By Manifesto Joe
The modern American political phenomenon of "the angry white male" has baffled me for a long time. These are working-class and lower-middle-class guys, age ranging from around 25 to 55, who vote overwhelmingly Republican, against their true economic interests. These aren't men who own hedge funds, and it's been shown repeatedly that supply-side tax cuts at best do nothing for them, and at worst shift the burden to them in insidious ways. For them, voting GOP is like being chickens for Colonel Sanders.
But after reading a recent Associated Press report on income trends in America, comparing 1974 earnings to the most recent available census stats, I think I understand this a little better. It's mostly about wages and salaries -- but with an ironic demagogic spin.
From AP's report:
"New analysis of census data challenges the historical presumption that each American generation will be wealthier than the one before, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project.
"A generation ago, American men in their 30s had median annual incomes of about $40,000. Men of the same age today ... make only about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation.
"That's a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to the report."
It's not easy for me to relate to the men who have been most profoundly affected by this trend. I've been in the work force since the late '70s. It wasn't hard for me to do a little better than my parents did, because we were a relatively poor family. At the time I came of age, poor kids like me were getting help that isn't so available anymore, so I got to go to a good college and graduated in 4 years.
But the following decades weren't kind to working-class, and even middle-class, white guys. A lot of the bread-and-butter blue-collar jobs were exported -- from places like Flint, Michigan, to places like Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. As more women, often with college degrees, entered the work force, and more minorities finally began climbing the ladder, The Angry White Male suddenly had competition that Pops never faced. That big promotion, or even the gold watch at 65, were no longer givens.
At the risk of seeming "illiberal" for just a moment, I have seen, and have been personally affected by, all the things that the pissed-off white dudes complain about. I've seen people hired in haste for jobs they were unprepared for, and unable to perform -- but they were still tolerated. I've seen people get promotions they weren't ready for -- but, true to The Peter Principle, they stayed there. I've seen mistakes swept under the rug time after time.
But, Angry White Dudes, let's be honest. Was it really different in 1950? If you were able to talk to the vanguard of women and minorities who were trying to break through an almost impregnable glass ceiling back then, wouldn't they be expressing the same frustrations, only worse?
But, back to the report. Upon closer examination, what becomes clear is that the puppetmasters are getting you fellas, y'all Angry White Males, to blame people who are largely in the same predicament you're in. Someone I know told me that he walked into a 7-Eleven one day and heard Rush Lardbaugh on a radio, railing against "Feminazis" and such, and the guy who had the radio on was a fortyish man in a red smock who was probably making eight bucks an hour. And he was grooving to the bashing.
The report suggests that, instead of listening to Lardbaugh's rant, this guy should have been checking out what his company's CEO makes. In the same period, from the '70s to the most recent stats:
"Chief executives' pay surged to 262 times the average worker's pay in 2005, up from 35 times in 1978, according to the report's analysis of Congressional Budget Office statistics."
A coincidence? "Free market" fundamentalists would have us believe so. The market is supposed to be some kind of primal force that, like the Ned Beatty character in Network says, mustn't be meddled with. But it's funny; they meddle with it in other countries, and to general good effect. Back to the report:
"The Pew report also found that in many countries, including Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and France, there is more economic mobility than in the U.S. when measuring by the income differences between generations."
OK, thirtysomething white males, go on being angry. But please, redirect the anger at those who really deserve it. You've got some pretty corpulent swine getting a free ride on your shoulders. It's time to start blaming them, and not your co-workers who happen to be of a different race or gender. Stop listening to the demagogues.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Campaign 2008: A Symphony of Horror
Joe thought he had an original idea here, but darned if The Rude Pundit didn't beat him to it by over a month. Go to www.rudepundit.blogspot.com and look in his archives for his April 28 post. Rudy Giuliani and Count Orlov from Nosferatu almost look like they could have been separated at birth.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
From Joe's Vault: Is "Conservatism" A New Form of Mental Illness?
By Manifesto Joe
Originally posted on Marc McDonald's Beggars Can Be Choosers, Aug. 29, 2005.
When I heard the title of Michael Savage's latest screed -- Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions -- the irony wasn't lost on me. This is from a man who:
Was fired from MSNBC for telling a caller to "get AIDS and die" among other things.
