This is, with permission, a reprint of a post by Burr Deming of Fair and Unbalanced of Nov. 18. It's taken me a while to get around to this, but I felt it was one of the best expositions of the barbaric institution of capital punishment as it is practiced here in the state of Texas. By the way, Mr. Deming's blog is on "Joe's Hot Links" for those who want to read more.
By Burr Deming
The way he had the man killed, and how he acted later, reminded me of a long ago personal experience.
It was decades back. An elderly relative, one I love dearly, was distraught. Her Social Security check had never arrived. What would she do now? So much for her depended on that check.
Her husband was not a popular character within the family. He was pompous, preening, and had a tendency toward self serving untruth. He enjoyed spending money and forgetting to mention it to his wife. He also had a reputation of having sticky fingers.
He was sullen as I reassured her. The check was probably late. But if it was lost or stolen, she only had to report it. These things happened, and there were procedures.
The only people who had anything to worry about would be anyone who might have taken the check from her mailbox. Stolen government checks are always traced, I said, and thieves are dealt with harshly. If the check was lost a replacement check would be issued. If the check had been stolen, a replacement check would be issued and someone would later be caught and go to jail. She could count on it.
Her hard-to-take husband jumped to his feet in anger. How dare I threaten him with jail ! ! !
When wrong is done, it is often guilty action later that points to culprits. "Consciousness of guilt" is used as evidence of guilt. In some states, fleeing the police qualifies. Trying to cover up a crime can as well.
After the now infamous Susan Smith drowned her two infant children in an attempt to overcome difficulties with her boyfriend, her lawyers tried to argue a variation of an insanity defense. She had been abused as a youngster. She had an unstable childhood. She was not conscious that she was doing anything wrong when she trapped her kids in a car and let it go into a lake.
The insanity defense became pretty much impossible because she had lied about the crime. She maintained that a black man, a stranger, had hijacked her automobile with the kids inside. She tried to cover up her guilt. If she was divorced from reality or did not know it was wrong to kill her children, or was oblivious to what she had done, then why invent a story to keep it a secret? She had demonstrated a consciousness of guilt. And so she now resides at Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina.
Twenty years ago, Cameron Todd Willingham could have tried to plead insanity. He was convicted of burning up his children near Austin Texas. But he tried to make it seem as if he hadn't committed the crime. Outside the burning home, he acted like a crazy man, fighting to get back to his children, crying, begging firefighters to rescue his family. Local forensic analysts, however, concluded the fire had been set deliberately.
Willingham's contrived emotions outside his home were just part of the clumsy coverup, just like the arson itself. He did not even try a defense of insanity. What was the point? He had demonstrated a consciousness of guilt. So instead, he continued, improbably, to maintain his innocence. He was sentenced to death in 1992.
Death sentences take time and, over the years, cracks appeared in the case. It turned out the forensic analysts didn't really know much about science. One outside fire investigator after another questioned the initial conclusions. The evidence did not support the accusation of arson. Finally, one of the biggest reputations got involved. The case attracted the attention of Dr. Gerald Hurst. He was an Austin fire investigator and a scientist in his own right. He worked the case pro bono.
The case quickly became cut-and-dried. The original findings were based on ignorance and superstition. Assumptions about science that were well known to be wrong at the time were presented as fact. It was the fire science equivalent of witchcraft. Completely predictable effects of electrical faults were needlessly termed suspicious, then conclusive. It was outrageous. Dr. Hurst called it junk science. He sent his report directly to the Governor of Texas.
We have a legal system that, at present, puts severe restrictions on death sentence appeals. Guilt or innocence seldom plays a part. It's all procedural. And there were no discernible procedural errors. The courts rely on a final non-judicial appeal. A governor may issue a pardon or commute a sentence if the judicial system is unable to get close to justice.
Indications are Texas Governor Rick Perry took 4 hours less time looking over the Hurst report than the OJ jury took examining the Los Angeles mountain of evidence. Which is to say zero. He didn't take the time to read it at all.
Cameron Todd Willington's last words before his execution in 2004 was to say once again that he was innocent of killing his children.
In the years after the execution, interest began to balloon. The Hurst report began to make the rounds and it looked devastating. Texas, in particular Rick Perry, had ordered an innocent man executed, ignoring obvious evidence that had been placed in the Governor's hands.
In 2009, a review of the case was ordered by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Renown scientist Dr. Craig Beyler was put in charge. Governor Perry's ofice insisted there was plenty of evidence to indicate the executed man could be guilty. But as he looked into it, Beyler appeared increasingly skeptical about the evidence, the verdict, and the execution.
Two days before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was to meet and consider Beyler's conclusions, Governor Perry moved in. He fired three of the commissioners, and replaced the chairman. The new chairman cancelled the meeting on the execution.
It was Governor Rick Perry's coverup.
Consciousness of guilt.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Herman Cain Candidacy Was An Absurd Joke Anyway -- He's An Ignoramus
By Manifesto Joe
I know I'm supposed to be indignant. If his accusers are telling the truth, Herman Cain has not merely been an adulterer, but a harasser as well. In adultery, at least the other person in the affair is a consenting adult. Victims of harassment have consented to nothing.
But I was always much more concerned, and still am, that an obvious ignoramus like Cain could ever have gotten as far as he did in presidential aspirations. This is a guy who actually said in an interview on the campaign trail, with alarm, that China is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Cain would have been around 18 or 19 at the time that China completed its first successful test of an atomic bomb. They've had the A-bomb for 47 years, and have probably developed some rather sophisticated delivery systems by now.
It's no crime that, as an ordinary citizen/dorkus, Cain missed that little tidbit of information. But for someone aspiring to be president of the U.S., it's downright laughable.
In other words, the big problem there was never Herman Cain's penis. It's his brain. (Or am I being redundant?)
Unfortunately, Mr. Cain was only one of the igmos in the GOP field. There are at least two others surviving among the Republicans' "seven dwarfs," and they will be vying to pick up Cain supporters as the Iowa contest draws nearer. I don't think I need to name them.
Whither the Republicans?
After the Tea Party-backed Republican candidates triumphed so resoundingly in last year's midterm elections, I was seriously worried that the country was in a mood to elect, literally, any bozo the GOP put up against President Obama. Now it looks far less certain. Any major political party that has Newt Gingrich emerging as a frontrunner for the presidential nomination has got to be in serious trouble. They honestly don't seem to know whom the hell to nominate.
Mr. Gingrich is far from the dumbest of the Republican contenders. But he's a longtime political opportunist, and there is considerable evidence that he at least used to be a serial adulterer.
His chief rival appears to be Mitt Romney, who seems to have a squeaky-clean image but has two serious drawbacks: (1) He's a Mormon trying to win over Religious Right types who regard Mormonism as a cult, and (2) Based on his record as governor of Massachusetts, I think he could be expected to govern more as a moderate than as the hard-right ideologue that Tea Party types clearly prefer.
What will happen? My guess is that there will be a long battle through the primaries, with Romney getting the edge. Wall Street wants a winner, not a buffoon, and that small but powerful wing of the party will have its way in the end. Gingrich, who has nothing better to do, would be well-advised to accept the No. 2 spot on the ticket, if Romney will have him.
I would say that's the Republicans' best chance next year. And, looking at the electoral map, they would have to win Florida, Ohio, and one of two key Western states -- either Nevada or Colorado -- to be able to win the presidency.
Six months ago, I feared the worst. Now, I'm more optimistic. Obama's not what I would have liked to see. He's not FDR. Hell, he's not even Truman or LBJ. But looking over the Republican "seven dwarfs," I'm just about ready to be a trusting fool and say for a second time, "Yes, we can!"
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I know I'm supposed to be indignant. If his accusers are telling the truth, Herman Cain has not merely been an adulterer, but a harasser as well. In adultery, at least the other person in the affair is a consenting adult. Victims of harassment have consented to nothing.
But I was always much more concerned, and still am, that an obvious ignoramus like Cain could ever have gotten as far as he did in presidential aspirations. This is a guy who actually said in an interview on the campaign trail, with alarm, that China is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Cain would have been around 18 or 19 at the time that China completed its first successful test of an atomic bomb. They've had the A-bomb for 47 years, and have probably developed some rather sophisticated delivery systems by now.
It's no crime that, as an ordinary citizen/dorkus, Cain missed that little tidbit of information. But for someone aspiring to be president of the U.S., it's downright laughable.
In other words, the big problem there was never Herman Cain's penis. It's his brain. (Or am I being redundant?)
Unfortunately, Mr. Cain was only one of the igmos in the GOP field. There are at least two others surviving among the Republicans' "seven dwarfs," and they will be vying to pick up Cain supporters as the Iowa contest draws nearer. I don't think I need to name them.
Whither the Republicans?
After the Tea Party-backed Republican candidates triumphed so resoundingly in last year's midterm elections, I was seriously worried that the country was in a mood to elect, literally, any bozo the GOP put up against President Obama. Now it looks far less certain. Any major political party that has Newt Gingrich emerging as a frontrunner for the presidential nomination has got to be in serious trouble. They honestly don't seem to know whom the hell to nominate.
Mr. Gingrich is far from the dumbest of the Republican contenders. But he's a longtime political opportunist, and there is considerable evidence that he at least used to be a serial adulterer.
His chief rival appears to be Mitt Romney, who seems to have a squeaky-clean image but has two serious drawbacks: (1) He's a Mormon trying to win over Religious Right types who regard Mormonism as a cult, and (2) Based on his record as governor of Massachusetts, I think he could be expected to govern more as a moderate than as the hard-right ideologue that Tea Party types clearly prefer.
What will happen? My guess is that there will be a long battle through the primaries, with Romney getting the edge. Wall Street wants a winner, not a buffoon, and that small but powerful wing of the party will have its way in the end. Gingrich, who has nothing better to do, would be well-advised to accept the No. 2 spot on the ticket, if Romney will have him.
I would say that's the Republicans' best chance next year. And, looking at the electoral map, they would have to win Florida, Ohio, and one of two key Western states -- either Nevada or Colorado -- to be able to win the presidency.
Six months ago, I feared the worst. Now, I'm more optimistic. Obama's not what I would have liked to see. He's not FDR. Hell, he's not even Truman or LBJ. But looking over the Republican "seven dwarfs," I'm just about ready to be a trusting fool and say for a second time, "Yes, we can!"
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Disgusted With Black Friday And Other Thanksgiving Excesses? Check Out Andy Borowitz
By Manifesto Joe (Well, sort of)
The Walmart pepper-spray incident in California was just one more of many reasons for Americans to feel ashamed about Black Friday. If there is no other reason for us to be embarrassed about being residents of the U.S., this is it.
I can't equal this man's one-liner humor, so I give you Mr. Andy Borowitz!
How to cut a turkey the Republican way: give 1% of your guests 99% of the meat.
Celebrate Thanksgiving the American way: spend money you don't have on Chinese products.
Here's a Thanksgiving diet tip: this year, don't eat like such a fucking pig.
Rick Perry says as President he would pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving and execute an innocent man instead.
BREAKING: US to Deploy Walmart Shoppers in Afghanistan.
The NBA deal is an inspiring story of millionaires finding common ground with billionaires.
BREAKING: FDA Declares Rick Perry a Vegetable.
As Egyptians risk their lives for new government, Americans bravely do the same for new flat screens.
My immigration proposal: we let illegal immigrants stay here but Mexico has to take our presidential candidates.
Besides pepper-spraying protesters and not arresting football coaches, what exactly do campus police do?
China may lead us in math and science, but we are way ahead of them in shitty vampire movies.
Want more? Andy is on Facebook and Twitter!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
The Walmart pepper-spray incident in California was just one more of many reasons for Americans to feel ashamed about Black Friday. If there is no other reason for us to be embarrassed about being residents of the U.S., this is it.
I can't equal this man's one-liner humor, so I give you Mr. Andy Borowitz!
How to cut a turkey the Republican way: give 1% of your guests 99% of the meat.
Celebrate Thanksgiving the American way: spend money you don't have on Chinese products.
Here's a Thanksgiving diet tip: this year, don't eat like such a fucking pig.
Rick Perry says as President he would pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving and execute an innocent man instead.
BREAKING: US to Deploy Walmart Shoppers in Afghanistan.
The NBA deal is an inspiring story of millionaires finding common ground with billionaires.
BREAKING: FDA Declares Rick Perry a Vegetable.
As Egyptians risk their lives for new government, Americans bravely do the same for new flat screens.
My immigration proposal: we let illegal immigrants stay here but Mexico has to take our presidential candidates.
Besides pepper-spraying protesters and not arresting football coaches, what exactly do campus police do?
China may lead us in math and science, but we are way ahead of them in shitty vampire movies.
Want more? Andy is on Facebook and Twitter!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Myth Of The Free Market, Part II: Steve Forbes Needs His Cranium Occupied
By Manifesto Joe
Recently, Steve Forbes joined Sarah Palin in saying something to the effect that the Occupy protesters need to go occupy Congress, not Wall Street. According to reports, the one-time Republican presidential candidate said that the protesters need to protest cumbersome regulations that he believes stymie business and seem intended to destroy the financial industry (Huh? Does he mean the one that was so unwisely deregulated during the late 1990s?)
Most of those who know Forbes' history, I'm sure, realize that this is yet another fool who, to paraphrase Jim Hightower's line about George H.W. Bush, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Forbes personifies all that is corrupt and twisted about the current system of rigged games, and the privileges that the system's 1% beneficiaries have the absurd nerve to deny that they have.
During his first campaign for president, which fortunately didn't go far, Forbes proposed a flat tax of 17%, and even suggested that the first $33,000 of a family income could go untaxed. That lured in an awful lot of uninquiring minds. I remember talking to a small-business owner who thought Forbes' idea was just wonderful -- until I explained to him what the catch was.
In the Forbes plan, income from dividends and interest, pensions, and capital gains would all be exempt from any and all federal taxation. For the most part, I just described what makes the difference between a very wealthy person and one of more modest means.
My friend hadn't heard that part, and had to back down and say, "You're right." I told him that a modified flat tax probably isn't such a bad idea, at least compared with the convoluted mess we have now. But the Forbes plan clearly wasn't the right one. I recall even Pat Buchanan, nobody's bleeding heart, commenting caustically that Forbes' plan sounded like something the boys in the boardroom would come up with.
What Forbes personifies is ironic -- he's the most dogmatic of "free-market" advocates, yet he represents all about the so-called free market that is, for all practical purposes for the vast majority of people, a joke and a hoax.
The U.S. is a plutocracy, not a democracy or even a republic
I've heard a lot of argument back and forth about whether the U.S. was constitutionally designed to be a "democracy" or a "republic." I'd have to say that it's supposed to have been some of both, or what could be described as a "democratic republic." It was obviously meant to be a "republic" inasmuch as our government is largely representative, divided and subject to certain checks and balances, as opposed to a "direct democracy." There are many democratic features in the system, but our founders seemed to clearly have the concept of the "tyranny of the majority" in mind.
But in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the country was largely composed of yeoman farmers and small-business people. Women didn't have the vote, and black people -- well, the proposition that they were even people was often a minority opinion among whites. In much of the nation then, they were property.
Much has changed since those days, some very much for the better, and some very much for the worse. Corporations have attained a supremacy over the economy (not just ours -- the world's) that even the visionaries of the 18th century might not have imagined.
Money is officially considered speech
Two rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have pretty much established plutocracy as our obvious form of government. The first, Buckley v. Valeo, came in 1976. Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The second ruling was in 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Here's yet another link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The general effect of these rulings, in tandem, was that in America, money is speech, and for all practical purposes, elections can be bought and sold, as though public offices were on the marketplace.
It has, of course, become quite clear to some of us that they are. Obama perhaps thought he could change things, but he ran up against that nasty and hard brick wall that is Corporate America. Wall Street more or less controls both major political parties, and its agents seem to have an awful lot of pull on Obama himself, whether he knows it or not.
Why does the myth of the "free market" persist?
It's very simple: People find this ideology to be very profitable in certain places and circumstances. Supply-side and "free market" theorists can be proved wrong again and again, but as long as some people find this ideology supremely profitable, they will embrace it, without reservations, and can find plenty of economists to rationalize it.
There's a great irony in all this. "Free market" thinkers point to the need for incentives, and the will to power and wealth, as defenses for their viewpoint. Where they go wrong is in thinking that, when you have a lot of people living by this philosophy, an "invisible hand" tends to move self-interest in a socially productive direction, toward competition and hard work that is supposed to ultimately benefit all who live in such a society.
I have felt that "invisible hand" many times. It always felt much more like a fist to me.
The inexorable lure of people toward a position of great wealth and social dominance lays waste to the very thing that is supposed to make this ideology work. Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly. The practitioners of the system are generally opportunists who will do what is necessary to establish that arrangement, even if it involves breaking a few rules. And it's especially convenient if they can arrange things in such a way that it's all quite legal and accepted as good and standard business.
And so, Steve Forbes, and Sarah Palin -- the temptation to rig the game so that the supreme competitors can win, over and over, is far too great. That is where lobbyists come in, and where the ultimate codification in favor of the winners happens over and over. The politicians become the "enemy" only when they stubbornly fight in favor of the public interest. More often, they are the stooges and dupes who do the bidding of the fat-cat "winners" such that the public loses much more often than it wins.
The real road to serfdom
We in America have been on it, for over 30 years. Only recently has a genuine grassroots movement emerged in which those brutally marginalized by the system have the nerve to stand up on their hind legs and say no. They finally see that the financial system has been a game rigged in favor of the so-called winners, and against them. They've finally seen that the misbehavior of the financial industry, with its subprime mortgages and derivatives and such, amounts to a tiny minority of privileged people using other people's money in order to rake in more and more money for themselves.
