes. ...

One focus for the GAO this week will be Ugland House, a five-story building in George Town that is listed as the headquarters for thousands of U.S. and international companies.

Baucus said last year that while Ugland House is home to 12,748 companies, "this building does not house the operations of 12,748 companies." He asked the GAO, among other things, to find out "what business, if any, these corporations carry on in the Cayman Islands."

In requesting the GAO probe in June, Baucus called Ugland House "one of the most likely places shady tax transactions could be sheltered."

Let's see -- that would be an average of 2,549.6 companies per story crammed into Ugland House. I wonder how many private offices are there?

WashingtonWatch.com gives this summary of the Senate bill, which has a House companion:

... Amends Internal Revenue Code provisions relating to tax shelter activities to: (1) establish legal presumptions against the validity of transactions involving offshore secrecy jurisdictions (i.e., foreign tax havens identified in this Act and by the Secretary of the Treasury); (2) impose restrictions on foreign jurisdictions, financial institutions, or international transactions that are of primary money laundering concern or that impede U.S. tax enforcement; (3) increase the period for Internal Revenue Service review of tax returns involving offshore secrecy jurisdictions; (4) require tax withholding agents and financial institutions to report certain information about beneficial owners of foreign-owned financial accounts and accounts established in offshore secrecy jurisdictions; and (5) disallow tax advisor opinions validating transactions in offshore secrecy jurisdictions.

Amends the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and other federal enactments to impose a penalty for failure to disclose holdings or transactions involving a foreign entity.

Requires the Secretary of the Treasury to publish a final rule requiring unregistered investment companies, including hedge funds or private equity funds, to establish anti-money laundering programs and to submit suspicious activity reports. ...

Increases penalties for promoting abusive tax shelters and for aiding and abetting the understatement of tax liability. ...

It's been 13 months since this bill was referred to committee, but sometimes good things are worth the wait. Sen. Charles "Chuck" Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking GOP member of the Finance Committee, has said he shares some of Baucus' concerns, so there are good bipartisan prospects for the bill.

Reactions to the bill on WashingtonWatch.com, though, were discouraging. It's no scientific polling sample, but the site seemed beset by Ron Paul cultists who tried to argue that if the U.S. had a federal income tax rate that was both low and "flat," corporations would not be setting up "shop" in offshore havens.

Questions for the libertarian Reynolds Wrap hat club: Would your "flat" tax on personal income include the income of corporate "legal persons"? Would it include income from dividends and interest? These are the people who bought into Ronald Reagan's wigged-out notion that corporate taxes are "hard to justify" because of double taxation.

So, a corporation should enjoy all the benefits of being a "legal person," but then not have to pay income tax like one? It's good ta be da king -- all the privilege, none of the responsibility.

Steve Forbes saddled up that Trojan horse during his pathetic attempts to run for president. Fortunately, the man has zero charisma. But an astonishing number of people, from what I recall, bought into his idea at face value. The sleight of hand was that it was really a tax proposed only on salaries and wages -- no dividends or interest. Even Pat Buchanan dismissed it as something that the boys at the country club would come up with.

The corporate income tax used to be a huge chunk of federal revenue, and that was during better times than these, mind you. In 1959, 39% of federal revenue came from corporate taxes (source: Internal Revenue Service statistics, via Barlett and Steele's now-classic America: What Went Wrong? (1992)) By 1989, that was down to 17%, and it's less now.

Raising taxes on the corporate titans is going to be a monumental quest for some future president and Congress. For now, an extra $100 billion would do a lot to cut the deficit. Go, Max, go.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Time To Stop Small-Time Legal Bribery Of Doctors

By Manifesto Joe

For years, it hasn't been such an uncommon sight to keep a doctor appointment in the early afternoon and see leftover pizza, or Chinese takeout, or such, around the joint. Then, a pharmaceutical salesperson emerges from the back, a walking drugstore with a big valise, after making a "sale." This person has apparently treated everybody in the clinic to lunch. (And then, written it off on the taxes as a business expense.) There are free drug samples galore, and lots of Cialis pens and coffee mugs; but it's understood that prescriptions will be written along with distribution of those samples.