Has referred to Iraqi prisoners as "subhumans" and called for them to be summarily executed by the thousands.
Said the tsunami that struck East Asian countries was not a tragedy but rather a message from God.
Says women should be denied the vote because they are too emotional -- their hormones rage.
But Savage isn't the only "conservative" who's been waxing psychopathic lately. The vilification of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan has shown a zany viciousness once heard only from the most demented elements of the right. The typically milder-mannered Fred Barnes called her a "crackpot." Rush Limbaugh said Sheehan's story is "nothing more than forged documents." (Two days later Limbaugh denied saying anything like this, whatever it was that he meant.) One-time Trotskyite turned right-wing straitjacket candidate David Horowitz described Sheehan's protest as "hateful" and said she is dishonoring the memory of her fallen son. A political consultant and blogger named Erick Erickson said Sheehan is "a whore in the form of a grieving mother."
Savage is right about one thing: There is a strain of mental illness spreading in America. Problem is, he's pointing in the wrong direction, as usual. Many of those who call themselves "conservatives" are not merely dangerous radicals. They could use a dose of anti-psychotic drugs.
I've been wondering about the sanity of "conservatives" since the days of Lee Atwater, when it became apparent that these self-styled paragons of virtue would say and do just about anything to win an election. Atwater later died, reportedly of a brain tumor; but I'm convinced that the tumor was benign. It's the brain that was malignant.
It's gotten worse since then. Consider a political landscape in which:
A Republican congressman, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, suggests that if terrorists attack the United States with a nuke, we could "take out their holy sites." (Presumably he would hold all Muslims responsible.)
The Rev. Pat Robertson, one of our best-known "Christian" broadcasters, suggests that we assassinate a legally elected foreign head of state because we don't like his policies or the company he keeps. (But hey, keep that oil coming.)
Bestselling commentator Ann Coulter says, quite seriously, about Islamic nations that we should "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (Millions buy this shrill woman's books. I suppose these are the readers who cut class the day the professor lectured on The Crusades.)
Barry Goldwater, after leaving politics, lamented that the Republican Party had been taken over by "a bunch of kooks." This was ironic when one recalls LBJ supporters in 1964 saying about rival candidate Goldwater, "In your guts you know he's nuts." If Goldwater scared people back then, what does that say about some of the loonies who hold high office now?
I suggest something further: That pretty much describes the whole contemporary "conservative" movement. It's not just some of the top politicos, pundits and preachers who are spouting rubber-room rhetoric. It's become like a bizarre cult of millions. The only positive aspect about how many of these fanatical weirdos there are is that they could never have all fit into the compound at Mount Carmel.
The Texas Republican Party, in its delusional 2004 platform, for example, urges that the IRS be eliminated, along with "income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax." The state GOP would also kill "the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the position of Surgeon General, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce and Labor." (I guess when you believe that The Rapture is coming soon, who needs a government?)
The comparably deranged 2000 platform calls for America to return to the gold standard and supports "individual teachers' right to teach creation science in Texas public schools." It also calls for the United States to quit the United Nations and re-establish control of the Panama Canal. (It stops short of unleashing Chiang Kai-shek's skeletal remains on mainland China.)
Consider that this is the political party that is governing Texas, virtually unchallenged.
Then there are the assorted lunatics who blog, argue in chat rooms, etc. A "Christian conservative" who identified himself (herself?) as "frogribs" posted a reply to an earlier article of mine on this blog in which he wrote:
"Yes, it is better `to have the London subway system be a battleground than to have al Qaeda blowing up folks over here.' The duty of the president is to place the lives and well being of Americans above all others." (I'm glad Bush was thinking that when he misled the country into a needless war in Iraq. And I'm certain the British will be thrilled to know we're willing to use them, and other allied civilians, as human shields.)
"Iraqi civilian casualties have occurred, but at a rate lower than anyone expected." (Was this person here, on this planet, in March 2003? We were hearing that this would be a cakewalk, and that Iraqis would be tossing rose petals at our soldiers' feet. Since then, dozens of suicide bombings later, the cake's been decorated with entrails, and the petals look curiously like toenails.)