Unfortunately, not enough Americans see this, just yet. When you've got an economy that has doubled in size in 30 years, and yet the wages and salaries of the middle and working classes have stagnated, the purpose of this game should be obvious. But the "winners" have a propaganda apparatus that is unprecedented. There's an entire "news" empire -- no need for me to identify it -- that keeps spooning this bilge out to millions every day.
The first and most important way to fight back is to reject the ideology. It doesn't involve having to embrace "communism," as "they" would have you believe. Just say NO -- stop heeding. Listen, but with a critical mind, and a knowledge that the people who have profited most off this system for 30 years want to keep it going for at least 30 more. That's more than half the battle.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Recently, Steve Forbes joined Sarah Palin in saying something to the effect that the Occupy protesters need to go occupy Congress, not Wall Street. According to reports, the one-time Republican presidential candidate said that the protesters need to protest cumbersome regulations that he believes stymie business and seem intended to destroy the financial industry (Huh? Does he mean the one that was so unwisely deregulated during the late 1990s?)
Most of those who know Forbes' history, I'm sure, realize that this is yet another fool who, to paraphrase Jim Hightower's line about George H.W. Bush, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Forbes personifies all that is corrupt and twisted about the current system of rigged games, and the privileges that the system's 1% beneficiaries have the absurd nerve to deny that they have.
During his first campaign for president, which fortunately didn't go far, Forbes proposed a flat tax of 17%, and even suggested that the first $33,000 of a family income could go untaxed. That lured in an awful lot of uninquiring minds. I remember talking to a small-business owner who thought Forbes' idea was just wonderful -- until I explained to him what the catch was.
In the Forbes plan, income from dividends and interest, pensions, and capital gains would all be exempt from any and all federal taxation. For the most part, I just described what makes the difference between a very wealthy person and one of more modest means.
My friend hadn't heard that part, and had to back down and say, "You're right." I told him that a modified flat tax probably isn't such a bad idea, at least compared with the convoluted mess we have now. But the Forbes plan clearly wasn't the right one. I recall even Pat Buchanan, nobody's bleeding heart, commenting caustically that Forbes' plan sounded like something the boys in the boardroom would come up with.
What Forbes personifies is ironic -- he's the most dogmatic of "free-market" advocates, yet he represents all about the so-called free market that is, for all practical purposes for the vast majority of people, a joke and a hoax.
The U.S. is a plutocracy, not a democracy or even a republic
I've heard a lot of argument back and forth about whether the U.S. was constitutionally designed to be a "democracy" or a "republic." I'd have to say that it's supposed to have been some of both, or what could be described as a "democratic republic." It was obviously meant to be a "republic" inasmuch as our government is largely representative, divided and subject to certain checks and balances, as opposed to a "direct democracy." There are many democratic features in the system, but our founders seemed to clearly have the concept of the "tyranny of the majority" in mind.
But in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the country was largely composed of yeoman farmers and small-business people. Women didn't have the vote, and black people -- well, the proposition that they were even people was often a minority opinion among whites. In much of the nation then, they were property.
Much has changed since those days, some very much for the better, and some very much for the worse. Corporations have attained a supremacy over the economy (not just ours -- the world's) that even the visionaries of the 18th century might not have imagined.
Money is officially considered speech
Two rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have pretty much established plutocracy as our obvious form of government. The first, Buckley v. Valeo, came in 1976. Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The second ruling was in 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Here's yet another link to a Wikipedia article on this ruling.
The general effect of these rulings, in tandem, was that in America, money is speech, and for all practical purposes, elections can be bought and sold, as though public offices were on the marketplace.
It has, of course, become quite clear to some of us that they are. Obama perhaps thought he could change things, but he ran up against that nasty and hard brick wall that is Corporate America. Wall Street more or less controls both major political parties, and its agents seem to have an awful lot of pull on Obama himself, whether he knows it or not.
Why does the myth of the "free market" persist?
It's very simple: People find this ideology to be very profitable in certain places and circumstances. Supply-side and "free market" theorists can be proved wrong again and again, but as long as some people find this ideology supremely profitable, they will embrace it, without reservations, and can find plenty of economists to rationalize it.
There's a great irony in all this. "Free market" thinkers point to the need for incentives, and the will to power and wealth, as defenses for their viewpoint. Where they go wrong is in thinking that, when you have a lot of people living by this philosophy, an "invisible hand" tends to move self-interest in a socially productive direction, toward competition and hard work that is supposed to ultimately benefit all who live in such a society.
I have felt that "invisible hand" many times. It always felt much more like a fist to me.
The inexorable lure of people toward a position of great wealth and social dominance lays waste to the very thing that is supposed to make this ideology work. Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly. The practitioners of the system are generally opportunists who will do what is necessary to establish that arrangement, even if it involves breaking a few rules. And it's especially convenient if they can arrange things in such a way that it's all quite legal and accepted as good and standard business.
And so, Steve Forbes, and Sarah Palin -- the temptation to rig the game so that the supreme competitors can win, over and over, is far too great. That is where lobbyists come in, and where the ultimate codification in favor of the winners happens over and over. The politicians become the "enemy" only when they stubbornly fight in favor of the public interest. More often, they are the stooges and dupes who do the bidding of the fat-cat "winners" such that the public loses much more often than it wins.
The real road to serfdom
We in America have been on it, for over 30 years. Only recently has a genuine grassroots movement emerged in which those brutally marginalized by the system have the nerve to stand up on their hind legs and say no. They finally see that the financial system has been a game rigged in favor of the so-called winners, and against them. They've finally seen that the misbehavior of the financial industry, with its subprime mortgages and derivatives and such, amounts to a tiny minority of privileged people using other people's money in order to rake in more and more money for themselves.
Unfortunately, not enough Americans see this, just yet. When you've got an economy that has doubled in size in 30 years, and yet the wages and salaries of the middle and working classes have stagnated, the purpose of this game should be obvious. But the "winners" have a propaganda apparatus that is unprecedented. There's an entire "news" empire -- no need for me to identify it -- that keeps spooning this bilge out to millions every day.
The first and most important way to fight back is to reject the ideology. It doesn't involve having to embrace "communism," as "they" would have you believe. Just say NO -- stop heeding. Listen, but with a critical mind, and a knowledge that the people who have profited most off this system for 30 years want to keep it going for at least 30 more. That's more than half the battle.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Joe Paterno, Jailbird? Even If He's Given Some Benefit Of The Doubt, It Looks Bad
By Manifesto Joe
I admit that I'm not much of a football fan. I actually like traditional boxing better, and preferred it. I'd much rather fight one opponent, of similar weight, at a time. But even among those who are football fans, this looks awful.
Joe Paterno, now pushing 85, is the winningest college FBS Division I football coach. He's been at Penn State for something like 45 or 46 years as the head coach. But from the evidence, he is accused of spending over 13 years covering up for a degenerate assistant who was alleged to have been buggering young boys. To be specific, a graduate assistant coach reported to Paterno that he saw this apparent scumbag in the locker-room shower molesting a boy whom he believed to be 10 years old.
What's perhaps even worse is the reaction to this among students at Penn State. They rioted in Paterno's favor, and even turned over a TV van.
It's pretty disgusting that, in a time when many Americans are suffering horrible deprivations, a bunch of pampered little jackasses are RIOTING in Paterno's favor over something this stupid and negligent. Is football more important than the safety of our children?
In our system, people are innocent until proved guilty, and rightly so. But the evidence in this case is severe, and it looks very much as though some of the woof-woof, jock-sniffing people at Penn State were putting football far above common decency. And that apparently includes a great many of the pampered, drunken students.
Let's get the grand jury going on this, right now.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I admit that I'm not much of a football fan. I actually like traditional boxing better, and preferred it. I'd much rather fight one opponent, of similar weight, at a time. But even among those who are football fans, this looks awful.
Joe Paterno, now pushing 85, is the winningest college FBS Division I football coach. He's been at Penn State for something like 45 or 46 years as the head coach. But from the evidence, he is accused of spending over 13 years covering up for a degenerate assistant who was alleged to have been buggering young boys. To be specific, a graduate assistant coach reported to Paterno that he saw this apparent scumbag in the locker-room shower molesting a boy whom he believed to be 10 years old.
What's perhaps even worse is the reaction to this among students at Penn State. They rioted in Paterno's favor, and even turned over a TV van.
It's pretty disgusting that, in a time when many Americans are suffering horrible deprivations, a bunch of pampered little jackasses are RIOTING in Paterno's favor over something this stupid and negligent. Is football more important than the safety of our children?
In our system, people are innocent until proved guilty, and rightly so. But the evidence in this case is severe, and it looks very much as though some of the woof-woof, jock-sniffing people at Penn State were putting football far above common decency. And that apparently includes a great many of the pampered, drunken students.
Let's get the grand jury going on this, right now.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Rick 'Texas Toast' Perry Has Become An Embarrassment To The State
By Manifesto Joe
And that's REALLY saying something, because we've been major-league embarrassed by an assortment of politicians in recent years.
After Il Doofus' incredible 8-year reign, I had become convinced that there is no person so stupid as to not qualify to be the Republican presidential nominee, so I was worried that Governor Goodhair had a real chance. Now it looks like he actually doesn't -- he somehow managed to find where the bottom was.
I'll repeat that I had the sad displeasure of interviewing him at the very dawn of his political career, when he was running for state representative in 1984. I got the very, very distinct impression of a serious bubblehead back then.
I'm very embarrassed that Texans have elected a man this vapid as governor, time after time. You may guess that he would never have even gotten my vote for dogcatcher. I regard my pit bull terrier as marginally smarter, and at least he had the good sense not to run for president.
Perry, somehow, has never lost an election. In the minor leagues, he's been a solid .300 hitter. Fortunately for the country, when he decided to step up and face major league pitching, he has struck out over and over.
Goodhair, just come home and be a bad governor for a few more years. Then just retire to West Texas, and let a Democrat, or at the very least a more competent Republican, be elected guv. You've done enough damage to the image of Texas for one lifetime.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
And that's REALLY saying something, because we've been major-league embarrassed by an assortment of politicians in recent years.
After Il Doofus' incredible 8-year reign, I had become convinced that there is no person so stupid as to not qualify to be the Republican presidential nominee, so I was worried that Governor Goodhair had a real chance. Now it looks like he actually doesn't -- he somehow managed to find where the bottom was.
I'll repeat that I had the sad displeasure of interviewing him at the very dawn of his political career, when he was running for state representative in 1984. I got the very, very distinct impression of a serious bubblehead back then.
I'm very embarrassed that Texans have elected a man this vapid as governor, time after time. You may guess that he would never have even gotten my vote for dogcatcher. I regard my pit bull terrier as marginally smarter, and at least he had the good sense not to run for president.
Perry, somehow, has never lost an election. In the minor leagues, he's been a solid .300 hitter. Fortunately for the country, when he decided to step up and face major league pitching, he has struck out over and over.
Goodhair, just come home and be a bad governor for a few more years. Then just retire to West Texas, and let a Democrat, or at the very least a more competent Republican, be elected guv. You've done enough damage to the image of Texas for one lifetime.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Smokin' Joe Frazier, 67, Finally Takes The Count He Never Took As A Brave Champ
Joe was never a very popular champion. He lacked Muhammad Ali's gift of gab, and held much resentment for his archrival. But he was definitely among the 10 best heavyweights of all time, and watching him in his prime was awesome.
Something I didn't know earlier -- one of the keys to Joe's victory in his first match with Ali in 1971 was something he and his corner figured out. Ali had a habit of dropping his right hand before loading up to throw a hard right uppercut. Yank Durham, Joe's chief cornerman, told him to watch for that. After 10 hard rounds in which Ali generally had the edge, in the 11th Frazier threw one of his patented left hooks over Ali's dropped right on one of those occasions.
Ali was seriously staggered, and the fight turned in Joe's favor after that. It happened again early in the 15th and final round. Ali hit the deck for the count of 4 that time. He got up and finished the fight, but by then Joe had made boxing history.
Here's remembering Smokin' Joe.
Something I didn't know earlier -- one of the keys to Joe's victory in his first match with Ali in 1971 was something he and his corner figured out. Ali had a habit of dropping his right hand before loading up to throw a hard right uppercut. Yank Durham, Joe's chief cornerman, told him to watch for that. After 10 hard rounds in which Ali generally had the edge, in the 11th Frazier threw one of his patented left hooks over Ali's dropped right on one of those occasions.
Ali was seriously staggered, and the fight turned in Joe's favor after that. It happened again early in the 15th and final round. Ali hit the deck for the count of 4 that time. He got up and finished the fight, but by then Joe had made boxing history.
Here's remembering Smokin' Joe.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Somebody Needs To Tell Right-Wingers Like Palin: The Free Market Is A Myth
By Manifesto Joe
What got me thinking about this was the cosmic fool Sarah Palin's recent pronouncements, to a Republican crowd in Florida, about the Occupy protesters.
This fool called the Occupy protesters misguided, in that they are supposed to be just more people seeking a bailout, more people who want to help themselves to other people's money, rather than being what she would prefer -- an Astroturf movement directing their rage at Washington politicians, i.e. Democrats.
Here's a link to a story on this.
According to this dipstick, the protesters shouldn't be blaming "the free market," or "job creators." They should be blaming Obama, Pelosi, et al, for the current morass.
Her imbecilic pronouncements embody all that is delusional about right-wing thinking in America today, and also in many generations past.
What "free market"?
Let's get into this point by point. In the wholesale grocery business, there's a thing called "slotting allowances," through which producers of a food product pay supermarket chains to get more prominent display on the shelves and aisles, etc., for their products. It's common knowledge among those who work in that industry.
It's a sort of legal payola, so that a dominant producer -- let's say, Campbell's soup -- can get much more prominent promotion on any grocery aisle than any of their competitors. Not surprisingly, Campbell's has a very impregnable oligopoly in U.S. soup sales. They have competitors, but they are largely ineffectual. Once an outfit like that gets on top, just try knocking them off.
Tax abatements
In the part of Texas where I live, this is a racket par excellence. The companies getting tax breaks at the local level read like a who's who of area corporations: Bell Helicopter, Radio Shack, General Motors, General Electric, Alcon and In-N-Out Burger. That's just a few.
The game is simple. The local yokels offer tax abatements to corporations to locate in said area. The corporations get competing offers from several locales. If one bunch of yokels doesn't offer a sweeter deal, well, they can just do legal blackmail and say, we'll just locate someplace that will give us MORE, and we'll take all the jobs there! All of them!! Booohooohooohahahaha!
And, guess what: THEY GET IT. ALL OF IT.
And you, John Q. Taxpayer, pay more in local property and sales taxes so that these corporate scofflaws can pay less. And they hire you at minimum wage or little more, and say that this has been their good deed as job creators!
What is the business of lobbyists?
This is something that renders notions of a "free market" nonsense. Or at least it should.
What do lobbyists do for a living? They are in places like Washington and Austin to influence public policy, and in such a way that will help maximize profits for their employers. Sometimes they don't even do it in a subtle way. Twentysomething years ago, chicken magnate Bo Pilgrim created quite a stir in Austin when he showed up passing out checks on the floor of the Texas Senate. At least most of the people on the make are more subtle than that.
Tax breaks, 2011-style
Recent studies have revealed that about two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no federal income tax. I mean, nothing, zilch, nada. The list reads, again, like a who's who of giant corporations -- ExxonMobil and General Electric come to mind. If someone wants to challenge me on this, the data are out there, and I'll be quite happy to respond.
How have they been able to do this? Short answer -- LOBBYISTS. They employ the very best, and they have been getting results over the past 25 years that have been little short of unbelievable. They own a lot of Washington politicians (please take note that these are just the front people, Sarah Palin) and can make them write a lot of lucrative things into the tax code.
Capitalism's internal contradictions
As a young man, trying to make my way in newspaper journalism, I was interviewed by a typical medium-small publisher, a silly man who had made his way up from being a sports woof-woof. He told me that, "We're all for competition. But when we get a competitor, we do our best to crush them, to run them out of business."
And, of course, they had been frequently successful at doing just that. And obviously, that's something that would be expected of them.
But it points out the basic problem that the entire capitalist system faces sooner or later: Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly.
They say they are for competition, but they ultimately want to eliminate competition. And, sadly, they will resort to whatever hideous means are necessary to do just that.
Adam Smith wasn't entirely on their side
Smith was writing in a very different time and place, but there are some selections from his writing that show a very different Smith from the one that the right wing lionizes.
"Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
Where is THAT Adam Smith when you need him?
Quotes from the "GOP," including one from a current presidential hopeful
In 1993, President Bill Clinton's economic plan raised the marginal tax rate on wealthy individuals, and not by a huge amount, by rich folks' standards. I was a taxpayer back then, middle-class, and I noticed little difference in my tax bill. The increase mostly hit the very rich. By the way, it passed in the House by ONE vote. Clinton had a strong Democratic majority in the House, but he couldn't even get all the Democrats to vote for it.
Let's see what Republicans had to say about this:
"We are buying a one-way ticket to a recession." -- Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, 1993. (Gramm, by the way, was an economics professor at Texas A&M before he began his lucrative political career.)
"It'll flatten the economy." -- Sen. William Roth, R-Delaware, 1993. (This is the dude for whom the Roth IRA is named.)
"I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable." -- U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, 1993, soon to be House speaker. Well, Newt, we did eventually have a recession. You were just 14 or 15 years off in your prediction.
Of course, you the reader remember quite well what happened during the '90s, after the Clinton economic plan passed by one vote. The U.S. economy collapsed. The national debt quadrupled. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work.