I've witnessed this firsthand, and so has my wife. It's under $100 worth of perks, so it's currently accepted practice (pardon my choice of words). Not every doctor accepts these small perks, but they are legal. And, this kind of unethical coziness between the medical profession and drug companies is one facet, among many, of the U.S. health-care debacle.

The Senate has a bill, the Physician Payment Sunshine Act (S. 2029), currently in the Finance Committee. It would, according to The Associated Press: "...create a database disclosing the names and addresses of doctors who receive gifts or payments. It would also include pharmaceutical company names and the value of the gift or payment."

More specific information is on WashingtonWatch.com. The bill would:

... amend title XI of the Social Security Act to provide for transparency in the relationship between physicians and manufacturers of drugs, devices, or medical supplies for which payment is made under Medicare, Medicaid, or SCHIP.

Sadly, this bill has been mired in committee since September, despite support from medical ethics groups. AP reported, tersely: "Drug companies oppose the act."

What are the "pro" arguments? I'll quote more from the AP story, which was not merely about doctors accepting perks. It was about doctors acting as actual shills, giving testimonials to peers for new drugs, under corporate sponsorship for damned good pay:

Pharmaceutical companies argue that doctors are an essential part of educating colleagues as new drugs are developed. ...

To summarize, their argument is: How can doctors know about new medicines, their potential side effects, their proper use, and so forth, unless they hear it from experienced peers? But, to have the symposiums sponsored by the drug companies, who are paying the doctors who are giving testimonials, seems like a pretty big ethical conflict of interest.

More from AP: PhRMA (the drug industry's lobbying arm) adopted voluntary rules in 2002 that limit the value of gifts to $100 or less and says that all forms of free entertainment, including sporting events, are inappropriate.

All very nice, but I'm offended by even seeing these reps feeding my doctor and his staff fully loaded pizza, beef broccoli and moo goo gai pan, and a lot of sales bullshit. The bill that's bogged down in the Senate committee isn't nearly strong enough. This is legal bribery, even if it's on a small scale. And I realize that any action won't have more than a tiny effect on the American health-care morass.

But on principle alone, it should be banned. And, any effect it has might work toward curbing what is clearly the chronic overmedication of the American people.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Latest Bush Flouting Of The Law Is Over EPA Ozone Rules

By Manifesto Joe

The Bush administration's contempt for the law involves a litany that goes back pretty much to Jan. 20, 2001, and even before then, if one includes the presidential campaign and an administration-"elect".

Let's add one more outrage to the long, long list. The Washington Post reports that Il Doofus himself intervened in an EPA ozone rules matter this week in an astonishing way:

The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

"It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard.

So, where was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency while this was happening?

WaPo again: The effort to rewrite the language -- on the day the agency faced a statutory deadline -- forced EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to postpone at the last moment a scheduled news conference to announce the new rules. It finally took place at 6 p.m., five hours later than planned.

This is just one more among hundreds of "outrages of the day" that many have observed about the Bush administration from the beginning. But it brings to mind the disappointment of many who see this conduct for what it is. By now I would have hoped that Dick Cheney would be facing impeachment proceedings, and that the hot seat would be dusted off next for Il Doofus hisownself. But we seem to live in an age in which moral courage is lacking in high places, even among those from whom it was most expected.

To read the entirety of this particular outrage from Il Doofus and the Gang, go here.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Michael Parenti, In Rare Form

I don't always agree with radical political analyst Michael Parenti, but he's nothing short of great in this lecture carried by a blogger friend of mine. Here goes:

Click here. And check out Vierotchka (see my blog roll). She's got a great site.

--MJ

Economic Trilogy, Part 3: BMW Offshoring Jobs To South Carolina

By Manifesto Joe

Back when I posted a piece called In Bush Era, U.S. Has Become A Third-World Country, I was at least half joking. It doesn't look so much like a joke now.

BMW, the German automaker, announced Monday that it will expand its plant in South Carolina, spending $750 million and adding 500 jobs at their facility in Greer (Population: something over 20,000). The company produced 155,000 vehicles last year in South Carolina and expects to increase production to 240,000 by 2012.

Simply on its face, this seems like good news. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, was in Greer for the shindig announcement. The first take would be that, hell, jobs are jobs.