"The U.S. still faces an insurgency, but they must remain to complete the mission in order to avoid the disastrous result learned in Vietnam. Napoleon said it best, 'If you decide to take Paris, take Paris.' Finish the job. ..." (This person evidently never heard about Waterloo. Or Nixon's hapless "Vietnamization" policy. What should we call this now -- "Iraqification"?)
"Does anyone remember how we got this country? We got it by force. We decimated the Indians ... We invaded the Spanish and the Mexicans and we took the spoils. We exploited slaves until the error was purged with the blood of 500,000 of our countrymen ... Manifest Destiny still runs in my veins and the veins of the free and the brave ..."
(Gosh, so America really was largely built on genocide, slavery and military aggression? Since it worked so well in the past, why don't we do all that stuff again? And when they bring back the slave auctions, I wonder -- how much would Jesus bid?)
If this person is a sincere, believing, born-again Christian, then someone must have slipped a couple of books by Nietzsche and Machiavelli into his Bible. I can envision The Prince, and Beyond Good and Evil, bound in there somewhere between Galatians and Revelation, no doubt by Godless nihilistic conspirators.
But seriously, crazy people don't perceive even such basic ideological contradictions. I've seen this firsthand in paranoid schizophrenics. They feel quite free to just make it up as they go along.
I think we've identified a unique personality disorder. It isn't hard to diagnose, because most of the patients call themselves "conservatives."
Charge nurse, call the orderlies, and break out the Thorazine. This is no problem that a little heavy sedation won't fix.
MANIFESTO JOE IS AN UNDERGROUND WRITER LIVING IN TEXAS.
Originally posted on Marc McDonald's Beggars Can Be Choosers, Aug. 29, 2005.
When I heard the title of Michael Savage's latest screed -- Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions -- the irony wasn't lost on me. This is from a man who:
Was fired from MSNBC for telling a caller to "get AIDS and die" among other things.
Has referred to Iraqi prisoners as "subhumans" and called for them to be summarily executed by the thousands.
Said the tsunami that struck East Asian countries was not a tragedy but rather a message from God.
Says women should be denied the vote because they are too emotional -- their hormones rage.
But Savage isn't the only "conservative" who's been waxing psychopathic lately. The vilification of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan has shown a zany viciousness once heard only from the most demented elements of the right. The typically milder-mannered Fred Barnes called her a "crackpot." Rush Limbaugh said Sheehan's story is "nothing more than forged documents." (Two days later Limbaugh denied saying anything like this, whatever it was that he meant.) One-time Trotskyite turned right-wing straitjacket candidate David Horowitz described Sheehan's protest as "hateful" and said she is dishonoring the memory of her fallen son. A political consultant and blogger named Erick Erickson said Sheehan is "a whore in the form of a grieving mother."
Savage is right about one thing: There is a strain of mental illness spreading in America. Problem is, he's pointing in the wrong direction, as usual. Many of those who call themselves "conservatives" are not merely dangerous radicals. They could use a dose of anti-psychotic drugs.
I've been wondering about the sanity of "conservatives" since the days of Lee Atwater, when it became apparent that these self-styled paragons of virtue would say and do just about anything to win an election. Atwater later died, reportedly of a brain tumor; but I'm convinced that the tumor was benign. It's the brain that was malignant.
It's gotten worse since then. Consider a political landscape in which:
A Republican congressman, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, suggests that if terrorists attack the United States with a nuke, we could "take out their holy sites." (Presumably he would hold all Muslims responsible.)
The Rev. Pat Robertson, one of our best-known "Christian" broadcasters, suggests that we assassinate a legally elected foreign head of state because we don't like his policies or the company he keeps. (But hey, keep that oil coming.)
Bestselling commentator Ann Coulter says, quite seriously, about Islamic nations that we should "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (Millions buy this shrill woman's books. I suppose these are the readers who cut class the day the professor lectured on The Crusades.)
Barry Goldwater, after leaving politics, lamented that the Republican Party had been taken over by "a bunch of kooks." This was ironic when one recalls LBJ supporters in 1964 saying about rival candidate Goldwater, "In your guts you know he's nuts." If Goldwater scared people back then, what does that say about some of the loonies who hold high office now?