Oh, wait -- none of that happened, did it? Quite the opposite, if I remember right. I guess I finally awakened from that long national nightmare of peace and prosperity.
How many times do the supply-siders have to be proved wrong?
Apparently it's going to take at least one more time. The polls show a very disheartening trend among many Americans toward delusional nostalgia. One poll indicated that, when asked which past American president people would want back to help guide us through the current crisis, 36% said Ronald Reagan! And only 29% said FDR!
Americans, don't get stuck on stupid. Reagan? You mean the guy who cut the marginal tax rate on rich people down to 28%, and tripled the national debt? Hell, he's one of the major reasons we're in this predicament now!
Part II is coming: The Myth Of The Free Market
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
What got me thinking about this was the cosmic fool Sarah Palin's recent pronouncements, to a Republican crowd in Florida, about the Occupy protesters.
This fool called the Occupy protesters misguided, in that they are supposed to be just more people seeking a bailout, more people who want to help themselves to other people's money, rather than being what she would prefer -- an Astroturf movement directing their rage at Washington politicians, i.e. Democrats.
Here's a link to a story on this.
According to this dipstick, the protesters shouldn't be blaming "the free market," or "job creators." They should be blaming Obama, Pelosi, et al, for the current morass.
Her imbecilic pronouncements embody all that is delusional about right-wing thinking in America today, and also in many generations past.
What "free market"?
Let's get into this point by point. In the wholesale grocery business, there's a thing called "slotting allowances," through which producers of a food product pay supermarket chains to get more prominent display on the shelves and aisles, etc., for their products. It's common knowledge among those who work in that industry.
It's a sort of legal payola, so that a dominant producer -- let's say, Campbell's soup -- can get much more prominent promotion on any grocery aisle than any of their competitors. Not surprisingly, Campbell's has a very impregnable oligopoly in U.S. soup sales. They have competitors, but they are largely ineffectual. Once an outfit like that gets on top, just try knocking them off.
Tax abatements
In the part of Texas where I live, this is a racket par excellence. The companies getting tax breaks at the local level read like a who's who of area corporations: Bell Helicopter, Radio Shack, General Motors, General Electric, Alcon and In-N-Out Burger. That's just a few.
The game is simple. The local yokels offer tax abatements to corporations to locate in said area. The corporations get competing offers from several locales. If one bunch of yokels doesn't offer a sweeter deal, well, they can just do legal blackmail and say, we'll just locate someplace that will give us MORE, and we'll take all the jobs there! All of them!! Booohooohooohahahaha!
And, guess what: THEY GET IT. ALL OF IT.
And you, John Q. Taxpayer, pay more in local property and sales taxes so that these corporate scofflaws can pay less. And they hire you at minimum wage or little more, and say that this has been their good deed as job creators!
What is the business of lobbyists?
This is something that renders notions of a "free market" nonsense. Or at least it should.
What do lobbyists do for a living? They are in places like Washington and Austin to influence public policy, and in such a way that will help maximize profits for their employers. Sometimes they don't even do it in a subtle way. Twentysomething years ago, chicken magnate Bo Pilgrim created quite a stir in Austin when he showed up passing out checks on the floor of the Texas Senate. At least most of the people on the make are more subtle than that.
Tax breaks, 2011-style
Recent studies have revealed that about two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no federal income tax. I mean, nothing, zilch, nada. The list reads, again, like a who's who of giant corporations -- ExxonMobil and General Electric come to mind. If someone wants to challenge me on this, the data are out there, and I'll be quite happy to respond.
How have they been able to do this? Short answer -- LOBBYISTS. They employ the very best, and they have been getting results over the past 25 years that have been little short of unbelievable. They own a lot of Washington politicians (please take note that these are just the front people, Sarah Palin) and can make them write a lot of lucrative things into the tax code.
Capitalism's internal contradictions
As a young man, trying to make my way in newspaper journalism, I was interviewed by a typical medium-small publisher, a silly man who had made his way up from being a sports woof-woof. He told me that, "We're all for competition. But when we get a competitor, we do our best to crush them, to run them out of business."
And, of course, they had been frequently successful at doing just that. And obviously, that's something that would be expected of them.
But it points out the basic problem that the entire capitalist system faces sooner or later: Capitalism thrives on competition, yet every capitalist wants a monopoly.
They say they are for competition, but they ultimately want to eliminate competition. And, sadly, they will resort to whatever hideous means are necessary to do just that.
Adam Smith wasn't entirely on their side
Smith was writing in a very different time and place, but there are some selections from his writing that show a very different Smith from the one that the right wing lionizes.
"Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
Where is THAT Adam Smith when you need him?
Quotes from the "GOP," including one from a current presidential hopeful
In 1993, President Bill Clinton's economic plan raised the marginal tax rate on wealthy individuals, and not by a huge amount, by rich folks' standards. I was a taxpayer back then, middle-class, and I noticed little difference in my tax bill. The increase mostly hit the very rich. By the way, it passed in the House by ONE vote. Clinton had a strong Democratic majority in the House, but he couldn't even get all the Democrats to vote for it.
Let's see what Republicans had to say about this:
"We are buying a one-way ticket to a recession." -- Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, 1993. (Gramm, by the way, was an economics professor at Texas A&M before he began his lucrative political career.)
"It'll flatten the economy." -- Sen. William Roth, R-Delaware, 1993. (This is the dude for whom the Roth IRA is named.)
"I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable." -- U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, 1993, soon to be House speaker. Well, Newt, we did eventually have a recession. You were just 14 or 15 years off in your prediction.
Of course, you the reader remember quite well what happened during the '90s, after the Clinton economic plan passed by one vote. The U.S. economy collapsed. The national debt quadrupled. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work.
Oh, wait -- none of that happened, did it? Quite the opposite, if I remember right. I guess I finally awakened from that long national nightmare of peace and prosperity.
How many times do the supply-siders have to be proved wrong?
Apparently it's going to take at least one more time. The polls show a very disheartening trend among many Americans toward delusional nostalgia. One poll indicated that, when asked which past American president people would want back to help guide us through the current crisis, 36% said Ronald Reagan! And only 29% said FDR!
Americans, don't get stuck on stupid. Reagan? You mean the guy who cut the marginal tax rate on rich people down to 28%, and tripled the national debt? Hell, he's one of the major reasons we're in this predicament now!
Part II is coming: The Myth Of The Free Market
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Tricks, But No Treats: Beware Of This Scam While Shopping Online
By Manifesto Joe
Have you ever been charged for something that you have not asked for -- or even worse, been charged for something that you specifically turned down?
I've seen both these scenarios many times before. It's not that such practices didn't already exist before the Internet. But shopping online has given greedy, unscrupulous capitalists (I sincerely hope I'm not being redundant there) lots of new opportunities to gouge consumers.
A few days ago I went online to reorder bank checks. I ordered four boxes at a discount price, chose a secure, tracked UPS method of shipping, for a fee, and then was presented with an option of buying a form of identity protection insurance for a fee of $9.80.
I had already chosen a good UPS shipping method with theft in mind, and I already have the means of identity protection if the problem arises. So, I have a very clear memory of moving my computer mouse to the "no" circle, clicking it, and seeing the little dot appear inside the circle that was to reject the coverage.
I kept moving to the "view shopping cart" page, and saw a final charge of $69.52. Without thinking much about it at first, I hit "place order."
Big mistake. I should have noticed that the $69.52 was too much. When I checked the itemized list on the shopping cart, they had sneaked that $9.80 insurance premium in on me.
I immediately called the toll-free number given on the order page, and after a few minutes of automated bullshit I finally got to speak to a live representative. Explaining what happened, I was told that my bank's checking account would be debited $69.52, but then get a credit of $9.80. I threw in a comment that I'd seen this sort of thing before -- I truly have -- and that I think it's an unfortunately common method of gouging the customer. That day, my rep had little to say in response.
By the next day, I had gotten an e-mail notification about my order being received, and that the total charge was $69.52. Nowhere was the refund of $9.80 mentioned, so I thought I'd better call them again.
I got a different phone rep this time. After I asked why the $9.80 credit wasn't on the e-mail notice, she said she had a record of a different rep talking to me the day before, and that this rep had filled out a requisition for the credit to be made. It wouldn't show up on bank records until the next week, I was told.
OK, but why isn't it on the e-mail notice, I asked. I told her that I'd encountered this sort of thing before while shopping online, and regard it as something very intentional and insincere.
I got a speech about how "accounts receivable" charges for the insurance as a separate item, and how they have to process the requisition separately. I was also told that I had the opportunity to view the shopping cart before final approval, at which time I could have rejected the insurance fee.
I have a very, very clear memory of rejecting the fee once, when first presented with it, and I told her this. Telling me that I should have checked over the shopping cart later, I said, is telling me that in order to reject the fee, I would have to have rejected it TWICE.
As if well-rehearsed -- and I suspect that she was -- she started the "accounts receivable" speech all over again. I let this go on for two or three sentences, replied, "I don't buy it," and hung up.
I've kept all the pertinent paperwork, and plan to check with my bank this week about that credit. If I don't get it soon, I plan to take that $9.80 out in phone rep time (at typical wages, perhaps an hour's worth) if they don't give it to me. $9.80 isn't much to some of these corporate types. But to someone like me, it's a good home-cooked meal for three people.
I was born, but it damn sure wasn't yesterday. I know exactly what these people are up to, and why this is common on the Internet. They may eventually have to refund me this money. But think of all the senior citizens out there, and all the younger people who are just bad at math to begin with, who wouldn't notice anything wrong. If they already rejected the fee once, they would think they were done with it and just pay the total without giving the matter any thought.
That's exactly what our corporate lackeys are counting on. There will be enough people of those descriptions who will be unknowingly gouged.
Beware of this trick, and don't give such bastards any treats. That's my advice on Halloween. I wish I'd taken it all earlier, myself, because now I'll have to fight for my money. Maybe you won't have to fight for yours.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Have you ever been charged for something that you have not asked for -- or even worse, been charged for something that you specifically turned down?
I've seen both these scenarios many times before. It's not that such practices didn't already exist before the Internet. But shopping online has given greedy, unscrupulous capitalists (I sincerely hope I'm not being redundant there) lots of new opportunities to gouge consumers.
A few days ago I went online to reorder bank checks. I ordered four boxes at a discount price, chose a secure, tracked UPS method of shipping, for a fee, and then was presented with an option of buying a form of identity protection insurance for a fee of $9.80.
I had already chosen a good UPS shipping method with theft in mind, and I already have the means of identity protection if the problem arises. So, I have a very clear memory of moving my computer mouse to the "no" circle, clicking it, and seeing the little dot appear inside the circle that was to reject the coverage.
I kept moving to the "view shopping cart" page, and saw a final charge of $69.52. Without thinking much about it at first, I hit "place order."
Big mistake. I should have noticed that the $69.52 was too much. When I checked the itemized list on the shopping cart, they had sneaked that $9.80 insurance premium in on me.
I immediately called the toll-free number given on the order page, and after a few minutes of automated bullshit I finally got to speak to a live representative. Explaining what happened, I was told that my bank's checking account would be debited $69.52, but then get a credit of $9.80. I threw in a comment that I'd seen this sort of thing before -- I truly have -- and that I think it's an unfortunately common method of gouging the customer. That day, my rep had little to say in response.
By the next day, I had gotten an e-mail notification about my order being received, and that the total charge was $69.52. Nowhere was the refund of $9.80 mentioned, so I thought I'd better call them again.
I got a different phone rep this time. After I asked why the $9.80 credit wasn't on the e-mail notice, she said she had a record of a different rep talking to me the day before, and that this rep had filled out a requisition for the credit to be made. It wouldn't show up on bank records until the next week, I was told.
OK, but why isn't it on the e-mail notice, I asked. I told her that I'd encountered this sort of thing before while shopping online, and regard it as something very intentional and insincere.
I got a speech about how "accounts receivable" charges for the insurance as a separate item, and how they have to process the requisition separately. I was also told that I had the opportunity to view the shopping cart before final approval, at which time I could have rejected the insurance fee.
I have a very, very clear memory of rejecting the fee once, when first presented with it, and I told her this. Telling me that I should have checked over the shopping cart later, I said, is telling me that in order to reject the fee, I would have to have rejected it TWICE.
As if well-rehearsed -- and I suspect that she was -- she started the "accounts receivable" speech all over again. I let this go on for two or three sentences, replied, "I don't buy it," and hung up.
I've kept all the pertinent paperwork, and plan to check with my bank this week about that credit. If I don't get it soon, I plan to take that $9.80 out in phone rep time (at typical wages, perhaps an hour's worth) if they don't give it to me. $9.80 isn't much to some of these corporate types. But to someone like me, it's a good home-cooked meal for three people.
I was born, but it damn sure wasn't yesterday. I know exactly what these people are up to, and why this is common on the Internet. They may eventually have to refund me this money. But think of all the senior citizens out there, and all the younger people who are just bad at math to begin with, who wouldn't notice anything wrong. If they already rejected the fee once, they would think they were done with it and just pay the total without giving the matter any thought.
That's exactly what our corporate lackeys are counting on. There will be enough people of those descriptions who will be unknowingly gouged.
Beware of this trick, and don't give such bastards any treats. That's my advice on Halloween. I wish I'd taken it all earlier, myself, because now I'll have to fight for my money. Maybe you won't have to fight for yours.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Cain Not Just A Koch Brothers Puppet, He's An Ignoramus
By Manifesto Joe
I should preface by saying that Herman Cain isn't stupid at all, at least certainly not in the classic sense of the word. Truly stupid people don't get master's degrees in computer science from Purdue University. But there's a big difference between intelligence and wisdom, and Cain exhibits little of the latter.
In the world according to Herman Cain, those of you out there who aren't rich, and have no job, "blame yourself." (Translation: Blame the victim.) Here's a link to a story on this.
Encouragement of self-hatred is nothing new in the Republican Party. It's one way they've stayed either in power or on the fringes of it for well over a century -- by isolating, dividing and fragmenting society's losers. It's never been corrupt institutions, it's always YOU. It's never hard-luck incidents like recessions, stock-market crashes, layoffs or catastrophic illnesses in families. Anything to keep the losers from banding together and doing something collectively about corrupt institutions.
This has always been a Republican subtext, and perhaps Cain should get some credit for having the chutzpah to say it right out loud. But that doesn't make this notion any less foolish.
A society is, at the very least, the sum of the individuals who are part of it. Certainly there are lazy, wasteful and moronic people out there (including many who inherited wealth and live in gated communities). There are also plenty of hardworking, thrifty, shrewd folks who have been laid off at work, have seen their life savings fractured because of reckless speculation by the high rollers, and/or have had the misfortune of getting sick or seeing a spouse or child come down with a catastrophic illness.
There are many other considerations in the "race," which as the Bible eloquently says, doesn't always go to the swiftest. (Since he is an associate Baptist minister, I assume that Mr. Cain knows his Bible.)
Luck is a factor that is often crucial. Just being the right stiff, in the right place, at the right time with the right line -- pure dumb luck -- is a biggie. Mark Cuban comes to mind. I suspect that there are many out there as hardworking, shrewd and thrifty as Cuban who are now desperately looking for work and fighting off foreclosure. But, with Americans and their mass media being the dollar-worshipping types that they are, one hears plenty about Cuban, and little if anything about the struggling, faceless masses out there.
Ruthlessness is another key factor. Anyone who's spent much time in the corporate world knows that this can't be underestimated. A ruthless person is apt to be willing to do things that a more ethical and dignified person is unwilling to do. Consequently, ruthless people often end up in managerial roles, and then tend to reward and promote ruthless toadies just like themselves.
In short, someone who has had their eyes and mind open in America, or any other place, for a few decades should know that material success and failure are unpredictable and capricious things. And, the winners tend to just keep on winning, and the losers ... they tend to spend their lives struggling just to get out of that hole.
According to his Wikipedia biography, Mr. Cain grew up relatively poor:
Herman Cain was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Lenora Caine (née Davis), a cleaning woman and domestic worker, and Luther Cain, Jr., who was raised on a farm and worked as a barber and janitor, as well as a chauffeur for Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff. Cain has said that as he was growing up, his family was "poor" but "happy". Cain related that his mother taught him about her belief that "success was not a function of what you start out with materially, but what you start out with spiritually". His father worked three jobs to own his own home — something he achieved during Cain's childhood — and to see his two sons graduate.
It's certainly an inspiring success story. But Mr. Cain should be reminded of his roots, and also of the fact that in the Great Recession some Americans, a great many, have had difficulty finding just one job, let alone three.
Very few lives out there have been the stuff of Horatio Alger novels. It's nice that Mr. Cain's life has gone like that. For most of us who grew up poor and became a little upwardly mobile, it was a struggle just to make it into the middle class, against odds. Saying "blame yourself" is a platitude from a smug, self-satisfied ignoramus.
Now for the Cain campaign ad on the Web
People are trying hard to figure this one out. Were they serious?
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/cain-unorthodox-ad-131143258.html
This 56-second Internet campaign ad looks as though Herman was trying to win over the votes of cigarette fiends.
Then there are the numerous gaffes
TV journalist David Gregory was a bit nonplussed when Cain admitted not really knowing what the "neoconservative" movement is or was. It's merely been discussed ever since Il Doofus (Bush 43) took office. How could a person seeking the White House in 2012 have missed out on something political that has been so extensively covered since 2001?
There was also his illegal-alien-killing electric fence for the Mexican border (oh yeah, just a joke), and the one about Jesus being the "perfect conservative" who was killed by a liberal court. Wow.