It comes right after Munich-based BMW announced that it is cutting 7.5 percent of its German work force and then increasing production in the U.S. Among companies in European Union nations, locales like South Carolina seem to have become the new Bangalore, India, types of destinations when it comes to offshoring jobs.

Economists are great at academic side-stepping -- I know from having worked with several of them. The first thing mentioned was the sharp decline in the value of the dollar relative to the value of the Euro. That is affecting trade between the U.S. and the EU, and not really in a bad way for the U.S. Suddenly, we're on our way to running a trade surplus with somebody on the planet. EU exports to the U.S. are increasing, but our exports to Europe are now increasing even more because of the cheap dollar. This will help the U.S. balance of payments. And that needs all the help it can get.

But the bottom line that isn't prominently mentioned is -- cheap nonunion labor. BMW isn't talking this up much, but they acknowledge that a reason they're doing this is because the South Carolina work force works cheaper than workers in Germany.

From The Associated Press, here's the typical comment on this from a U.S. economic source:

"This is completely driven by the plunge in the dollar," said Greg Gardner with Oliver Wyman, publisher of the Harbour Report on automotive manufacturing activity. "It is untenable to produce at a much higher cost in Germany."

The euro climbed to record heights Friday, reaching $1.5463 before falling back to $1.5335 in late trading after the Federal Reserve announced it would provide more cash to banks that need it. That means European goods cost more for Americans to buy.

By building the cars in the U.S., BMW can save money on the lower dollar and on wages since its South Carolina workers make less than German workers, Gardner said.

Jeff Foxworthy may need to add something to his joke book, although it's not very funny: If you build Eurotrash carburetors for half the wages they pay over there -- then you might be a redneck.

What's next? How about computer call centers in Mississippi? In terms of communication, I can't imagine that the accent problem could be any worse than it is when you get "Kenny" in Bangalore at 3 in the morning.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Druggy Water: Drinking From The City Supply Lowered My Cholesterol 30 Points In 30 Days

By Manifesto Joe

No, not really. But the results of an Associated Press investigation released Sunday could make you wonder what's in your municipal water supply, if that's the water you drink.

The AP reported that traces of medical drugs were found in the municipal water supplies of 24 major metro areas from coast to coast. The tap water going to 41 million Americans showed these tiny quantities.

City officials were quick to point out that the amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals and over-the-counter substances here are minuscule, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion. But scientists are a bit worried about the long-term consequences for Americans' health.

And, it raises another question: Could this be yet another indicator of how egregiously overmedicated Americans have become at the hands of greedy drug companies and myopically compliant doctors?

Here are some of AP's findings:

-- Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

-- Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

--Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

-- The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

-- Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The AP found that officials in many cities weren't terribly cooperative. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

For whatever reassurance this provides, the Environmental Protection Agency is aware of the phenomenon. AP again: "We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Despite the official assertions of drinking-water safety, this sounds like a job for a congressional committee. Perhaps experience has made me a little paranoid, but when there's secrecy, that usually means somebody has something to hide.

AP again:

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

Some scientists theorize that the ever-increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals and OTC meds that people take are a big part of this problem. Much of the stuff leaves your body in your urine. And, here's a hint -- think before you ever flush unused pills down the commode.

Another disturbing thought is that this problem is not confined to the waters of the U.S. Such contamination has been found in chemical analysis of waters all over the world.

There are other facets of the problem. Many modern drugs, such as cholesterol meds, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic drugs, resist the most up-to-date wastewater treatment processes. And, how about animals?

AP again: Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Are the fathead minnows our coal-mine canaries?

The recently deceased novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about how drinking alcohol is made, as sort of a micro-allegory. The culture begins as yeast -- and as the yeast fungi feed on sugar, they shit alcohol (that's their version of feces). In fermentation, the increasingly polluted environment gradually destroys yeast, leaving the alcohol
behind for us reprobates to enjoy. I hope this doesn't really bother anyone next time they pour a couple of fingers of Jack Daniels -- that they're drinking yeast shit. It's never deterred me.

The relevance of this allegory is that we -- the yeast fungi who somehow climbed up out of the muck, began walking on two legs and invented plumbing -- seem to be doing something like that to ourselves on a grandiose scale, and on several fronts. This, if it's as bad as some researchers fear, is just one more way we may be doing ourselves in as a species.