I suggest something further: That pretty much describes the whole contemporary "conservative" movement. It's not just some of the top politicos, pundits and preachers who are spouting rubber-room rhetoric. It's become like a bizarre cult of millions. The only positive aspect about how many of these fanatical weirdos there are is that they could never have all fit into the compound at Mount Carmel.
The Texas Republican Party, in its delusional 2004 platform, for example, urges that the IRS be eliminated, along with "income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax." The state GOP would also kill "the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the position of Surgeon General, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce and Labor." (I guess when you believe that The Rapture is coming soon, who needs a government?)
The comparably deranged 2000 platform calls for America to return to the gold standard and supports "individual teachers' right to teach creation science in Texas public schools." It also calls for the United States to quit the United Nations and re-establish control of the Panama Canal. (It stops short of unleashing Chiang Kai-shek's skeletal remains on mainland China.)
Consider that this is the political party that is governing Texas, virtually unchallenged.
Then there are the assorted lunatics who blog, argue in chat rooms, etc. A "Christian conservative" who identified himself (herself?) as "frogribs" posted a reply to an earlier article of mine on this blog in which he wrote:
"Yes, it is better `to have the London subway system be a battleground than to have al Qaeda blowing up folks over here.' The duty of the president is to place the lives and well being of Americans above all others." (I'm glad Bush was thinking that when he misled the country into a needless war in Iraq. And I'm certain the British will be thrilled to know we're willing to use them, and other allied civilians, as human shields.)
"Iraqi civilian casualties have occurred, but at a rate lower than anyone expected." (Was this person here, on this planet, in March 2003? We were hearing that this would be a cakewalk, and that Iraqis would be tossing rose petals at our soldiers' feet. Since then, dozens of suicide bombings later, the cake's been decorated with entrails, and the petals look curiously like toenails.)
"The U.S. still faces an insurgency, but they must remain to complete the mission in order to avoid the disastrous result learned in Vietnam. Napoleon said it best, 'If you decide to take Paris, take Paris.' Finish the job. ..." (This person evidently never heard about Waterloo. Or Nixon's hapless "Vietnamization" policy. What should we call this now -- "Iraqification"?)
"Does anyone remember how we got this country? We got it by force. We decimated the Indians ... We invaded the Spanish and the Mexicans and we took the spoils. We exploited slaves until the error was purged with the blood of 500,000 of our countrymen ... Manifest Destiny still runs in my veins and the veins of the free and the brave ..."
(Gosh, so America really was largely built on genocide, slavery and military aggression? Since it worked so well in the past, why don't we do all that stuff again? And when they bring back the slave auctions, I wonder -- how much would Jesus bid?)
If this person is a sincere, believing, born-again Christian, then someone must have slipped a couple of books by Nietzsche and Machiavelli into his Bible. I can envision The Prince, and Beyond Good and Evil, bound in there somewhere between Galatians and Revelation, no doubt by Godless nihilistic conspirators.
But seriously, crazy people don't perceive even such basic ideological contradictions. I've seen this firsthand in paranoid schizophrenics. They feel quite free to just make it up as they go along.
I think we've identified a unique personality disorder. It isn't hard to diagnose, because most of the patients call themselves "conservatives."
Charge nurse, call the orderlies, and break out the Thorazine. This is no problem that a little heavy sedation won't fix.
MANIFESTO JOE IS AN UNDERGROUND WRITER LIVING IN TEXAS.
Monday, May 28, 2007
A Few Thoughts On Memorial Day
By Manifesto Joe
In my youth I studiously avoided all things military -- such were the times. As a teen, I didn't know anybody, not even the most macho right-wing dolt, who wanted to go to Vietnam. At 18 I reluctantly registered for the draft, but the war ended (infamously) while I was in college, under deferment. It seemed surreal then. People like me, coming of age in the '70s, could barely remember a time when there wasn't a Vietnam War.
But now, this Memorial Day, I think about my dad. I found out 28 years after his death that he won 5 Bronze Stars in the Pacific theater of World War II. He never told stories when I was a kid; he didn't seem to want to talk about any of it. I think he had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I didn't know about his war record until I found his discharge papers among my mom's stuff a couple of years ago.