Again, perhaps Cain should get a little credit for admitting when he doesn't know something, as in the case of "neoconservative." He didn't just go on talking and making a bigger fool of himself, a la Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.
But a person this foolish, and so ill-informed on the issues, shouldn't even be running for Congress, let alone the Republican presidential nomination.
Experience has taught me not to "misunderestimate" the foolishness of Republicans. I suppose it's still possible for Cain to get the nomination. But the powerful Wall Street branch of the party wants a November winner, not an October buffoon. Even Rick Perry, poor as his debate performances have been, is looking like someone the kingmakers will prefer to an amateur like Cain. (At this point, I'd bet on Romney, though he'll have to name an extreme right-wing running mate to placate the Tea Party.)
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I should preface by saying that Herman Cain isn't stupid at all, at least certainly not in the classic sense of the word. Truly stupid people don't get master's degrees in computer science from Purdue University. But there's a big difference between intelligence and wisdom, and Cain exhibits little of the latter.
In the world according to Herman Cain, those of you out there who aren't rich, and have no job, "blame yourself." (Translation: Blame the victim.) Here's a link to a story on this.
Encouragement of self-hatred is nothing new in the Republican Party. It's one way they've stayed either in power or on the fringes of it for well over a century -- by isolating, dividing and fragmenting society's losers. It's never been corrupt institutions, it's always YOU. It's never hard-luck incidents like recessions, stock-market crashes, layoffs or catastrophic illnesses in families. Anything to keep the losers from banding together and doing something collectively about corrupt institutions.
This has always been a Republican subtext, and perhaps Cain should get some credit for having the chutzpah to say it right out loud. But that doesn't make this notion any less foolish.
A society is, at the very least, the sum of the individuals who are part of it. Certainly there are lazy, wasteful and moronic people out there (including many who inherited wealth and live in gated communities). There are also plenty of hardworking, thrifty, shrewd folks who have been laid off at work, have seen their life savings fractured because of reckless speculation by the high rollers, and/or have had the misfortune of getting sick or seeing a spouse or child come down with a catastrophic illness.
There are many other considerations in the "race," which as the Bible eloquently says, doesn't always go to the swiftest. (Since he is an associate Baptist minister, I assume that Mr. Cain knows his Bible.)
Luck is a factor that is often crucial. Just being the right stiff, in the right place, at the right time with the right line -- pure dumb luck -- is a biggie. Mark Cuban comes to mind. I suspect that there are many out there as hardworking, shrewd and thrifty as Cuban who are now desperately looking for work and fighting off foreclosure. But, with Americans and their mass media being the dollar-worshipping types that they are, one hears plenty about Cuban, and little if anything about the struggling, faceless masses out there.
Ruthlessness is another key factor. Anyone who's spent much time in the corporate world knows that this can't be underestimated. A ruthless person is apt to be willing to do things that a more ethical and dignified person is unwilling to do. Consequently, ruthless people often end up in managerial roles, and then tend to reward and promote ruthless toadies just like themselves.
In short, someone who has had their eyes and mind open in America, or any other place, for a few decades should know that material success and failure are unpredictable and capricious things. And, the winners tend to just keep on winning, and the losers ... they tend to spend their lives struggling just to get out of that hole.
According to his Wikipedia biography, Mr. Cain grew up relatively poor:
Herman Cain was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Lenora Caine (née Davis), a cleaning woman and domestic worker, and Luther Cain, Jr., who was raised on a farm and worked as a barber and janitor, as well as a chauffeur for Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff. Cain has said that as he was growing up, his family was "poor" but "happy". Cain related that his mother taught him about her belief that "success was not a function of what you start out with materially, but what you start out with spiritually". His father worked three jobs to own his own home — something he achieved during Cain's childhood — and to see his two sons graduate.
It's certainly an inspiring success story. But Mr. Cain should be reminded of his roots, and also of the fact that in the Great Recession some Americans, a great many, have had difficulty finding just one job, let alone three.
Very few lives out there have been the stuff of Horatio Alger novels. It's nice that Mr. Cain's life has gone like that. For most of us who grew up poor and became a little upwardly mobile, it was a struggle just to make it into the middle class, against odds. Saying "blame yourself" is a platitude from a smug, self-satisfied ignoramus.
Now for the Cain campaign ad on the Web
People are trying hard to figure this one out. Were they serious?
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/cain-unorthodox-ad-131143258.html
This 56-second Internet campaign ad looks as though Herman was trying to win over the votes of cigarette fiends.
Then there are the numerous gaffes
TV journalist David Gregory was a bit nonplussed when Cain admitted not really knowing what the "neoconservative" movement is or was. It's merely been discussed ever since Il Doofus (Bush 43) took office. How could a person seeking the White House in 2012 have missed out on something political that has been so extensively covered since 2001?
There was also his illegal-alien-killing electric fence for the Mexican border (oh yeah, just a joke), and the one about Jesus being the "perfect conservative" who was killed by a liberal court. Wow.
Again, perhaps Cain should get a little credit for admitting when he doesn't know something, as in the case of "neoconservative." He didn't just go on talking and making a bigger fool of himself, a la Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.
But a person this foolish, and so ill-informed on the issues, shouldn't even be running for Congress, let alone the Republican presidential nomination.
Experience has taught me not to "misunderestimate" the foolishness of Republicans. I suppose it's still possible for Cain to get the nomination. But the powerful Wall Street branch of the party wants a November winner, not an October buffoon. Even Rick Perry, poor as his debate performances have been, is looking like someone the kingmakers will prefer to an amateur like Cain. (At this point, I'd bet on Romney, though he'll have to name an extreme right-wing running mate to placate the Tea Party.)
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Herman Cain Is A Trojan Horse For The Koch Brothers
By Manifesto Joe
It's been odd and interesting seeing Herman Cain's surge in the polls as a Republican presidential contender. He's never held public office. He was little-known until recent debates. And, in a political party not known for its progressive ideas on racial issues, he's black.
But for the time being, the GOP presidential contest seems to have come down to a three-way fight between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Cain. He's definitely a player in this thing now, if the polls are to be believed.
Now that he's been under the microscope for a while, we can see why. He's the apparent candidate of the billionaire Koch brothers.
The Kochs are the worst kind of corporate pond scum on the planet. According to the Credo Mobile phone company:
Koch Industries' units have stolen oil from federal lands, rigged prices with competitors, paid bribes to win contracts in six countries, sold oil equipment to Iran despite a U.S. ban, been charged with releasing tons of cancer-causing benzene into the atmosphere, and have had five criminal convictions in the U.S. and Canada.
Credo's source is Bloomberg News. Here's a link to the story.
They are also the most notable bankrollers of the Tea Party "astroturf" movement, and hence have a vast amount of clout in today's Republican Party.
Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has longstanding ties to the Koch empire and their extreme-right-wing group, Americans for Prosperity. He and close associates have been carrying water for the Koch brothers for a very long time, as The Associated Press reported yesterday. Here's a link to that story.
Cain's "9-9-9" tax proposal is something that could have come right out of the Koch brothers' boardrooms or far-right "think" tanks. Sounds catchy for the rubes -- but in case you hadn't heard, any sales tax is very regressive in effect, hitting those who spend proportionately more of their income on consumer items the hardest. He would, under his proposal, institute a 9% sales tax at the federal level, and this on many people who are already paying 8% or more at the state level, where the tax structure is usually more regressive anyway.
There was one analysis of how, for example, multibillionaire Warren Buffett would fare with Cain's stupid "9-9-9" plan. Buffett estimates that he paid about 17% of his income in federal taxes last year. With Cain's plan, he would pay far, far less -- and of course, the poor would pay far, far more.
Cain is a Trojan horse for some very sinister things going on in American politics right now. I doubt that even the Koch brothers believe that he will emerge as the Republican nominee. But good performances by Cain will pull the party toward the right and strengthen the hand of the Tea Party, even if Romney is the probable nominee.
Speaking of lying demagogues, then there's Paul Ryan
In a recent appearance on Meet the Press, Ryan, a high-ranking Republican U.S. House member from Wisconsin, said that the U.S. has, at 35%, a higher corporate income tax than other countries have, "And we're losing as a result of it."
What this lying demagogue failed to mention is how few U.S. corporations actually pay anything close to that. Numerous recent studies have found that two-thirds of American corporations actually pay no federal income tax at all. ExxonMobil not only paid no federal income tax for 2009, but actually got a credit of $156 million, for a year in which their reported profit was well over $19 billion.
(To be fair, ExxonMobil spokesmen told PolitiFact that the company’s "U.S. income tax expense" for 2009 was approximately $500 million. The company declined to provide documentation for that number.)
Here's a link to the Ryan story.
One thing it seems that Republicans can always be counted on to do is give you part of the story -- just the part that could help more rich people get by paying little or no tax.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It's been odd and interesting seeing Herman Cain's surge in the polls as a Republican presidential contender. He's never held public office. He was little-known until recent debates. And, in a political party not known for its progressive ideas on racial issues, he's black.
But for the time being, the GOP presidential contest seems to have come down to a three-way fight between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Cain. He's definitely a player in this thing now, if the polls are to be believed.
Now that he's been under the microscope for a while, we can see why. He's the apparent candidate of the billionaire Koch brothers.
The Kochs are the worst kind of corporate pond scum on the planet. According to the Credo Mobile phone company:
Koch Industries' units have stolen oil from federal lands, rigged prices with competitors, paid bribes to win contracts in six countries, sold oil equipment to Iran despite a U.S. ban, been charged with releasing tons of cancer-causing benzene into the atmosphere, and have had five criminal convictions in the U.S. and Canada.
Credo's source is Bloomberg News. Here's a link to the story.
They are also the most notable bankrollers of the Tea Party "astroturf" movement, and hence have a vast amount of clout in today's Republican Party.
Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has longstanding ties to the Koch empire and their extreme-right-wing group, Americans for Prosperity. He and close associates have been carrying water for the Koch brothers for a very long time, as The Associated Press reported yesterday. Here's a link to that story.
Cain's "9-9-9" tax proposal is something that could have come right out of the Koch brothers' boardrooms or far-right "think" tanks. Sounds catchy for the rubes -- but in case you hadn't heard, any sales tax is very regressive in effect, hitting those who spend proportionately more of their income on consumer items the hardest. He would, under his proposal, institute a 9% sales tax at the federal level, and this on many people who are already paying 8% or more at the state level, where the tax structure is usually more regressive anyway.
There was one analysis of how, for example, multibillionaire Warren Buffett would fare with Cain's stupid "9-9-9" plan. Buffett estimates that he paid about 17% of his income in federal taxes last year. With Cain's plan, he would pay far, far less -- and of course, the poor would pay far, far more.
Cain is a Trojan horse for some very sinister things going on in American politics right now. I doubt that even the Koch brothers believe that he will emerge as the Republican nominee. But good performances by Cain will pull the party toward the right and strengthen the hand of the Tea Party, even if Romney is the probable nominee.
Speaking of lying demagogues, then there's Paul Ryan
In a recent appearance on Meet the Press, Ryan, a high-ranking Republican U.S. House member from Wisconsin, said that the U.S. has, at 35%, a higher corporate income tax than other countries have, "And we're losing as a result of it."
What this lying demagogue failed to mention is how few U.S. corporations actually pay anything close to that. Numerous recent studies have found that two-thirds of American corporations actually pay no federal income tax at all. ExxonMobil not only paid no federal income tax for 2009, but actually got a credit of $156 million, for a year in which their reported profit was well over $19 billion.
(To be fair, ExxonMobil spokesmen told PolitiFact that the company’s "U.S. income tax expense" for 2009 was approximately $500 million. The company declined to provide documentation for that number.)
Here's a link to the Ryan story.
One thing it seems that Republicans can always be counted on to do is give you part of the story -- just the part that could help more rich people get by paying little or no tax.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
I'll Sign The Papers, Just Please Don't Make Me Listen To Rush Limbaugh
By Manifesto Joe
In 2002, as I was about to undergo cataract surgery, I had the misfortune of being in a room in which the surgical nurses were playing Rush Limbaugh's radio show. I was hearing Rush while I briefly underwent sedation, and when I woke up, Rush was still on. That made me think, just for a moment, that I had died and my soul had entered a place of eternal damnation.
Perhaps I should have sued for malpractice, but unfortunately I think I waited until the time after the statute of limitations had passed.
Now, I understand that a Harris County woman who was briefly in custody of the Houston police in 2010 is suing because she was forced to listen to Lardbaugh while she was in the squad car. She claims that Lardbaugh was making derogatory remarks about black people (not a big stretch, that one) and that the police officer was laughing at them (not a big stretch, either).
Following is a link to the story, courtesy of Yahoo! News.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/woman-froced-listen-rush-limbaugh-files-lawsuit-too-154424839.html
(Sorry this isn't in the usual link form, but Blogger isn't letting me do this the usual way.)
Police torture?
They might consider using this method at Guantanamo Bay. It might work even better than waterboarding.
According to the story:
Bridgett Nicholson Boyd filed a lawsuit against the city of Houston for being forced to listen to Limbaugh's radio show. In 2010, Boyd was ticketed for driving on the shoulder of a road (even though she said her car was breaking down). The police officer also arrested her and drove her to the local jail. During the ride, Boyd said, she was forced to listen to Limbaugh make "derogatory comments about black people" (which the officer was laughing at). Though the charges against Boyd were immediately dropped, she's now claiming defamation, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. On his radio show, Limbaugh weighed in on the case. "We don't make derogatory comments about black people," he said. "We make derogatory comments about liberals."
Boyd was apparently a completely innocent person, but even if she were a convicted felon, might this not constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
In 2002, as I was about to undergo cataract surgery, I had the misfortune of being in a room in which the surgical nurses were playing Rush Limbaugh's radio show. I was hearing Rush while I briefly underwent sedation, and when I woke up, Rush was still on. That made me think, just for a moment, that I had died and my soul had entered a place of eternal damnation.
Perhaps I should have sued for malpractice, but unfortunately I think I waited until the time after the statute of limitations had passed.
Now, I understand that a Harris County woman who was briefly in custody of the Houston police in 2010 is suing because she was forced to listen to Lardbaugh while she was in the squad car. She claims that Lardbaugh was making derogatory remarks about black people (not a big stretch, that one) and that the police officer was laughing at them (not a big stretch, either).
Following is a link to the story, courtesy of Yahoo! News.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/woman-froced-listen-rush-limbaugh-files-lawsuit-too-154424839.html
(Sorry this isn't in the usual link form, but Blogger isn't letting me do this the usual way.)
Police torture?
They might consider using this method at Guantanamo Bay. It might work even better than waterboarding.
According to the story:
Bridgett Nicholson Boyd filed a lawsuit against the city of Houston for being forced to listen to Limbaugh's radio show. In 2010, Boyd was ticketed for driving on the shoulder of a road (even though she said her car was breaking down). The police officer also arrested her and drove her to the local jail. During the ride, Boyd said, she was forced to listen to Limbaugh make "derogatory comments about black people" (which the officer was laughing at). Though the charges against Boyd were immediately dropped, she's now claiming defamation, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. On his radio show, Limbaugh weighed in on the case. "We don't make derogatory comments about black people," he said. "We make derogatory comments about liberals."
Boyd was apparently a completely innocent person, but even if she were a convicted felon, might this not constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, October 7, 2011
'Occupy Wall Street' Protesters In Danger Of Becoming Dupes For The Republican Party
By Manifesto Joe
This isn't going to be a popular post among many on the "left," or what's left of it. Politics, for those who have studied the subject for a while, clearly emerges as the art of compromise. It's certainly necessary to have the activists outside on the streets, but perhaps even more important to have those nasty insiders who actually make the "sausage" laws that we have to live with for generations.
I'm happy in one sense to see lots of people on the streets in the "Occupy Wall Street" protest movement. It's high time that a lot of Americans understood that the system has long been rigged against them. Not that this is anything new -- it's just gotten worse over the past 30 or so years.
A sad thing that I'm seeing in this movement is the Mainstream Media spin on it, and how many people in the rank and file of it are playing into its hands. It's being depicted as a protest against "bad economic conditions" rather than against the fundamentals of a capitalist system that has reverted to its primitive and brutal roots, with few mitigating forces to shield ordinary people from its ill effects.
One laid-off worker in New York was interviewed by the MSM, and he said that he saw no real difference between Bush and Obama. The middle class in America, he "reasoned," is actually worse off after nearly 3 years of Obama than it was after 8 years of Il Doofus.
I would have to say to such a person that he was missing the salient point. If a Bush surrogate had been elected president instead of Obama, such people would INDEED be able to see the difference, quite starkly. Obama clearly hasn't been everything that the remaining progressives in America might have wanted. But they fail to see that the Il Doofus "kleptocracy" was given an almost totally free hand for nearly seven years before the meltdown got fully under way, and that Obama's policies, while not all we wanted, have served to keep things from getting much worse than they might have been.
I'm one person who was very unhappy and railing against the "kleptocracy" that we were seeing all through the '80s during the Reagan years, but I didn't notice many people raising any cain back then. It was, in fact, hard to get anyone to even listen to the alternative viewpoint. Now, we have political neophytes taking to the streets and railing against things that have been happening for decades, not just for a few years. Come to the party, folks. Some of us were telling you all this shit back in the days when you were dutifully casting your first votes for Republicans.
Again, Obama hasn't been all I would have liked, but in the current climate, it's unlikely that anyone electable could have been. He was forced to work with a Congress that wouldn't give him what he wanted. In November 2008, we elected a president, not a dictator. As an example, the public option narrowly passed in a heavily Democratic House of Representatives. In the Senate, it had a majority, but fell short of the 60-vote "supermajority" that our system requires to enact damn near anything. DINOs like Ben Nelson and "independents" like Joe Lieberman wouldn't put it over. For politically savvy people, this wasn't a surprise. Our system is awash in corporate money, and people like that know that they can't stay in office without that largess.