There are serious inconveniences that this phenomenon would have potential to cause. Most men would never aspire to breast enlargement; I have yet to receive a spam e-mail from Stephanie or Inga making me such an offer. I certainly wouldn't want it courtesy of estrogen in my tap water.

Congress persons, step up to the plate. We need panel hearings on this issue.

To read the entire AP report, go here.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

An Update On The AWOL Economy

By Manifesto Joe

In case there was any doubt after Thursday's bad news (see the previous post on this blog) that the U.S. economy is sort of absent without leave, Friday's news, and more tidbits from Thursday, probably erased it all.

Here are more economic news nuggets for your dining and dancing pleasure:

-- The Labor Department estimated that the U.S. lost 63,000 jobs in February, far more than analysts had expected.

-- This from The New York Times: "On Thursday, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that about 7.9 percent of all loans - a record high - were past due or in foreclosure. Until the third quarter of last year, the rate had not climbed above 7 percent since 1979."

-- More from The Times: "Home prices are falling in almost every part of the country, a phenomenon that Fed officials and many other experts until recently thought was all but impossible, and some analysts now predict that average home prices will ultimately fall 20 percent from their peak in 2006."

-- And still more from The Times: "The effect is reducing household wealth. According to data this week from the Fed, net household wealth declined by $900 billion in the fourth quarter of last year."

-- And yet still more from The Times: "Stocks dipped yet again Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 146.70 points to close at 11,893.69. The S&P 500 was off 10.97 points to close at 1293.37, while the NASAQ was down 8.01 points to 2212.49."

And then, this platitude from "President" Shithead:

"I know this is a difficult time for our economy, but we recognized the problem early (HAWHAWHAWHAWHAW...) and provided the economy with a booster shot. We will begin to see the impact over the coming months." (There is apparently going to be such impact, I don't know how they're going to afford enough Ex-Lax to handle it.)

Pardon my doubts -- I think the recession is very much unofficially here, and a deficit-stoking tax rebate that will seep through the economy in the summer isn't likely to head it off, in the least.

I speculate here, but I hope with all body and soul that we are finally emerging from a very long era of bad economic policy. The laissez-faire, "free market" model seems to keep rising from the dead, but I don't think that's evidence of its strength. It seems to have been discredited over and over.

I think what gives it a perversely enduring strength is its seeming justification for swinish behavior by the economic elite. Consider that these are the folks who give the greatest sums to political campaigns, of both parties.

If you are among the privileged, it's a way to elude guilt. After all, you're hiring gardeners, maids, drivers and cooks. You leave big tips at the country club. Rationalization: How can all this largess not "trickle down?" And then, those nasty government people just want more and more tax money?

I'm actually supposed to help pay for the roads and bridges that I only have my hired help drive over? I'm supposed to help pay for the public library? (Barnes and Noble has all the coffee-table books I want). Those liberals ought to just go out and get themselves honest jobs. Wait, what's this in the paper about outsourcing jobs to India? Oh, OK -- none of my help is affected.

And remember to have that personal secretary keep that subscription to National Review current. God rest Bill Buckley's soul.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

What Economy, Stupid?

By Manifesto Joe

Yeah, the title is an exaggeration. But it comes just after a day of very bad economic news. The recession is not yet official, but I think the question is no longer if, but when. Here are a few news nuggets from Thursday:

-- For the first time since World War II, U.S. homeowner debt now exceeds home equity.

-- In the fourth quarter of 2007, the percentage of U.S. homes caught up in foreclosure proceedings reached a record 0.83 percent.

-- The benchmark crude oil price climbed to a record $105.47. The prices of staple
groceries -- bread, milk, eggs and such -- have been been climbing in tandem.

-- The Dow Jones industrial average fell 214 points Thursday and is flirting with a dip below the 12,000 mark.

I would dare say that Republican "free" market economic policies have been given every chance to work and have proved wanting. I got my "tinkle-down" in the '80s. I'm still waiting for the "trickle-down."