But people like him put it on the line for an America that hardly seems to exist anymore. The chickenhawks betrayed us, first with Vietnam and now with the Iraq fiasco, and sullied the memory of people like my dad.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas
In my youth I studiously avoided all things military -- such were the times. As a teen, I didn't know anybody, not even the most macho right-wing dolt, who wanted to go to Vietnam. At 18 I reluctantly registered for the draft, but the war ended (infamously) while I was in college, under deferment. It seemed surreal then. People like me, coming of age in the '70s, could barely remember a time when there wasn't a Vietnam War.
But now, this Memorial Day, I think about my dad. I found out 28 years after his death that he won 5 Bronze Stars in the Pacific theater of World War II. He never told stories when I was a kid; he didn't seem to want to talk about any of it. I think he had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I didn't know about his war record until I found his discharge papers among my mom's stuff a couple of years ago.
But people like him put it on the line for an America that hardly seems to exist anymore. The chickenhawks betrayed us, first with Vietnam and now with the Iraq fiasco, and sullied the memory of people like my dad.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas
Sunday, May 27, 2007
He's Lost It: Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick Declares His Power "Absolute"
By Manifesto Joe
Among infamous serial killers, they're often named Wayne (Something or Other). Among Texas politicians, they seem to be named Tom (DeLay, Craddick).
If anyone comes close to Tom DeLay as an embodiment of the crypto-fascist outfit that the Texas Republican Party has become, that person must now be state House Speaker Tom Craddick.
This from various news sources: Craddick, when confronted Friday night with motions to remove him as speaker, declared that his power to disregard such motions is "absolute." His parliamentarian and her assistant resigned and were replaced after a two-hour recess. Many Republicans were angered and in shock. Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, was quoted: "I knew we had a speaker. I didn't know we had a dictator."
The New York Times reported:
"During the five-hour spectacle, Mr. Craddick outmaneuvered his opponents, lawmakers who tried to overtake the speaker’s podium were physically restrained and the House parliamentarian resigned before the House adjourned shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday. ...
"Democrats and Republicans complain that Mr. Craddick, Republican of Midland, has ruled with an iron fist. They say his style often forces them to vote against the interests of their districts."
Craddick is an almost 40-year legislator from Midland -- recall, just incidentally, that this is the flat, treeless, right-wing oilfield paradise where George W. and Laura Bush spent much of their undoubtedly idyllic childhoods.
He now faces an open mutiny within his own right-wing party, and for good reasons. He has faced an insurgency within Republican ranks for a while. No Democrat would ever have trusted him further than the next Republican lobbyist. But he has a well-earned reputation as a despot, and even the Republicans are rebelling against the megalomania that is in full display now.
Craddick's history as a tin-pot Napoleon is a long one. In '03, when the newly Republican-controlled Legislature was busy Gerrymandering the state's congressional districts, some of the Democrats in the Legislature split for Ardmore, Okla., where they could hole up and prevent a quorum. They said they actually had to cross the state lines to do this. The reason: Herr Craddick had ze state troopers out looking for zem, to bring zem in, unter ze orderz. Achtung.
Anyway, the House and Senate eventually managed, with then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's invaluable help, to Gerrymander Texas to a congressional Republican majority for the next couple of generations.
DeLay was eventually indicted on criminal charges stemming from alleged campaign finance violations. The trial is pending. And, let us not forget Craddick's role as one of DeLay's state Republican toadies. They were very tight back then.
But a general thing to ponder is the Republican Party's incredible talent for jacking itself, and the country, around, and usually both at once. In Texas, the problems with Craddick began right after the Republicans gained control of the state House for the first time in 130 years.
Democrats can be quite exasperating at times. But one thing I've noticed about Republicans, when they are taken seriously and voted into office: When given power, it takes them about one-tenth of the time to shit their britches.
I sincerely hope the situation can get better, and without so many diapers at public expense.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Among infamous serial killers, they're often named Wayne (Something or Other). Among Texas politicians, they seem to be named Tom (DeLay, Craddick).