So, the public option fell short. And then, what was the reaction of the voters? Over 30% of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't show up at the polls in 2010. The Republicans, fueled by the faux populism of the Tea Party and Koch brothers' money, won the House back in a near landslide. People like me told you what was going to happen after that. And you were surprised?
Get real, folks. Some of us out here were fighting this battle even before some of you were born. And it's been damned thankless.
Don't let the MSM distort this into something else. Even Newt Gingrich is trying to make this out into some faux right-wing populist BS. Don't let it happen!
Obama isn't what I wanted, and probably even less what you wanted. Would you prefer Rick Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Or Mitt Romney, who wants to increase the military budget and add 100,000 troops to our fighting force, and yet still presumes to balance the federal budget?
Well, it's looking more and more like you're going to get one of those right-wing demagogues. Then perhaps you will see, the hard way, what the difference is between a hard-right-wing fool and a centrist compromiser. I'll take the latter, thank you.
Compromise is hard. Dealing with moronic ideologues is harder. You're about to find that out.
I'm reminded of lines from The Second Coming, a poem by William Butler Yeats.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Don't let it happen, protesters. Another presidency like that of Il Doofus could really, really do this country in.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
This isn't going to be a popular post among many on the "left," or what's left of it. Politics, for those who have studied the subject for a while, clearly emerges as the art of compromise. It's certainly necessary to have the activists outside on the streets, but perhaps even more important to have those nasty insiders who actually make the "sausage" laws that we have to live with for generations.
I'm happy in one sense to see lots of people on the streets in the "Occupy Wall Street" protest movement. It's high time that a lot of Americans understood that the system has long been rigged against them. Not that this is anything new -- it's just gotten worse over the past 30 or so years.
A sad thing that I'm seeing in this movement is the Mainstream Media spin on it, and how many people in the rank and file of it are playing into its hands. It's being depicted as a protest against "bad economic conditions" rather than against the fundamentals of a capitalist system that has reverted to its primitive and brutal roots, with few mitigating forces to shield ordinary people from its ill effects.
One laid-off worker in New York was interviewed by the MSM, and he said that he saw no real difference between Bush and Obama. The middle class in America, he "reasoned," is actually worse off after nearly 3 years of Obama than it was after 8 years of Il Doofus.
I would have to say to such a person that he was missing the salient point. If a Bush surrogate had been elected president instead of Obama, such people would INDEED be able to see the difference, quite starkly. Obama clearly hasn't been everything that the remaining progressives in America might have wanted. But they fail to see that the Il Doofus "kleptocracy" was given an almost totally free hand for nearly seven years before the meltdown got fully under way, and that Obama's policies, while not all we wanted, have served to keep things from getting much worse than they might have been.
I'm one person who was very unhappy and railing against the "kleptocracy" that we were seeing all through the '80s during the Reagan years, but I didn't notice many people raising any cain back then. It was, in fact, hard to get anyone to even listen to the alternative viewpoint. Now, we have political neophytes taking to the streets and railing against things that have been happening for decades, not just for a few years. Come to the party, folks. Some of us were telling you all this shit back in the days when you were dutifully casting your first votes for Republicans.
Again, Obama hasn't been all I would have liked, but in the current climate, it's unlikely that anyone electable could have been. He was forced to work with a Congress that wouldn't give him what he wanted. In November 2008, we elected a president, not a dictator. As an example, the public option narrowly passed in a heavily Democratic House of Representatives. In the Senate, it had a majority, but fell short of the 60-vote "supermajority" that our system requires to enact damn near anything. DINOs like Ben Nelson and "independents" like Joe Lieberman wouldn't put it over. For politically savvy people, this wasn't a surprise. Our system is awash in corporate money, and people like that know that they can't stay in office without that largess.
So, the public option fell short. And then, what was the reaction of the voters? Over 30% of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't show up at the polls in 2010. The Republicans, fueled by the faux populism of the Tea Party and Koch brothers' money, won the House back in a near landslide. People like me told you what was going to happen after that. And you were surprised?
Get real, folks. Some of us out here were fighting this battle even before some of you were born. And it's been damned thankless.
Don't let the MSM distort this into something else. Even Newt Gingrich is trying to make this out into some faux right-wing populist BS. Don't let it happen!
Obama isn't what I wanted, and probably even less what you wanted. Would you prefer Rick Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Or Mitt Romney, who wants to increase the military budget and add 100,000 troops to our fighting force, and yet still presumes to balance the federal budget?
Well, it's looking more and more like you're going to get one of those right-wing demagogues. Then perhaps you will see, the hard way, what the difference is between a hard-right-wing fool and a centrist compromiser. I'll take the latter, thank you.
Compromise is hard. Dealing with moronic ideologues is harder. You're about to find that out.
I'm reminded of lines from The Second Coming, a poem by William Butler Yeats.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Don't let it happen, protesters. Another presidency like that of Il Doofus could really, really do this country in.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Last Week: AP Whitewashes Tax Inequity, And Rick Perry Becomes The GOP Pinata
By Manifesto Joe
Last week brought good news and bad. The bad news is that The Associated Press did one of their imbecilic "fact checks" on the question of unfair taxation in America, and their whitewash was widely disseminated by the Mainstream Media. They were fundamentally inaccurate on many points.
Thank God for Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ analyzed the AP data and pretty thoroughly nailed where they went wrong.
The issue became a media focus point after President Obama proposed a deficit reduction plan that included a minimum tax on the rich. So, here's where AP went with this, excerpted from the CTJ review:
"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."
The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.
If that's what you get from "the data," AP doesn't do a good job of showing it. The piece points out early on that about 1,400 millionaires paid no income tax at all -- that's a small number of tax avoiders, they explain, though clearly this would be part of what Obama is talking about.
But then they zero in on what seems to be their best case:
This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Well, that sounds like a slam dunk, right? The rich pay twice as much as middle class earners. Or maybe not: Obama's claim hinges on the fact that, for high-income families and individuals, investment income is often taxed at a lower rate than wages. The top tax rate for dividends and capital gains is 15 percent. (The emphasis is mine. -- MJ) The top marginal tax rate for wages is 35 percent, though that is reserved for taxable income above $379,150.
So what if much of a really wealthy person's income is investment income? AP doesn't get into that; it moves on to discussing the fact that a lot of poor people pay no income tax.
Here's a link to the entire CTJ article.
One of the most pernicious mantras of the right wing is the alleged "liberal bias" of the MSM. There might have been some case for this to have been made 25 or more years ago, when Dan Rather was king at CBS and AIM was in its infancy. What appears to have happened is that the death of the Fairness Doctrine, plus a quarter-century of corporate whippings, scattered most of the hard-hitting, independent journalists. Apparently, what's mostly left are miserable corporate shills such as those who concocted this AP whitewash on U.S. taxation.
There were more problems. The AP focused on the top 10% of earners paying an estimated 70% of federal income taxes. I haven't had time to check this for accuracy, but presuming that it's true -- it's not the top 10% who are the main problem here. It's more like the top 1%, the superrich.
Not only did the AP "analysis" not account at all for the lower rates on investment income and capital gains, it didn't examine the shelters and breaks that go only to the very highest "earners."
Nor did the "analysis" discuss the corporate income tax, which in 1959 accounted for 39% of all federal income tax revenue, according to the IRS. We're a long, long way from those days. By 1989, the IRS corporate take was down to 17%, according to the agency itself. And last year, two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no income tax at all, and some like ExxonMobil even got vast refunds.
It's a common fact that while wages and salaries stagnated over the past 30 years in real dollars, the U.S. economy roughly doubled in size. So, if ordinary schmucks saw no gains from their greater productivity during that time, who made off with all that loot?
Now the good news: Governor Goodhair as pinata
Sorry, Spanish purists, but I couldn't figure out how to make an "n" with a tilde work on Blogger.
It's a bit heartening to know that people in other parts of the U.S. are beginning to figure out what some Texans have known for a very long time -- that Rick Perry is a lightweight among lightweights. His vapid, stammering performance at last week's Republican presidential debate was ample evidence. The other GOP "contenders" suddenly realize that there's a papier-mache figure there, just waiting for a blindfolded rival to rip him open with a stick so that the candy will come pouring out.
And that economic miracle that Goodhair keeps touting is about that fragile, too. Analysts are seeing that most of the state's revenue comes from two sources: federal funding, and sales tax. None of this looks good for Goodhair, a neo-secessionist who's eternally railing about federal interference and high taxes. Want to guess who bears the biggest burden of sales taxes? (Hint: It's known as a "regressive" tax.)
And then, property taxes, which tend to hit the middle class hardest, are the crucial revenue source at the local level in Texas.
All this, so that Goodhair can spread 'em wide for our Corporate Masters to relocate their headquarters here in Texas.
And while I've got the CTJ site up, here's a link from thinkprogress.org to a post about Goodhair's Texas "miracle."
The American people may still be stupid enough for Perry to emerge as the Republican nominee. In today's climate, it honestly wouldn't surprise me. But at least the rest of America has had fair warning now.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Last week brought good news and bad. The bad news is that The Associated Press did one of their imbecilic "fact checks" on the question of unfair taxation in America, and their whitewash was widely disseminated by the Mainstream Media. They were fundamentally inaccurate on many points.
Thank God for Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ analyzed the AP data and pretty thoroughly nailed where they went wrong.
The issue became a media focus point after President Obama proposed a deficit reduction plan that included a minimum tax on the rich. So, here's where AP went with this, excerpted from the CTJ review:
"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."
The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.
If that's what you get from "the data," AP doesn't do a good job of showing it. The piece points out early on that about 1,400 millionaires paid no income tax at all -- that's a small number of tax avoiders, they explain, though clearly this would be part of what Obama is talking about.
But then they zero in on what seems to be their best case:
This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Well, that sounds like a slam dunk, right? The rich pay twice as much as middle class earners. Or maybe not: Obama's claim hinges on the fact that, for high-income families and individuals, investment income is often taxed at a lower rate than wages. The top tax rate for dividends and capital gains is 15 percent. (The emphasis is mine. -- MJ) The top marginal tax rate for wages is 35 percent, though that is reserved for taxable income above $379,150.
So what if much of a really wealthy person's income is investment income? AP doesn't get into that; it moves on to discussing the fact that a lot of poor people pay no income tax.
Here's a link to the entire CTJ article.
One of the most pernicious mantras of the right wing is the alleged "liberal bias" of the MSM. There might have been some case for this to have been made 25 or more years ago, when Dan Rather was king at CBS and AIM was in its infancy. What appears to have happened is that the death of the Fairness Doctrine, plus a quarter-century of corporate whippings, scattered most of the hard-hitting, independent journalists. Apparently, what's mostly left are miserable corporate shills such as those who concocted this AP whitewash on U.S. taxation.
There were more problems. The AP focused on the top 10% of earners paying an estimated 70% of federal income taxes. I haven't had time to check this for accuracy, but presuming that it's true -- it's not the top 10% who are the main problem here. It's more like the top 1%, the superrich.
Not only did the AP "analysis" not account at all for the lower rates on investment income and capital gains, it didn't examine the shelters and breaks that go only to the very highest "earners."
Nor did the "analysis" discuss the corporate income tax, which in 1959 accounted for 39% of all federal income tax revenue, according to the IRS. We're a long, long way from those days. By 1989, the IRS corporate take was down to 17%, according to the agency itself. And last year, two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no income tax at all, and some like ExxonMobil even got vast refunds.
It's a common fact that while wages and salaries stagnated over the past 30 years in real dollars, the U.S. economy roughly doubled in size. So, if ordinary schmucks saw no gains from their greater productivity during that time, who made off with all that loot?
Now the good news: Governor Goodhair as pinata
Sorry, Spanish purists, but I couldn't figure out how to make an "n" with a tilde work on Blogger.
It's a bit heartening to know that people in other parts of the U.S. are beginning to figure out what some Texans have known for a very long time -- that Rick Perry is a lightweight among lightweights. His vapid, stammering performance at last week's Republican presidential debate was ample evidence. The other GOP "contenders" suddenly realize that there's a papier-mache figure there, just waiting for a blindfolded rival to rip him open with a stick so that the candy will come pouring out.
And that economic miracle that Goodhair keeps touting is about that fragile, too. Analysts are seeing that most of the state's revenue comes from two sources: federal funding, and sales tax. None of this looks good for Goodhair, a neo-secessionist who's eternally railing about federal interference and high taxes. Want to guess who bears the biggest burden of sales taxes? (Hint: It's known as a "regressive" tax.)
And then, property taxes, which tend to hit the middle class hardest, are the crucial revenue source at the local level in Texas.
All this, so that Goodhair can spread 'em wide for our Corporate Masters to relocate their headquarters here in Texas.
And while I've got the CTJ site up, here's a link from thinkprogress.org to a post about Goodhair's Texas "miracle."
The American people may still be stupid enough for Perry to emerge as the Republican nominee. In today's climate, it honestly wouldn't surprise me. But at least the rest of America has had fair warning now.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Republicans: This Is What Happens When Some People Forget To Take Their Medication
By Manifesto Joe
Although it's tempting, I'll refrain here from demonizing all Republicans. My wife appears to be the only Democrat in her large extended family, and some of my in-laws are the salt of the Earth. They just spend too much time watching Fox News.
Republicans appear, at present, to be inhabiting some alternate universe -- one in which prolonged tax breaks for rich people and giant corporations create full employment, one in which 46 million poor Americans are all feasting on junk food while they're not talking on their smart phones, one in which medically uninsured people don't end up costing taxpayers money anyway, one in which perpetual military meddling abroad doesn't end up making us targets at home -- etc., etc.
In other words, they live in an alternate universe that seems to bear no resemblance to the one in which most of the rest of us live.
I'll focus on two points that seem to sum up this phenomenon.
Republican response to Obama's tax plan
If there's one serious problem I have with President Obama, it is with his habit of trying over and over, despite numerous betrayals, to reason and compromise with the mentally disturbed. Until recent days, he's been far, far too nice.
Obama has flatly said that he will veto any deficit-cutting plan that cuts benefits for Medicare recipients yet does not raise taxes for wealthy individuals and big corporations. After about 32 months of trying in vain to work with crazy people, he's finally delineating the difference between us and them. It wasn't us who recklessly did our best to crash the world economy, or who have horded wealth from an economy that doubled in size over 30 years, while wages and salaries were stagnant. It was them.
Yet now, they want us to pay.
Obama's proposal for a minimum tax on rich people is, historically, pretty modest. But I still have yet to hear anyone in the Mainstream Media point out that, about the time I was born in 1956, the U.S. marginal income tax rate was close to 90%, and after JFK-era cuts remained 70% for many years.
It's true that not many high earners ever paid that much, thanks to shelters and loopholes. But even with some of those eliminated, bear in mind that only the most "left-leaning" people are proposing a marginal rate as high as 49%, compared to the 35% where the top rate stands now, with shelters and loopholes included. And it's been pointed out that investment income, the staple of the wealthy, is taxed at only 15%.
Here's a link to the Associated Press story about this.
Predictably, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the ball carrier for the supply-side die-hards, has called Obama's proposal "class warfare." That phrase is sounding more hollow than ever, as we've been watching wealth be horded for three decades only to see an unemployment rate of at least 9% (not counting the many underemployed people, or those who have given up and stopped looking for work).
But that's the Republican mantra, despite abundant evidence that "supply-side" hording has not translated into job creation, and that our current "recovery" is weak because consumers simply don't have much money to spend.
Obama surely knows that his plan has no chance of passage by the current House of Representatives, and Speaker John "Orange Julius" Boehner has told him so. It's a proposal whose purpose is to beat pathologically stubborn Republicans over the head with around this time next year, as the election nears and the economy is expected to remain in the tank.
With a bad economy that may double-dip into recession, rhetoric crafted around this proposal may be the best chance Obama has for re-election, since a lot of people under such conditions will vote against the incumbent no matter whom it is.
Sigh. God must have loved stupid people. He made so many of them.
That said, on to the next Republican spectacle.
Tea Party trolls cheer hypothetical death during televised GOP debate
This is, of course, old news by now. The reason I didn't want to comment on it days ago is that it was too fresh, and I wanted more time to consider what's happening to the Republican Party.
In case you didn't see it or read about it, here's a link to the audience laughing and cheering at the Tea Party debate as CNN's Wolf Blitzer presses Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, about the hypothetical death of an uninsured man.
Granted, even Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that he was taken aback by the audience reaction. And, not all Republicans are Tea Party sympathizers. In the latest poll I've heard about, self-identifying Republicans are just about split up the middle about whether they approve of the Tea Party "movement."
But half of Republicans sympathizing with these sorts of attitudes and values should be a bit disturbing. And although Paul's rhetoric about self-reliance sounds oh-so-noble on its face, he's been around long enough to remember why Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in the first place.
Bills for the uninsured often weren't being picked up by churches, private individuals, etc., nor are they now. What happens now, more often than not, is that uninsured people go to taxpayer-supported charity hospitals for services. Either that, or the hospitals are forced to simply write off unpaid bills, and the taxpayer gets stuck with that in a different way.
Again, I am loath to demonize Republicans. They aren't all crazy. But they appear to be indoctrinated so well as to be impervious to reality, much as in the manner of religious fundamentalists. Ever tried arguing with one of those?
And, it would appear that a certain element among Republicans are indeed disturbed people, embracing cretinous and savage values and attitudes. And the party as a whole seems so frightened of losing elections that it panders to them.