The Bush "stimulus" tax sweetie-pie has yet to make its way into the economy, but don't look for it to be an answer. It will add to the deficit; and it won't help people who are about to lose their homes, their jobs, and their cars, right now. It won't help those who have been waiting for years to qualify for SSI disability or Medicaid because of the enormous backlog of applicants facing pared-down skeleton crews. It won't help the millions of medically uninsured, a number of whom are simply sent home to die.

I could stretch this litany on and on, but I won't belabor it. It should be clear that the U.S. has gone through an almost 30-year robber baron revival, a Gilded Age redux. This year, the electorate has one more opportunity to put a stop to it.

Fasten your seat belts. As Bette Davis once told moviegoers, it's going to be a bumpy ride. There won't be anything meaningful done this year because Big Business has just the cretin they chose in the Oval Office. We're looking to January 2009 for any genuine solutions.

One thing that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton more or less agree on is that taxes on the rich will have to be raised. Clinton, in one of their numerous debates, suggested that the tax structure should be returned to where it was at the beginning of 2001, before George W. Bush pushed through his sweet tax meat for the wealthy and big corporations.

That was the tax rate passed in 1993, the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency, by one vote in the House. It got no Republican votes. The marginal rates were raised, but not even close to what they had been 12 years earlier.

I'll rehash something from a previous post: You remember what happened during those '90s, the Clinton era? Republican opponents of his program predicted economic collapse ...

Unemployment rose to 25 percent. Inflation went double-digit, and interest rates topped 20 percent. There were food riots in the streets of heartland cities. Teenagers, put out of their homes, rode the rails, stole and ate yard chickens and prostituted themselves to degenerates.

The Bonus Army marched on Washington ...

Sorry -- wrong presidents, wrong eras. Seriously, the Clinton plan brought a dramatic turnaround in the federal deficit, because the government was finally collecting enough tax revenue to fund what was needed. The relatively modest tax increase on wealthy individuals somehow accompanied years of strong growth. Future generations will have reason to be grateful -- the national debt would likely be around $12 trillion now, instead of $9 trillion-plus, if it hadn't been for those eight years.

One president we wouldn't likely get any meaningful change out of is John McCain. The leader of the Straitjacket Express appears to have sold out to the Bushies on economic issues. He's committed himself -- pardon the expression -- to the Bush tax smoocherama with the rich and Big Business, pledging to make Bush's bonanzas permanent.

An important thing to remember is that the division in the Democratic Party is going to have to end soon. We're at a critical juncture in the nation's history, and we simply can't afford any more Republican economic policies. We need voters to expand the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. And, we need a Democratic president -- yes, I know there are differences between the candidates, but one or the other will be essential -- to sign the bills.

The big word is November. I hope you can pay your mortgage until then.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Texas Update: No Two-Step For Gene Kelly

By Manifesto Joe

State Democratic Party regulars are no doubt sighing in relief. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, is coming in with just under 51 percent of primary vote, winning the outright majority he needed to avoid a runoff and be the nominee against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Noriega has key endorsements and might actually stand a chance in November against Cornyn, a Bush shill and one of the Senate's most expendable members.

Meanwhile, Gene Kelly, perennial candidate for this or that (see previous post), will have to take his dance macabre home to Universal City, Texas. (He usually only left there to pay the filing fee, anyway.) Perhaps we've seen the last of the 81-year-old retired military lawyer. But it's not like Texans ever saw much of him. In nearly 20 years of seeking and never winning public office, Kelly rarely campaigned. Name recognition can only do just so much. Maybe if he'd changed his name to John Wayne and run as a Republican ...

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

What Happened In Texas ...

By Manifesto Joe

... was that Hispanics turned out. A whole lot of them. And they voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton.

It appears that El Paso put her over. She won that urban area by a ratio of over 2-to-1. That, and her strength in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, offset a big Obama vote in Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston and Austin.

I feel kind of bittersweet about the whole thing. There are things I like and dislike about both, but I am very ready to support whichever one is the nominee.

It seems there was a strong Obama vote among those who cast ballots early, and among those who made up their minds early. The more undecided people, and those who waited until yesterday to vote, went mostly for Hillary. The experience argument seemed to carry a lot of weight with those who decided late.

So, if you're wondering, how did I vote? I voted Democratic, as an early voter. My wife waited until yesterday, and she also voted Democratic. That's as much as you're going to get out of me right now.