If anyone comes close to Tom DeLay as an embodiment of the crypto-fascist outfit that the Texas Republican Party has become, that person must now be state House Speaker Tom Craddick.
This from various news sources: Craddick, when confronted Friday night with motions to remove him as speaker, declared that his power to disregard such motions is "absolute." His parliamentarian and her assistant resigned and were replaced after a two-hour recess. Many Republicans were angered and in shock. Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, was quoted: "I knew we had a speaker. I didn't know we had a dictator."
The New York Times reported:
"During the five-hour spectacle, Mr. Craddick outmaneuvered his opponents, lawmakers who tried to overtake the speaker’s podium were physically restrained and the House parliamentarian resigned before the House adjourned shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday. ...
"Democrats and Republicans complain that Mr. Craddick, Republican of Midland, has ruled with an iron fist. They say his style often forces them to vote against the interests of their districts."
Craddick is an almost 40-year legislator from Midland -- recall, just incidentally, that this is the flat, treeless, right-wing oilfield paradise where George W. and Laura Bush spent much of their undoubtedly idyllic childhoods.
He now faces an open mutiny within his own right-wing party, and for good reasons. He has faced an insurgency within Republican ranks for a while. No Democrat would ever have trusted him further than the next Republican lobbyist. But he has a well-earned reputation as a despot, and even the Republicans are rebelling against the megalomania that is in full display now.
Craddick's history as a tin-pot Napoleon is a long one. In '03, when the newly Republican-controlled Legislature was busy Gerrymandering the state's congressional districts, some of the Democrats in the Legislature split for Ardmore, Okla., where they could hole up and prevent a quorum. They said they actually had to cross the state lines to do this. The reason: Herr Craddick had ze state troopers out looking for zem, to bring zem in, unter ze orderz. Achtung.
Anyway, the House and Senate eventually managed, with then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's invaluable help, to Gerrymander Texas to a congressional Republican majority for the next couple of generations.
DeLay was eventually indicted on criminal charges stemming from alleged campaign finance violations. The trial is pending. And, let us not forget Craddick's role as one of DeLay's state Republican toadies. They were very tight back then.
But a general thing to ponder is the Republican Party's incredible talent for jacking itself, and the country, around, and usually both at once. In Texas, the problems with Craddick began right after the Republicans gained control of the state House for the first time in 130 years.
Democrats can be quite exasperating at times. But one thing I've noticed about Republicans, when they are taken seriously and voted into office: When given power, it takes them about one-tenth of the time to shit their britches.
I sincerely hope the situation can get better, and without so many diapers at public expense.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
From Joe's Vault: It's The Exploitation, Stupid: Key Issue Few Are Discussing In Immigration Debate
By Manifesto Joe
This was originally posted on Marc McDonald's Beggars Can Be Choosers (see links) on May 4, 2006. A year later, it seems relevant enough to recycle; sixty-somethings among our lawmakers are now behaving worse than the stars of the World Wrestling Federation as they grapple with legislation on this issue.
The debate about illegal immigration has focused largely on cost-benefit analysis, with people citing conflicting studies about the effects on wages, taxes, jobs, health care, education costs, etc.
What few seem to be talking about is that this issue stems from two things: Mexico's corrupt, oligarchic system; and, increasingly, our own.
What is the effect on wages? According to Harvard economists George J. Borjas and Lawrence F. Katz, from 1980 to 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of U.S.-born men by nearly 4 percent. The poorest 10 percent of the work force suffered worse, they wrote, with a 7.4 percent reduction. Among high school dropouts, it was 8.2 percent.
What is the effect on jobs? It's been long argued that illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans won't. That seemed largely true in the 1980s, but less so now. In Texas, where I live, it's easy to see how this has changed. Just walk up to any construction site and find out how many of the skilled tradesmen there are equally skilled in English.
But Borjas and Katz point out that such effects are mitigated -- for example, certain types of businesses (hand car washes and landscapers) would not even exist without the cheap labor of illegal immigrants.
Borjas wrote in an April 18 op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal: "A larger pool of competing workers lowers relative wages. This does not imply that immigration is a net loss for the economy. After all, the wage losses suffered by workers show up as higher profits to employers and, eventually, as lower prices to consumers. Immigration policy is just another redistribution program. In the short run, it transfers wealth from one group (workers) to another group (employers). Whether or not such transfers are desirable is one of the central questions in the immigration debate."