This may not be a recipe for disaster next year. If the economy remains in the tank as it is expected to, any Republican nominee, even a somewhat crazy and/or stupid one, is likely to make next year's presidential election much closer than it should be. History favors them in the short run. But in the long run, this will be a recipe for disaster.
Institutions can go insane as easily as people can. While not all Republicans are crazy, as an institution, the Republican Party seems to have crossed into the territory of institutional insanity. I just hope that some kind of implosion can occur before they end up doing as much damage to the country as they seem to intend.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Although it's tempting, I'll refrain here from demonizing all Republicans. My wife appears to be the only Democrat in her large extended family, and some of my in-laws are the salt of the Earth. They just spend too much time watching Fox News.
Republicans appear, at present, to be inhabiting some alternate universe -- one in which prolonged tax breaks for rich people and giant corporations create full employment, one in which 46 million poor Americans are all feasting on junk food while they're not talking on their smart phones, one in which medically uninsured people don't end up costing taxpayers money anyway, one in which perpetual military meddling abroad doesn't end up making us targets at home -- etc., etc.
In other words, they live in an alternate universe that seems to bear no resemblance to the one in which most of the rest of us live.
I'll focus on two points that seem to sum up this phenomenon.
Republican response to Obama's tax plan
If there's one serious problem I have with President Obama, it is with his habit of trying over and over, despite numerous betrayals, to reason and compromise with the mentally disturbed. Until recent days, he's been far, far too nice.
Obama has flatly said that he will veto any deficit-cutting plan that cuts benefits for Medicare recipients yet does not raise taxes for wealthy individuals and big corporations. After about 32 months of trying in vain to work with crazy people, he's finally delineating the difference between us and them. It wasn't us who recklessly did our best to crash the world economy, or who have horded wealth from an economy that doubled in size over 30 years, while wages and salaries were stagnant. It was them.
Yet now, they want us to pay.
Obama's proposal for a minimum tax on rich people is, historically, pretty modest. But I still have yet to hear anyone in the Mainstream Media point out that, about the time I was born in 1956, the U.S. marginal income tax rate was close to 90%, and after JFK-era cuts remained 70% for many years.
It's true that not many high earners ever paid that much, thanks to shelters and loopholes. But even with some of those eliminated, bear in mind that only the most "left-leaning" people are proposing a marginal rate as high as 49%, compared to the 35% where the top rate stands now, with shelters and loopholes included. And it's been pointed out that investment income, the staple of the wealthy, is taxed at only 15%.
Here's a link to the Associated Press story about this.
Predictably, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the ball carrier for the supply-side die-hards, has called Obama's proposal "class warfare." That phrase is sounding more hollow than ever, as we've been watching wealth be horded for three decades only to see an unemployment rate of at least 9% (not counting the many underemployed people, or those who have given up and stopped looking for work).
But that's the Republican mantra, despite abundant evidence that "supply-side" hording has not translated into job creation, and that our current "recovery" is weak because consumers simply don't have much money to spend.
Obama surely knows that his plan has no chance of passage by the current House of Representatives, and Speaker John "Orange Julius" Boehner has told him so. It's a proposal whose purpose is to beat pathologically stubborn Republicans over the head with around this time next year, as the election nears and the economy is expected to remain in the tank.
With a bad economy that may double-dip into recession, rhetoric crafted around this proposal may be the best chance Obama has for re-election, since a lot of people under such conditions will vote against the incumbent no matter whom it is.
Sigh. God must have loved stupid people. He made so many of them.
That said, on to the next Republican spectacle.
Tea Party trolls cheer hypothetical death during televised GOP debate
This is, of course, old news by now. The reason I didn't want to comment on it days ago is that it was too fresh, and I wanted more time to consider what's happening to the Republican Party.
In case you didn't see it or read about it, here's a link to the audience laughing and cheering at the Tea Party debate as CNN's Wolf Blitzer presses Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, about the hypothetical death of an uninsured man.
Granted, even Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that he was taken aback by the audience reaction. And, not all Republicans are Tea Party sympathizers. In the latest poll I've heard about, self-identifying Republicans are just about split up the middle about whether they approve of the Tea Party "movement."
But half of Republicans sympathizing with these sorts of attitudes and values should be a bit disturbing. And although Paul's rhetoric about self-reliance sounds oh-so-noble on its face, he's been around long enough to remember why Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in the first place.
Bills for the uninsured often weren't being picked up by churches, private individuals, etc., nor are they now. What happens now, more often than not, is that uninsured people go to taxpayer-supported charity hospitals for services. Either that, or the hospitals are forced to simply write off unpaid bills, and the taxpayer gets stuck with that in a different way.
Again, I am loath to demonize Republicans. They aren't all crazy. But they appear to be indoctrinated so well as to be impervious to reality, much as in the manner of religious fundamentalists. Ever tried arguing with one of those?
And, it would appear that a certain element among Republicans are indeed disturbed people, embracing cretinous and savage values and attitudes. And the party as a whole seems so frightened of losing elections that it panders to them.
This may not be a recipe for disaster next year. If the economy remains in the tank as it is expected to, any Republican nominee, even a somewhat crazy and/or stupid one, is likely to make next year's presidential election much closer than it should be. History favors them in the short run. But in the long run, this will be a recipe for disaster.
Institutions can go insane as easily as people can. While not all Republicans are crazy, as an institution, the Republican Party seems to have crossed into the territory of institutional insanity. I just hope that some kind of implosion can occur before they end up doing as much damage to the country as they seem to intend.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, September 12, 2011
On Social Security And Medicare, Old May Throw Young Under The Bus
By Manifesto Joe
To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't old, sick people who recklessly crashed the world financial system or got the U.S. embroiled in two (or three) wars without figuring out how to pay for them. Nor was it they who kept cutting taxes for big corporations and wealthy individuals, to the point where a record surplus became record deficits.
But, as the congressional "supercommittee" tries to figure out ways to slash the deficit and national debt -- well, it's been said that they aren't supposed to have Social Security and Medicare in the equation. Don't bet on that.
Since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House, with many of the freshmen members coming directly from the Tea Party "movement," the House agenda is rigidly right-wing. That means that taxes stay just where they are, a joy ride for the rich. Since these are generally pro-military hawks, don't look for defense spending to take many hits. Corporate welfare will probably continue, because these folks know where their campaign contributions come from.
So, where is there left to go for spending cuts? Only one place -- the so-called "entitlements." That means, for the most part, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. All campaign rhetoric aside, when the dust settles, that's where the scalpel will be drawn.
When I said that old, sick people didn't do any of the things that racked up so much debt, I meant that they weren't the direct instigators. But their consent was necessary, and a sad, just plain ridiculous number of people 65 and older vote Republican. They've been giving their consent for over 30 years.
In that time, the U.S. economy has doubled in size, but wages and salaries have remained stagnant. Want to guess who's been the big beneficiary of this?
As the U.S. economy has been thusly restructured, the middle class has been having a long war waged on it, and in large part its members, especially the older ones, seem unaware that this has even been happening. Now we're getting down to what conservatives and libertarians have long meant, in realspeak, by smaller, limited government.
It means government similar to the one the U.S. had in 1890. There was no federal income tax, and the concept of busting trusts was in its infancy. A startlingly small number of people held about half of the wealth in the country. U.S. senators were not directly elected, but rather were chosen by state legislatures. (Texas Gov. and presidential candidate Rick Perry apparently would like to see us go back to doing that.) In the Senate, it was common for the lawmakers to be referred to as "a silver senator" or "a textile senator." They were put there to represent very specific financial interests.
And about half of America's elderly lived in poverty, according to the contemporary definition. That compares with about 10 percent today.
In short, "limited government" means a plutocracy in which the limitations are one-dimensional. It's OK to dole out vast land grants to railroad companies to lay cross-continental tracks. It's not OK to do anything to help old, sick and/or poor people. In the spirit of social Darwinism, those people are supposed to just die off and leave the world to "the strong."
The appeal to selfishness
I turned 55 this year, so I'm in sort of a gray area regarding the U.S. welfare state, or what's left of it. I'm at least a decade away from qualifying for any "entitlements," but they are definitely not an abstraction to me now. They are within sight.
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, put forth a plan this year that pretty much telegraphed the punch that's coming. For people my age and older, there's not that much to worry about -- Social Security and Medicare will be there for people our age, albeit with some "strategic" trims here and there.
Anybody out there in America who's much younger than me, have your Vaseline handy. You're going to get it, and you should know where.
Clearly, the right-wing's strategy is to assure older people, usually the biggest Republican voting bloc, that the "entitlements" will be there for them. What they are moving us toward is a sort of "phase-out" of America's already-meager welfare state. I'm actually glad now that my wife and I decided not to have kids -- I would hate to have left young people behind to deal with the future that U.S. right-wingers obviously have in mind for them.
When one is in one's twenties, retirement is so far off that it is an abstraction. Besides, at that age, many people about halfway expect to one day make that "big score" that will put them far ahead in the game. Not that many twentysomethings expect what usually happens -- that one will have to work so hard just to be middle-class, and just to stay there as one ages.
Having grown up relatively poor, with parents who were young during the Great Depression, I never took very much for granted. But some Americans, including many my age and older, have always taken just about everything for granted.
And when the day comes when Americans are no longer "entitled" to "entitlements," guess who's going to get thrown under the bus? It won't be the older folks.
Where are the hellraisers?
I was just a kid during the Sixties, but I remember the era quite well enough that I felt a sense of having missed a lot while I was in college in the 1970s. By the time Gerald Ford was president and the Vietnam War was over, there was a lot less to raise hell about. We had to look for things, like maybe legalizing pot or establishing co-ed dorms, to stir shit about.
It seems to me that the young have their own nasty Vietnam going on right here, right now -- and they don't seem to be, as a generation, doing much about it. It's pretty standard that when reporters interview younger people about their financial future, they will say that they expect to work until they are 70 or 80. Retirement, to them, is becoming an obsolete concept.
I would warn those now 25 about what things are going to be like when you are 55. You don't sleep as soundly. Odd aches and pains start to emerge. Some days it's hard to gather the self-discipline to make it to that middle-class job that, you realize, is what stands between you and homelessness.
At 55, retirement starts to sound awfully good, and it will to you, too, twentysomethings. And in 30 years, when you're in my shoes, and I'm gumming Jello in a nursing home if I'm even still alive, retirement will definitely not be an abstraction for you. And the Paul Ryans, the people you're not taking much action to stop right now, have a much grimmer future in store for you.
My advice is to get out on the streets and raise some holy hell now, while you've got the energy. For your own future, it's imperative now for you to put the fear of God and organized labor into the likes of Mr. Ryan.
Twentysomethings, this is your crucial time, and you won't be able to depend on many Florida retirees to fight any battles for you. Either fight for control of the bus, or be thrown under it.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't old, sick people who recklessly crashed the world financial system or got the U.S. embroiled in two (or three) wars without figuring out how to pay for them. Nor was it they who kept cutting taxes for big corporations and wealthy individuals, to the point where a record surplus became record deficits.
But, as the congressional "supercommittee" tries to figure out ways to slash the deficit and national debt -- well, it's been said that they aren't supposed to have Social Security and Medicare in the equation. Don't bet on that.
Since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House, with many of the freshmen members coming directly from the Tea Party "movement," the House agenda is rigidly right-wing. That means that taxes stay just where they are, a joy ride for the rich. Since these are generally pro-military hawks, don't look for defense spending to take many hits. Corporate welfare will probably continue, because these folks know where their campaign contributions come from.
So, where is there left to go for spending cuts? Only one place -- the so-called "entitlements." That means, for the most part, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. All campaign rhetoric aside, when the dust settles, that's where the scalpel will be drawn.
When I said that old, sick people didn't do any of the things that racked up so much debt, I meant that they weren't the direct instigators. But their consent was necessary, and a sad, just plain ridiculous number of people 65 and older vote Republican. They've been giving their consent for over 30 years.
In that time, the U.S. economy has doubled in size, but wages and salaries have remained stagnant. Want to guess who's been the big beneficiary of this?
As the U.S. economy has been thusly restructured, the middle class has been having a long war waged on it, and in large part its members, especially the older ones, seem unaware that this has even been happening. Now we're getting down to what conservatives and libertarians have long meant, in realspeak, by smaller, limited government.
It means government similar to the one the U.S. had in 1890. There was no federal income tax, and the concept of busting trusts was in its infancy. A startlingly small number of people held about half of the wealth in the country. U.S. senators were not directly elected, but rather were chosen by state legislatures. (Texas Gov. and presidential candidate Rick Perry apparently would like to see us go back to doing that.) In the Senate, it was common for the lawmakers to be referred to as "a silver senator" or "a textile senator." They were put there to represent very specific financial interests.
And about half of America's elderly lived in poverty, according to the contemporary definition. That compares with about 10 percent today.
In short, "limited government" means a plutocracy in which the limitations are one-dimensional. It's OK to dole out vast land grants to railroad companies to lay cross-continental tracks. It's not OK to do anything to help old, sick and/or poor people. In the spirit of social Darwinism, those people are supposed to just die off and leave the world to "the strong."
The appeal to selfishness
I turned 55 this year, so I'm in sort of a gray area regarding the U.S. welfare state, or what's left of it. I'm at least a decade away from qualifying for any "entitlements," but they are definitely not an abstraction to me now. They are within sight.
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, put forth a plan this year that pretty much telegraphed the punch that's coming. For people my age and older, there's not that much to worry about -- Social Security and Medicare will be there for people our age, albeit with some "strategic" trims here and there.
Anybody out there in America who's much younger than me, have your Vaseline handy. You're going to get it, and you should know where.
Clearly, the right-wing's strategy is to assure older people, usually the biggest Republican voting bloc, that the "entitlements" will be there for them. What they are moving us toward is a sort of "phase-out" of America's already-meager welfare state. I'm actually glad now that my wife and I decided not to have kids -- I would hate to have left young people behind to deal with the future that U.S. right-wingers obviously have in mind for them.
When one is in one's twenties, retirement is so far off that it is an abstraction. Besides, at that age, many people about halfway expect to one day make that "big score" that will put them far ahead in the game. Not that many twentysomethings expect what usually happens -- that one will have to work so hard just to be middle-class, and just to stay there as one ages.
Having grown up relatively poor, with parents who were young during the Great Depression, I never took very much for granted. But some Americans, including many my age and older, have always taken just about everything for granted.
And when the day comes when Americans are no longer "entitled" to "entitlements," guess who's going to get thrown under the bus? It won't be the older folks.
Where are the hellraisers?
I was just a kid during the Sixties, but I remember the era quite well enough that I felt a sense of having missed a lot while I was in college in the 1970s. By the time Gerald Ford was president and the Vietnam War was over, there was a lot less to raise hell about. We had to look for things, like maybe legalizing pot or establishing co-ed dorms, to stir shit about.
It seems to me that the young have their own nasty Vietnam going on right here, right now -- and they don't seem to be, as a generation, doing much about it. It's pretty standard that when reporters interview younger people about their financial future, they will say that they expect to work until they are 70 or 80. Retirement, to them, is becoming an obsolete concept.
I would warn those now 25 about what things are going to be like when you are 55. You don't sleep as soundly. Odd aches and pains start to emerge. Some days it's hard to gather the self-discipline to make it to that middle-class job that, you realize, is what stands between you and homelessness.
At 55, retirement starts to sound awfully good, and it will to you, too, twentysomethings. And in 30 years, when you're in my shoes, and I'm gumming Jello in a nursing home if I'm even still alive, retirement will definitely not be an abstraction for you. And the Paul Ryans, the people you're not taking much action to stop right now, have a much grimmer future in store for you.
My advice is to get out on the streets and raise some holy hell now, while you've got the energy. For your own future, it's imperative now for you to put the fear of God and organized labor into the likes of Mr. Ryan.
Twentysomethings, this is your crucial time, and you won't be able to depend on many Florida retirees to fight any battles for you. Either fight for control of the bus, or be thrown under it.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, September 5, 2011
On Labor Day, Remembering Who Really Built America
By Manifesto Joe
Once almost 20 years ago, when I was having a conversation with a young man whom I knew to be politically right-wing, the subject somehow moved to entrepreneurs. "Entrepreneurs built this country," he told me.
I tend to be reluctant to get into arguments with people whose minds, I know, cannot be changed. I simply replied, "Well, yes and no," and moved the conversation on to other matters. In my time on Earth, I've never yet known a person whose mind was changed as a result of a political argument.
Another factor is that I often don't think of the right things to say at the right times. I'm much better with a keyboard or on paper, because it affords more time to consider things.
Looking back, what I wish I had said back to this young man was, "They had a hell of a lot of help from the people who did the hands-on labor. You know, workers. You've heard of them, right?"
Beasts of burden?
You don't have to talk to libertarians or most American conservatives for very long to discover that, in the world they inhabit, workers are more or less like a team of mules, mere beasts of burden. The entrepreneur is like the farmer behind the plow, motivating and guiding them and taking almost all the risks.
I feel compelled to point out that Farmer Jones would have an awfully hard time plowing his own back forty without his team of mules. And even if one subscribes to this unsympathetic and inhumane view of human labor, doesn't it make sense to feed and care for the beasts of burden well, so that they will stay healthy and strong for their work?
You wouldn't know that while looking at capitalism as it's been practiced through most of U.S. history. Overworked, underpaid, ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-doctored laborers have been the norm, not the exception. Our "entrepreneurial" class has consistently squeezed all it could out of those brutish proles, and then tossed them out onto the street when the time came that they weren't needed or were no longer much good.