You can get the exit-poll demographic breakdown here, at CNN.com.

Texas postscript: A second story is that perennial candidate Gene Kelly stands a chance to make a runoff for the Democratic U.S. senatorial nomination against state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston. This is one that probably won't be decided until much later today -- Noriega was hovering at around 50 percent of the vote, with Kelly a distant second.

Kelly has run for U.S. Senate three times, and actually got the Democratic nomination and the honor of getting clobbered in 2000 by GOP incumbent Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. He seldom campaigns. He's a retired military lawyer and judge, somewhere around 81 years old.

Observers have been trying to figure out how he's achieved this modest but noticeable level of success, and they figure it must be the name. "The dancer is dead," many party regulars are trying to tell the voters.

I can't help but think that if such a significant slice of the electorate is that stupid, then Rick Noriega's surname may not be helping him much.

Problem is, Kelly has actually done well enough to force the Texas Democratic Party into a couple of expensive runoffs. Keep your fingers crossed that he doesn't do it again. Here are a couple of links that tell more of the story: This one has the real info. This one is just for fun.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bush Misadventures In Mideast Blinded Him To Troubles In Latin America

By Manifesto Joe

While the U.S. remains stuck in the Iraq quagmire, and Afghanistan looks increasingly like one, too, there's plenty of trouble simmering in our own back yard. The problems of Latin America have already changed the face of America forever -- and that may be just a warm-up, because now there's the faint odor of war.

Reuters reported Sunday from Caracas:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sent troops and tanks to the Colombian border and mobilized warplanes on Sunday, warning Bogota could spark a war after it bombed inside another of its neighbors, Ecuador.

Reacting to Colombia's killing on Saturday of a Colombian rebel over the border in Ecuador, a Venezuelan ally, Chavez also withdrew all of his diplomats from Bogota in the worst dispute between the neighbors since he came to office in 1999. ...

"May God spare us a war. But we are not going to allow them violate our sovereign territory," the ex-paratrooper said.

Colombia's troops killed Raul Reyes, a leader of Marxist FARC rebels, during an attack on a jungle camp in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency. The operation included air strikes and fighting across the border.

The anti-U.S. Chavez, who had warned a similar operation in Venezuela would be "cause for war," threatened to send Russian-made fighter jets into U.S. ally Colombia if its troops also struck inside his OPEC country.

Eduador's president, Rafael Correa, also sent troops to the Colombian border and expelled Colombia's ambassador.

Some analysts viewed the moves as grandstanding by Chavez, who must realize that war with Colombia would bring serious repercussions to Venezuela's economy. But if war were to break out, the U.S., being allied with Colombia and having demonized Chavez for many years, would be in a real spot.

The official U.S. response sounded pretty lame. Reuters went on:

Washington, which backs Uribe's fight against the rebels with its largest military aid outside the Middle East, said it was monitoring developments after Chavez's "odd reaction."

At this point, the only real way George W. Bush can exert influence in Latin America is militarily, and his Iraq misadventure has made that option precarious to say the least. And, given the history of hostility toward Chavez, intervention down there could well turn into yet another quagmire that the American people can't afford.

The incident suggests U.S. vulnerability, and diminished influence, as part of the pathetic Bush legacy. Obsessed with Mideast adventures, Bush has left the U.S. looking a lot like the Richard Nixon metaphor of a "pitiful, helpless giant" when it comes to dealing with events on our own hemisphere.

Pablo Bachelet of McClatchy Newspapers posted a piece, "Bush Legacy: Farewell to the Monroe Doctrine?", that is definitely worth a read. Bachelet, actually posting Saturday, the day before the troop movements were reported, wrote of Bush:

... his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.

He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.

I wouldn't exactly endorse some of the free-trade pacts referred to there. But at the core of the issues are the lack of serious U.S. political engagement in Latin America, and the inability to see how some economic rivals are making inroads in the region.

And the demonization of Chavez has proved costly. I have little doubt, judging from his actions, that Chavez is a power-monger (sorry, many fellow lefties). But the current administration has done plenty to antagonize him. There are conflicting accounts, but the U.S. government appears to have been, at the very least, willing to condone any success of the April 2002 coup attempt against him, had it been successful.