And there, I'm talking about the ones fortunate enough to be paid at least a bare subsistence for their labor. Until the 1860s, there was a very large class of Americans whose labor was taken from them by force.
On Labor Day, take a break from the grill and those cold ones and take time to remember who really did the work that built this nation. They are the ones who did the sweating behind jackhammers, not behind a roulette wheel.
The U.S. did see a significant period during the 20th century in which conditions for working people improved, thanks to union organizing and governmental reforms. But since about 1980, we've been seeing the fingers of workers pried off those gains, one by one. Now, joblessness and working conditions are as bad as or worse than they've been anytime since 1940.
Marx: Right about one thing?
Karl Marx was apparently wrong about a lot, but from the looks of things now, he may have been dead-on right about one -- the inability of capitalism to reform itself. Marx predicted that there would be many efforts to mitigate the harsh conditions that capitalism generally brings to the working class, but that capitalism would always, inexorably revert back to its primitive state -- like it's doing now, in America and elsewhere.
For decades, I've been one of those who has hoped that a workable "third way" could be found, given the brutality of laissez-faire on one extreme and communism on the other. I've seen my hopes usually dashed, to the point that I fear them now to be just wishful thinking. I sincerely hope, on this Labor Day, that my current inclinations are wrong.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Once almost 20 years ago, when I was having a conversation with a young man whom I knew to be politically right-wing, the subject somehow moved to entrepreneurs. "Entrepreneurs built this country," he told me.
I tend to be reluctant to get into arguments with people whose minds, I know, cannot be changed. I simply replied, "Well, yes and no," and moved the conversation on to other matters. In my time on Earth, I've never yet known a person whose mind was changed as a result of a political argument.
Another factor is that I often don't think of the right things to say at the right times. I'm much better with a keyboard or on paper, because it affords more time to consider things.
Looking back, what I wish I had said back to this young man was, "They had a hell of a lot of help from the people who did the hands-on labor. You know, workers. You've heard of them, right?"
Beasts of burden?
You don't have to talk to libertarians or most American conservatives for very long to discover that, in the world they inhabit, workers are more or less like a team of mules, mere beasts of burden. The entrepreneur is like the farmer behind the plow, motivating and guiding them and taking almost all the risks.
I feel compelled to point out that Farmer Jones would have an awfully hard time plowing his own back forty without his team of mules. And even if one subscribes to this unsympathetic and inhumane view of human labor, doesn't it make sense to feed and care for the beasts of burden well, so that they will stay healthy and strong for their work?
You wouldn't know that while looking at capitalism as it's been practiced through most of U.S. history. Overworked, underpaid, ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-doctored laborers have been the norm, not the exception. Our "entrepreneurial" class has consistently squeezed all it could out of those brutish proles, and then tossed them out onto the street when the time came that they weren't needed or were no longer much good.
And there, I'm talking about the ones fortunate enough to be paid at least a bare subsistence for their labor. Until the 1860s, there was a very large class of Americans whose labor was taken from them by force.
On Labor Day, take a break from the grill and those cold ones and take time to remember who really did the work that built this nation. They are the ones who did the sweating behind jackhammers, not behind a roulette wheel.
The U.S. did see a significant period during the 20th century in which conditions for working people improved, thanks to union organizing and governmental reforms. But since about 1980, we've been seeing the fingers of workers pried off those gains, one by one. Now, joblessness and working conditions are as bad as or worse than they've been anytime since 1940.
Marx: Right about one thing?
Karl Marx was apparently wrong about a lot, but from the looks of things now, he may have been dead-on right about one -- the inability of capitalism to reform itself. Marx predicted that there would be many efforts to mitigate the harsh conditions that capitalism generally brings to the working class, but that capitalism would always, inexorably revert back to its primitive state -- like it's doing now, in America and elsewhere.
For decades, I've been one of those who has hoped that a workable "third way" could be found, given the brutality of laissez-faire on one extreme and communism on the other. I've seen my hopes usually dashed, to the point that I fear them now to be just wishful thinking. I sincerely hope, on this Labor Day, that my current inclinations are wrong.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Day Of The Voting Dead: Perry Re-Elected Despite 'Dead Peasant' Insurance Scheme
By Manifesto Joe
People don't seem to recall what was happening five years ago in politics. That was so long ago! I'll refresh some memories. Il Doofus' approval ratings were sliding down to eventual record lows, he was about to lose control of Congress -- and in Texas, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry was something less than popular.
The problem with Perry's opposition that year was that they couldn't unite behind one candidate. Goodhair was re-elected with only 39% of the vote, and his main opposition was split three ways -- Democrat Chris Bell got 29.8%, independent state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn got 18%, and country-Western singer and novelist Kinky Friedman got 12.6% (Kinky's a funny and engaging personality, but he flopped badly as a politician.)
Now let me really solicit memories, all the way back to late 2003. The Huffington Post has reminded everyone, including me, that Gov. Rick Perry's office was proposing to Swiss banking giant UBS a scheme in which UBS would buy life insurance policies on retired Texas teachers, cutting the state government in with revenue upon the deaths of said teachers. The survivors of the teachers would get nothing, and the elderly ex-teachers themselves would be offered something like $50 to $100 to sign the contract.
Here's a link to the Huffington Post article on the scheme. It's noteworthy that former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, author of some of the financial deregulation that half wrecked the U.S. and world economies, was by this time a vice president of UBS, and was reportedly in on the talks.
In this ghoulish scheme, UBS would essentially be gambling on the deaths of the retired teachers, with the state cut in on revenue from the deals. Corporations had long been using this as a tax break, since insurance premiums and death benefits are not taxed.
Walmart had already gone through horrid publicity over this practice, in which that company took out life insurance policies on its low-wage "associates." "Dead peasant insurance" was what some pundit dubbed it.
When news of this scheme hit Texas news media outlets in the coming months, it queered the deal. Teachers groups were predictably outraged. And, there seemed to be little question that the governor's office was the main force pushing the scheme. (It's also noteworthy that Perry's 23-year-old son went to work for UBS a few years later.)
But the voters didn't seem to remember any of this come 2006, nor did the news media. Knuckle-dragging zombies staggered to the polls and re-elected Perry, and they did it again in 2010.
Thankfully, the Huffington Post has raised this story from the dead. It's going to be important to keep reminding the public about this matter, and many others, as Goodhair lurches toward the possibility of the Republican presidential nomination next year.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
People don't seem to recall what was happening five years ago in politics. That was so long ago! I'll refresh some memories. Il Doofus' approval ratings were sliding down to eventual record lows, he was about to lose control of Congress -- and in Texas, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry was something less than popular.
The problem with Perry's opposition that year was that they couldn't unite behind one candidate. Goodhair was re-elected with only 39% of the vote, and his main opposition was split three ways -- Democrat Chris Bell got 29.8%, independent state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn got 18%, and country-Western singer and novelist Kinky Friedman got 12.6% (Kinky's a funny and engaging personality, but he flopped badly as a politician.)
Now let me really solicit memories, all the way back to late 2003. The Huffington Post has reminded everyone, including me, that Gov. Rick Perry's office was proposing to Swiss banking giant UBS a scheme in which UBS would buy life insurance policies on retired Texas teachers, cutting the state government in with revenue upon the deaths of said teachers. The survivors of the teachers would get nothing, and the elderly ex-teachers themselves would be offered something like $50 to $100 to sign the contract.
Here's a link to the Huffington Post article on the scheme. It's noteworthy that former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, author of some of the financial deregulation that half wrecked the U.S. and world economies, was by this time a vice president of UBS, and was reportedly in on the talks.
In this ghoulish scheme, UBS would essentially be gambling on the deaths of the retired teachers, with the state cut in on revenue from the deals. Corporations had long been using this as a tax break, since insurance premiums and death benefits are not taxed.
Walmart had already gone through horrid publicity over this practice, in which that company took out life insurance policies on its low-wage "associates." "Dead peasant insurance" was what some pundit dubbed it.
When news of this scheme hit Texas news media outlets in the coming months, it queered the deal. Teachers groups were predictably outraged. And, there seemed to be little question that the governor's office was the main force pushing the scheme. (It's also noteworthy that Perry's 23-year-old son went to work for UBS a few years later.)
But the voters didn't seem to remember any of this come 2006, nor did the news media. Knuckle-dragging zombies staggered to the polls and re-elected Perry, and they did it again in 2010.
Thankfully, the Huffington Post has raised this story from the dead. It's going to be important to keep reminding the public about this matter, and many others, as Goodhair lurches toward the possibility of the Republican presidential nomination next year.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Hey, New Yorkers: Take The Hurricane Warning Seriously
By Manifesto Joe
I've been through four hurricanes and two tropical storms. Don't take any warnings about this sort of thing lightly.
The one I'm thinking of is when I was 14, and it wasn't expected to be that much. It gained strength spectacularly just off the Gulf Coast, and then came in. It was officially called a Category 3 hurricane after the fact. At the time, people measured the gusts at 160 mph, more like a Category 4. Later, the official measure was lower, but it was quite enough.
I never saw anything like it before, and I hope I never do again. Fortunately, we were riding the thing out in a very strong house, and we had boarded the place up as much as one does with a routine hurricane. Things were going down all around us. Power lines, garages, houses -- collapsing. The eye passed over us, so then there was a long lull in the middle -- a deathly calm.
Then the worst part came. The second "half" was more like two-thirds of the storm. It seemed like it would never end.
Then we spent about a week digging our way out of the ruins. No power (in August in South Texas), only the water we had drawn, food out of cans. A little help from the Red Cross and FEMA.
A direct hit on Manhattan would be a calamity. Take this seriously.
Correction: FEMA as we know it now didn't exist until the late 1970s. There was federal aid coming to the area then, but it had to have been under different auspices. We didn't lose our home, so of course we didn't ask for any.
I've been through four hurricanes and two tropical storms. Don't take any warnings about this sort of thing lightly.
The one I'm thinking of is when I was 14, and it wasn't expected to be that much. It gained strength spectacularly just off the Gulf Coast, and then came in. It was officially called a Category 3 hurricane after the fact. At the time, people measured the gusts at 160 mph, more like a Category 4. Later, the official measure was lower, but it was quite enough.
I never saw anything like it before, and I hope I never do again. Fortunately, we were riding the thing out in a very strong house, and we had boarded the place up as much as one does with a routine hurricane. Things were going down all around us. Power lines, garages, houses -- collapsing. The eye passed over us, so then there was a long lull in the middle -- a deathly calm.
Then the worst part came. The second "half" was more like two-thirds of the storm. It seemed like it would never end.
Then we spent about a week digging our way out of the ruins. No power (in August in South Texas), only the water we had drawn, food out of cans. A little help from the Red Cross and FEMA.
A direct hit on Manhattan would be a calamity. Take this seriously.
Correction: FEMA as we know it now didn't exist until the late 1970s. There was federal aid coming to the area then, but it had to have been under different auspices. We didn't lose our home, so of course we didn't ask for any.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Right-Wing Reign Of Error: How Kooks Like Bachmann Keep Getting It Wrong
By Manifesto Joe
Sometimes it happens because they're stupid -- and sometimes it happens because they're convinced that everybody else is stupid. Either way, the right wing in America can't be trusted for any kind of facts or history, recent or distant. Their inaccuracies are countless, but a few more recent ones stand out.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity
Boobs usually come in pairs, and on the right wing it's no exception. Herr Lardbaugh and Herr Hannity told their listeners earlier this month that President Obama inherited a U.S. unemployment rate of 5.6% and 5.7% (Hannity gave the lower figure.)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the accepted authority on this subject, put the U.S. unemployment rate at 7.8% in January 2009, the month that Obama took office. So, who's lying?
It turns out that the AVERAGE jobless rate for 2008 was 5.8% -- all 12 months combined into an average. Even if Herr Lardbaugh and Herr Hannity were using that figure, they STILL got it wrong. (The easiest job in the world has got to be that of Herr Lardbaugh's fact-checker.)
Here's a link to New York magazine's story on the subject.
Bachmann's unbelievable string of gaffes
In the previous case, I think we've got a couple of smart asses who are putting bogus numbers over on the rubes. In the case of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., I fear that we've got the proto-rube. This person is under serious consideration to be the Republican nominee for president of the U.S. Yet, she's shockingly stupid, too much so to even be respected as a member of the U.S. House.
First, she kicks off her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, which she mistakenly calls the birthplace of John Wayne. It was actually a residence of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
More recently, she wished Elvis a happy birthday on the 34th anniversary of his death.
And, on a right-wing radio talk show Thursday, Bachmann said that Americans are fearful of the rise of the Soviet Union. Here's a link to a story on that interview.
Bachmann is, of course, no newcomer to the reign of right-wing error. Here's a link to my earlier post about the congresswoman blaming something she called the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" on FDR. (It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover.)
I understand that Bachmann is blaming all her recent gaffes on her strenuous speaking schedule. But, that's one good reason to have a rather long and grueling campaign trail for the presidency -- at the very least, it gives the public a chance to vet the contenders and see what they perform like under pressure.
But what worries me is that Americans had plenty of time to size up both Ronald "Mr. Magoo" Reagan and George W. "Il Doofus" Bush. The standards have clearly been lowered enough that Bachmann may get a complete pass on all this, and more to come.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sometimes it happens because they're stupid -- and sometimes it happens because they're convinced that everybody else is stupid. Either way, the right wing in America can't be trusted for any kind of facts or history, recent or distant. Their inaccuracies are countless, but a few more recent ones stand out.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity
Boobs usually come in pairs, and on the right wing it's no exception. Herr Lardbaugh and Herr Hannity told their listeners earlier this month that President Obama inherited a U.S. unemployment rate of 5.6% and 5.7% (Hannity gave the lower figure.)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the accepted authority on this subject, put the U.S. unemployment rate at 7.8% in January 2009, the month that Obama took office. So, who's lying?
It turns out that the AVERAGE jobless rate for 2008 was 5.8% -- all 12 months combined into an average. Even if Herr Lardbaugh and Herr Hannity were using that figure, they STILL got it wrong. (The easiest job in the world has got to be that of Herr Lardbaugh's fact-checker.)
Here's a link to New York magazine's story on the subject.
Bachmann's unbelievable string of gaffes
In the previous case, I think we've got a couple of smart asses who are putting bogus numbers over on the rubes. In the case of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., I fear that we've got the proto-rube. This person is under serious consideration to be the Republican nominee for president of the U.S. Yet, she's shockingly stupid, too much so to even be respected as a member of the U.S. House.
First, she kicks off her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, which she mistakenly calls the birthplace of John Wayne. It was actually a residence of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
More recently, she wished Elvis a happy birthday on the 34th anniversary of his death.
And, on a right-wing radio talk show Thursday, Bachmann said that Americans are fearful of the rise of the Soviet Union. Here's a link to a story on that interview.
Bachmann is, of course, no newcomer to the reign of right-wing error. Here's a link to my earlier post about the congresswoman blaming something she called the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" on FDR. (It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover.)
I understand that Bachmann is blaming all her recent gaffes on her strenuous speaking schedule. But, that's one good reason to have a rather long and grueling campaign trail for the presidency -- at the very least, it gives the public a chance to vet the contenders and see what they perform like under pressure.
But what worries me is that Americans had plenty of time to size up both Ronald "Mr. Magoo" Reagan and George W. "Il Doofus" Bush. The standards have clearly been lowered enough that Bachmann may get a complete pass on all this, and more to come.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Another Texas Two-Step: Governor Goodhair Declares, Michael Burgess Scares
By Manifesto Joe
As of this writing, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry still hadn't given the South Carolina speech that is said to be the one that will make his bid for the presidency official. I'm presuming that he will do just that.
Goodhair keeps indicating that he wants to go national with The Texas Way. That's great -- if you're already rich. Texas has a pretty decent Third World economy. I would advise y'all in the rest of the U.S. to try to stick with the First World formula. The Third World path has definite limitations.
Sure, there have been plenty of jobs created in Texas during the nearly 11 years Goodhair has been governor -- low-wage, service-sector jobs, mostly. The state has become a veritable magnet for illegal immigrant labor. It's been estimated that if you got rid of all the workers who are here illegally, about a third of the restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would have to close. Seems like everybody in the Anglo culture here has a few anecdotes about things like, approaching somebody in a restaurant or supermarket only to be told, "No habla Ingles."
(Fortunately, "Donde esta el bano?" was a common tourista question I remembered from Spanish class.)
Creation of such crummy jobs is about all Texas can point to for recent bragging rights. During Goodhair's time in office (he's the state's longest-serving governor, unfortunately), basics such as education, health care, per capita income and infrastructure of all kinds have suffered. The state ranks relatively low in any rankings of such sectors. ("Thank God for Mississippi!" one school official is reported to have said.)
Our public universities, led by the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems, are BIG, like everything in Texas. They are also notoriously mediocre. Even New York City's public college system, designed mainly for disadvantaged students, is considered at least marginally better than what the state government supports here.
Goodhair should know about academic mediocrity -- he's a graduate of A&M's College Station flagship, and he even did some time on academic probation while he was there.
Then there's his beef with the federal government. He has hinted strongly at secession, yet he whines when he doesn't immediately get federal money, like when wildfires burned up a lot of ranches and rural subdivisions.
Among other things, the state's debt has approximately doubled in a decade, and the $25 billion shortfall that the Legislature "dealt with" during this biennial session was by far the largest in Texas history.
Hey, but we still have no state income tax! Instead, we have very high sales taxes and user fees. And the property taxes can be pretty steep, thanks to all those medical bills the taxpayers have to cover so that our charity hospitals and clinics can treat the millions of uninsured people.
Don't get the idea that I hate Texas -- hell, I'm a native South Texan, and there is much in this culture that I know I would miss if I relocated to some politically sane place like Vermont. I have my own recipe for the best chili con carne in the world, and there's nothing like a big platter of sizzling fajitas, prepared by someone who really knows how. Shiner Bock gets my vote as one of the best beers around, and the wines of West Texas are getting better all the time. I'm indifferent to the Dallas Cowboys, but I have to admit to feeling a little pride when the Texas Rangers made it to the World Series for the first time in franchise history last fall.
But we ought to face it -- Texas is a good place mainly for those lucky enough to be born rich. If you live in a gated community and can afford to send your kids to private schools and colleges, you don't notice it much when a lot of the basics begin to fall apart. Well, maybe when you fail to miss a big pothole in the road while driving that swell new Lexus to the country club, one notices then.
Rick Perry thinks Texas should be a model for the rest of the nation. Il Doofus -- not coincidentally Perry's predecessor as governor -- just about halfway took the U.S. to that very place during eight years in office. If the American people are stupid enough to want someone to really finish the job, then Goodhair's their man. He's been one of the lousiest governors we ever had, and it would be fitting for him to be the Republicans' successor to Il Doofus, who in Texas started the job that Perry has pretty well finished here.
I just hope the rest of the country is wise enough not to do what Texans have done.
Step Two: Burgess wants to impeach Obama so that the latter's agenda can be stopped
Yep, that's what U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville (Dallas area), told a Tea Party gathering in Keller, Texas, a few days ago. I don't remember him elaborating as to exactly what the charges would be, but he did say that it would be a great way to save the republic, or something like that, by bringing President Obama's agenda to a grinding halt.
Reporters tried to get Burgess to follow up on this. At first he responded awkwardly, then his office suddenly stopped taking any phone calls on the subject. He's been silent ever since.
Here's a link to a UPI report on the subject.
You may recall that Burgess was one of the "lawmakers" in Congress who wanted to block government regulation that would require light bulbs to be more energy-efficient. Here's a link to my post on that.
The voters in Texas sure know how to pick 'em.
A stock response from Republicans would be to point out that there were Democrats who wanted to bring articles of impeachment against Il Doofus. I honestly wish that could have happened. In that case, during the 2002-03 run-up to the Iraq invasion, we had a president who was pretty clearly lying to us about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He got the U.S. into a war that, so far, has cost nearly $800 billion and nearly 1.5 million Iraqi lives. War crimes charges on the international scale might have been good, too.
Unfortunately, Il Doofus didn't leave quite enough evidence to bring impeachment charges. As always, he left open the possibility that he was merely ignorant and foolish.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
As of this writing, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry still hadn't given the South Carolina speech that is said to be the one that will make his bid for the presidency official. I'm presuming that he will do just that.
Goodhair keeps indicating that he wants to go national with The Texas Way. That's great -- if you're already rich. Texas has a pretty decent Third World economy. I would advise y'all in the rest of the U.S. to try to stick with the First World formula. The Third World path has definite limitations.
Sure, there have been plenty of jobs created in Texas during the nearly 11 years Goodhair has been governor -- low-wage, service-sector jobs, mostly. The state has become a veritable magnet for illegal immigrant labor. It's been estimated that if you got rid of all the workers who are here illegally, about a third of the restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area would have to close. Seems like everybody in the Anglo culture here has a few anecdotes about things like, approaching somebody in a restaurant or supermarket only to be told, "No habla Ingles."
(Fortunately, "Donde esta el bano?" was a common tourista question I remembered from Spanish class.)
Creation of such crummy jobs is about all Texas can point to for recent bragging rights. During Goodhair's time in office (he's the state's longest-serving governor, unfortunately), basics such as education, health care, per capita income and infrastructure of all kinds have suffered. The state ranks relatively low in any rankings of such sectors. ("Thank God for Mississippi!" one school official is reported to have said.)
Our public universities, led by the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems, are BIG, like everything in Texas. They are also notoriously mediocre. Even New York City's public college system, designed mainly for disadvantaged students, is considered at least marginally better than what the state government supports here.
Goodhair should know about academic mediocrity -- he's a graduate of A&M's College Station flagship, and he even did some time on academic probation while he was there.
Then there's his beef with the federal government. He has hinted strongly at secession, yet he whines when he doesn't immediately get federal money, like when wildfires burned up a lot of ranches and rural subdivisions.
Among other things, the state's debt has approximately doubled in a decade, and the $25 billion shortfall that the Legislature "dealt with" during this biennial session was by far the largest in Texas history.
Hey, but we still have no state income tax! Instead, we have very high sales taxes and user fees. And the property taxes can be pretty steep, thanks to all those medical bills the taxpayers have to cover so that our charity hospitals and clinics can treat the millions of uninsured people.
Don't get the idea that I hate Texas -- hell, I'm a native South Texan, and there is much in this culture that I know I would miss if I relocated to some politically sane place like Vermont. I have my own recipe for the best chili con carne in the world, and there's nothing like a big platter of sizzling fajitas, prepared by someone who really knows how. Shiner Bock gets my vote as one of the best beers around, and the wines of West Texas are getting better all the time. I'm indifferent to the Dallas Cowboys, but I have to admit to feeling a little pride when the Texas Rangers made it to the World Series for the first time in franchise history last fall.
But we ought to face it -- Texas is a good place mainly for those lucky enough to be born rich. If you live in a gated community and can afford to send your kids to private schools and colleges, you don't notice it much when a lot of the basics begin to fall apart. Well, maybe when you fail to miss a big pothole in the road while driving that swell new Lexus to the country club, one notices then.
Rick Perry thinks Texas should be a model for the rest of the nation. Il Doofus -- not coincidentally Perry's predecessor as governor -- just about halfway took the U.S. to that very place during eight years in office. If the American people are stupid enough to want someone to really finish the job, then Goodhair's their man. He's been one of the lousiest governors we ever had, and it would be fitting for him to be the Republicans' successor to Il Doofus, who in Texas started the job that Perry has pretty well finished here.
I just hope the rest of the country is wise enough not to do what Texans have done.
Step Two: Burgess wants to impeach Obama so that the latter's agenda can be stopped
Yep, that's what U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville (Dallas area), told a Tea Party gathering in Keller, Texas, a few days ago. I don't remember him elaborating as to exactly what the charges would be, but he did say that it would be a great way to save the republic, or something like that, by bringing President Obama's agenda to a grinding halt.
Reporters tried to get Burgess to follow up on this. At first he responded awkwardly, then his office suddenly stopped taking any phone calls on the subject. He's been silent ever since.
Here's a link to a UPI report on the subject.
You may recall that Burgess was one of the "lawmakers" in Congress who wanted to block government regulation that would require light bulbs to be more energy-efficient. Here's a link to my post on that.
The voters in Texas sure know how to pick 'em.
A stock response from Republicans would be to point out that there were Democrats who wanted to bring articles of impeachment against Il Doofus. I honestly wish that could have happened. In that case, during the 2002-03 run-up to the Iraq invasion, we had a president who was pretty clearly lying to us about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He got the U.S. into a war that, so far, has cost nearly $800 billion and nearly 1.5 million Iraqi lives. War crimes charges on the international scale might have been good, too.
Unfortunately, Il Doofus didn't leave quite enough evidence to bring impeachment charges. As always, he left open the possibility that he was merely ignorant and foolish.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Republicans In Denial That Clinton Surplus Was Real
By Manifesto Joe
Who were the last two U.S. presidents to deliver balanced federal budgets? Answer: The last one was Bill Clinton. Before him, you have to go all the way back to fiscal 1968-69 -- that one was Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Yep, it was those "tax-and-spend" Democrats who did this. During the years in between, and since, we've seen what happens when government spends, but doesn't adequately tax. The debt piles up, like it did under Ronald Reagan and Il Doofus.
The Republican talking point about this is that the Clinton surplus is supposed to have been solely the result of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, which created a spike in income tax revenues because of overvalued Internet stocks. The bubble certainly helped Clinton, but saying that it was the only reason for the increased revenue is denial of history.
Here's a link to an article on the subject at FactCheck.org. Even when the accounting excludes the Social Security surplus, Clinton delivered two balanced budgets, including one with an $86.4 billion surplus (with Social Security included, that would be $236.2 billion).
The article states:
The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans incorrectly claim is the "largest tax increase in history." It fell almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton’s fiscal 1994 budget also contained some spending restraints. An equally if not more powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and rising salaries.
So yes, the dot-com bubble was a big factor. But it's like poet Charles Bukowski said about luck -- that counts, too.
Notable here is that the Clinton economic plan, which the House passed in 1993 by a single vote, raised the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6%. I was a middle-income taxpayer during those years, and the effect of the Clinton plan on my taxes was almost nil. Rich people were, for a change, forced to pay something closer to their fair share for the upkeep of society.
Since President Obama has had a struggling economy to deal with since Day One (thanks so much, Il Doofus) letting tax rates return to the Clinton-era levels wouldn't come even very close to balancing the current budget. Obama has been a hard-luck SOB who inherited the biggest mess anyone has faced since FDR. And unlike FDR, he didn't have a 3-to-1 majority in the Congress, and fickle voters cost him a majority in the House last year.
Now, of course, he's being kicked around from two directions -- from the right, by lunatics who can't decide whether he's a socialist or a Nazi, and from the left, by those who would rather have had him fight losing battles for the public health-care option and for a more genuine compromise on the debt-ceiling issue. It's not hard to understand Obama's critics on the left, but if he'd done what they apparently wanted him to do, we'd have no health-care changes coming at all, and the economy would REALLY be in ruins.
But, I digress -- back to Clinton and his budgets. The basic lesson here is that all governments, any governments, must have adequate revenue in order to function. In 30 years, the U.S. economy has doubled in output, but wages and salaries for ordinary workers have stagnated. It's the superrich who have reaped the benefits (and they didn't even use a gun). And their tax burden has been dramatically reduced.
Bill Clinton wasn't my ideal as a president (nor is Obama). I reluctantly voted for Clinton twice. I opposed NAFTA, which he and Al Gore delivered up for our Corporate Masters. Clinton also signed off on deregulation of financial markets that proved disastrous, and that even he now admits was a mistake. And, I'd say the jury remains out on what Molly Ivins always called "welfare deform," which Clinton also signed.
But in politics, one often has to hold one's nose and take what one can get, and in the 1990s that was Clinton. Warts and all, I'd rather have him in charge than Il Doofus or Reagan, any day.
Letting tax rates revert to Clinton-era levels would just be a start. Right now, with conditions as they are, balancing the budget would require closing a lot of loopholes, plus a top marginal rate of, say, 49%. I think we've seen, judging from the long-term record of supply-side policy, that such a move would have little negative impact on job creation.
But the reality is that the Tea Party has great power in the House of Representatives, and the economy remains in the tank. Putting Obama over for a second term is far from certain. If we emerge in 2013 with a Republican president and both houses of Congress under that party's control, prepare for the worst. We'll likely see deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare -- and yet there will still be huge deficits, for years to come.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Who were the last two U.S. presidents to deliver balanced federal budgets? Answer: The last one was Bill Clinton. Before him, you have to go all the way back to fiscal 1968-69 -- that one was Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Yep, it was those "tax-and-spend" Democrats who did this. During the years in between, and since, we've seen what happens when government spends, but doesn't adequately tax. The debt piles up, like it did under Ronald Reagan and Il Doofus.
The Republican talking point about this is that the Clinton surplus is supposed to have been solely the result of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, which created a spike in income tax revenues because of overvalued Internet stocks. The bubble certainly helped Clinton, but saying that it was the only reason for the increased revenue is denial of history.
Here's a link to an article on the subject at FactCheck.org. Even when the accounting excludes the Social Security surplus, Clinton delivered two balanced budgets, including one with an $86.4 billion surplus (with Social Security included, that would be $236.2 billion).
The article states:
The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans incorrectly claim is the "largest tax increase in history." It fell almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton’s fiscal 1994 budget also contained some spending restraints. An equally if not more powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and rising salaries.
So yes, the dot-com bubble was a big factor. But it's like poet Charles Bukowski said about luck -- that counts, too.
Notable here is that the Clinton economic plan, which the House passed in 1993 by a single vote, raised the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6%. I was a middle-income taxpayer during those years, and the effect of the Clinton plan on my taxes was almost nil. Rich people were, for a change, forced to pay something closer to their fair share for the upkeep of society.
Since President Obama has had a struggling economy to deal with since Day One (thanks so much, Il Doofus) letting tax rates return to the Clinton-era levels wouldn't come even very close to balancing the current budget. Obama has been a hard-luck SOB who inherited the biggest mess anyone has faced since FDR. And unlike FDR, he didn't have a 3-to-1 majority in the Congress, and fickle voters cost him a majority in the House last year.
Now, of course, he's being kicked around from two directions -- from the right, by lunatics who can't decide whether he's a socialist or a Nazi, and from the left, by those who would rather have had him fight losing battles for the public health-care option and for a more genuine compromise on the debt-ceiling issue. It's not hard to understand Obama's critics on the left, but if he'd done what they apparently wanted him to do, we'd have no health-care changes coming at all, and the economy would REALLY be in ruins.
But, I digress -- back to Clinton and his budgets. The basic lesson here is that all governments, any governments, must have adequate revenue in order to function. In 30 years, the U.S. economy has doubled in output, but wages and salaries for ordinary workers have stagnated. It's the superrich who have reaped the benefits (and they didn't even use a gun). And their tax burden has been dramatically reduced.
Bill Clinton wasn't my ideal as a president (nor is Obama). I reluctantly voted for Clinton twice. I opposed NAFTA, which he and Al Gore delivered up for our Corporate Masters. Clinton also signed off on deregulation of financial markets that proved disastrous, and that even he now admits was a mistake. And, I'd say the jury remains out on what Molly Ivins always called "welfare deform," which Clinton also signed.
But in politics, one often has to hold one's nose and take what one can get, and in the 1990s that was Clinton. Warts and all, I'd rather have him in charge than Il Doofus or Reagan, any day.
Letting tax rates revert to Clinton-era levels would just be a start. Right now, with conditions as they are, balancing the budget would require closing a lot of loopholes, plus a top marginal rate of, say, 49%. I think we've seen, judging from the long-term record of supply-side policy, that such a move would have little negative impact on job creation.
But the reality is that the Tea Party has great power in the House of Representatives, and the economy remains in the tank. Putting Obama over for a second term is far from certain. If we emerge in 2013 with a Republican president and both houses of Congress under that party's control, prepare for the worst. We'll likely see deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare -- and yet there will still be huge deficits, for years to come.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Rick 'Governor Goodhair' Perry No Doubt Learned How To Pray In College
By Manifesto Joe
Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry seemed to win a lot of brownie points with the Religious Right for his Saturday prayer fest in Houston. Some 30,000 people attended, it was estimated. He looks like a likely candidate for president, and he doubtlessly won over a lot of Tea Party support by instigating this event.
Recently, we the voters have also gotten a chance to look at his college transcript, that of an animal husbandry major at Texas A&M who graduated with a 2.3 GPA. Here's a link to it, courtesy of The Huffington Post.
Goodhair made a C in U.S. history, and a D in principles of economics. I suspect that, between hits of No Doz, he learned how to pray right before his economics final. Apparently God didn't deign to help him too much in organic chemistry -- he flunked a second course in it.
Here's from a contemporary student:
"A&M wasn't exactly Harvard on the Brazos River," recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post. "This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke."
And this guy may want to be president?
I realize that people can grow a lot during half a lifetime. FDR reportedly wasn't a great student, and Truman never went to college. LBJ went to what was then Southwest Texas State Teacher's College, now Texas State University. Where I'm from, that was always known as a great party college that often turned out good schoolteachers. Eisenhower ranked low in his graduating class at West Point, and Il Doofus is said to have gotten through Yale largely on "gentleman's C's." Reagan famously told Barbara Walters in an interview that "I never knew anything above C's," and his alma mater was Eureka College in Illinois.
Personally, I would rather have someone for president who at least bothered to read most of the textbooks. Whatever their shortcomings were and are, I get the impression that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at least managed to do that.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry seemed to win a lot of brownie points with the Religious Right for his Saturday prayer fest in Houston. Some 30,000 people attended, it was estimated. He looks like a likely candidate for president, and he doubtlessly won over a lot of Tea Party support by instigating this event.
Recently, we the voters have also gotten a chance to look at his college transcript, that of an animal husbandry major at Texas A&M who graduated with a 2.3 GPA. Here's a link to it, courtesy of The Huffington Post.
Goodhair made a C in U.S. history, and a D in principles of economics. I suspect that, between hits of No Doz, he learned how to pray right before his economics final. Apparently God didn't deign to help him too much in organic chemistry -- he flunked a second course in it.
Here's from a contemporary student:
"A&M wasn't exactly Harvard on the Brazos River," recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post. "This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke."
And this guy may want to be president?
I realize that people can grow a lot during half a lifetime. FDR reportedly wasn't a great student, and Truman never went to college. LBJ went to what was then Southwest Texas State Teacher's College, now Texas State University. Where I'm from, that was always known as a great party college that often turned out good schoolteachers. Eisenhower ranked low in his graduating class at West Point, and Il Doofus is said to have gotten through Yale largely on "gentleman's C's." Reagan famously told Barbara Walters in an interview that "I never knew anything above C's," and his alma mater was Eureka College in Illinois.
Personally, I would rather have someone for president who at least bothered to read most of the textbooks. Whatever their shortcomings were and are, I get the impression that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at least managed to do that.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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