A bottom line here is that, whatever warts the man has, Chavez has won election after election in Venezuela, by wide margins. There haven't been credible challenges to the legitimacy of those elections. He didn't have to be appointed to the presidency by his country's high court. His popularity among common Venezuelans is beyond question, and so is his legitimacy as the nation's leader.

Normalization of relations with Venezuela would be a big step in the right direction. Chavez, I admit, makes me pretty nervous; but the U.S. fraternizes with anti-democratic strongmen who make me a lot more nervous. To wit, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf is an ally. Chavez never will be, but I would say that with him, normalization of relations is a practical and desirable option.

It won't happen under a President McCain. It might under a President Obama, or a President Clinton. There's a lot of damage to be repaired, and we can pretty much assume that no Republican administration will do it.

Another starting point would be Cuba. Bachelet also wrote:

Some critics say changing the Cuba policy also will help. A new Cuba approach, says Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, would be a ''superb opening toward refurbishing'' the Latin America policy that he describes as "bordering on failure.''

In microcosmic terms, the U.S. has been hassling with folks across town, while the neighbors are about to start a shooting feud that we (in the editorial sense) helped start. It's time to come back to the neighborhood and rejoin the association.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

As Another Bill Rots In Subcommittee, U.S. Remains The World's Foremost Jailer

By Manifesto Joe

Although the trend is far from new, the U.S. did pass a milestone recently in its overall incarceration rate, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States. More than 1 in 100 American adults is either in prison or in jail. This is the largest prison/jail population in the world. Even far more populous China is a distant second, the report says. We're talking both numbers and per capita, going away.

The report puts the most current figure for U.S. incarcerated at 2,319,258. Of those, 171,790 are enjoying austere lodging in my home state of Texas.

The growth of the orange jump-suit set has attracted the attention of certain lawmakers. But predictably, change is coming very slowly, and one of the pertinent bills in the Congress is -- you guessed it, mired in a subcommittee.

At the federal level, one lawmaker who is trying to turn back an irrational trend is U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas. She's the sponsor of H.R. 261, the proposed Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2007.

According to washingtonwatch.com, here's a description of the bill, and its status:

Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2007 - Amends the federal criminal code to direct the Bureau of Prisons, pursuant to a good time policy, to release a prisoner who has served one half or more of his or her term of imprisonment if that prisoner: (1) has attained age 45; (2) has never been convicted of a crime of violence; and (3) has not engaged in any violation, involving violent conduct, of institutional disciplinary regulations.

Latest Major Action: 2/2/2007: Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Translation: It will be stuck there for quite a while. According to the Web site fantasycongress.com, it has no co-sponsors.

There are some other revealing statistics in the Pew report. About 1 in 9 black men aged 20 to 34 are in prison or jail, for just one example.

What happened? The report says that this is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing that began in the 1980s. Translation: The War on Drugs, and "Three Strikes, You're Out."

Jackson-Lee is fighting windmills for now, and only at the federal prison level at that. But this is a trend that cannot and will not continue much longer. The costs will see to that: The report says that in 20 years, state spending on corrections, adjusted for inflation, went up 127%; spending on higher education, 21%. State governments are paying nearly $50 billion a year to prop up this quasi-gulag. The federal government is paying more than $5 billion annually.

"Lock 'em up" has always played well with much of the electorate -- I will risk saying the more ignorant part of it -- but alternatives to prison must be explored, especially where the disastrous War on Drugs is concerned. The hoosegows are so full that I think it's time to refocus on offenders who have actually injured someone else, arbitrarily and directly, rather than some schmuck who gets caught with a user's amount of a controlled substance. We've done the hard-ass approach for a generation, and it has obviously run its course.

If you ever write to your representatives in Congress, it might be a good time to mention H.R. 261, since this problem is in the news.

And, I will leave you all with a link to a fine post on this subject that, among other things, also explores the disturbing trend of outsourcing incarceration to contractors. These companies operate "private" prisons that maximize profits through varied abuse, deprivation and frighteningly unsanitary conditions.

You'll find a lot more at The Existentialist Cowboy.

Be joyful that you are free -- if you more or less are.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.