It is amusing to see some conservatives who take a hard line on immigration latching onto the Borjas-Katz study. I never noticed that these union-busting, Wal-Mart-shopping types were ever concerned about low wages in the past. Their stand is more likely rooted in right-wing xenophobia, not concern for U.S. workers.
This brings us to the Republican Party's great divide on this issue: the bigots versus the exploiters. Among the more "moderate" elitist Republicans, they don't want to lose their gardeners or their cleaning women -- they work so cheap.
It also brings us to the reason all these millions of Mexican nationals come here illegally, often at great risk: The Mexican economy, mismanaged for decades by a corrupt, oligarchic government, can't provide jobs for its large peasant class. And this may be somewhat by design.
The history of the PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party, in Mexico tells the sordid tale of how the 1910-20 revolution was betrayed. In addition to the phony, occasionally murderous one-party "democracy" it operated for 71 years, the PRI eventually gutted many progressive reforms pushed through by legendary President Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s. It so mismanaged the economy that by the late 1970s and early 1980s, wealthy Mexicans were reinvesting assets abroad because they had little confidence in their own economy. And so, even fewer jobs were created in Mexico. And even when times were better, wealth was hoarded, not shared.
In 2004, the World Bank reported that Mexico, which is considered a middle-income nation as a whole, had a 50 percent poverty rate. Corruption remains endemic, and the country's rich seem more than happy to encourage the jobless poor to cross the U.S. border by the millions.
After fraudulent presidential elections, including one in 1988 that was stolen from Cardenas' son Cuauhtemoc, the voters finally got to throw the PRI out.
But the PAN administration that came to power after the 2000 election has proved to be the Fox in charge of the henhouse. For Mexico's poor, life has improved little, if any, under conservative President Vicente Fox.
And NAFTA's "liberalization" of agriculture in Mexico has been a disaster for peasant farmers there, throwing them into direct competition with more mechanized and heavily subsidized U.S. farming operations.
And still the future looks bleaker. Mexico's leftist hopeful for president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has fallen behind the conservative PAN candidate in a recent poll. And in America, our own steady movement toward a corrupt, Mexican-style oligarchy continues unabated under the sleazy administration of George W. Bush.
So, expect millions more illegal immigrants, and thousands more scofflaw U.S. employers who will gladly hire them. They work cheap; they don't make waves; they can't form unions; they will often work off the books, for cash; and if they get hurt on the job, they can't sue.
Forget about the Cro-Magnon Republican idea to make them felons. This is a government that couldn't handle a Category 3 hurricane in New Orleans. How is it going to round up and deport 12 million illegal immigrants?
Expect this debate to go on a long time. But let's get past peripheral questions of how much it costs to educate the immigrants' kids and provide charity health care, how much in taxes they do or don't pay, how much money they spend here or send back to Mexico.
It's the exploitation, stupid -- there, and here.
MANIFESTO JOE IS AN UNDERGROUND WRITER LIVING IN TEXAS.
This was originally posted on Marc McDonald's Beggars Can Be Choosers (see links) on May 4, 2006. A year later, it seems relevant enough to recycle; sixty-somethings among our lawmakers are now behaving worse than the stars of the World Wrestling Federation as they grapple with legislation on this issue.
The debate about illegal immigration has focused largely on cost-benefit analysis, with people citing conflicting studies about the effects on wages, taxes, jobs, health care, education costs, etc.
What few seem to be talking about is that this issue stems from two things: Mexico's corrupt, oligarchic system; and, increasingly, our own.
What is the effect on wages? According to Harvard economists George J. Borjas and Lawrence F. Katz, from 1980 to 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of U.S.-born men by nearly 4 percent. The poorest 10 percent of the work force suffered worse, they wrote, with a 7.4 percent reduction. Among high school dropouts, it was 8.2 percent.
What is the effect on jobs? It's been long argued that illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans won't. That seemed largely true in the 1980s, but less so now. In Texas, where I live, it's easy to see how this has changed. Just walk up to any construction site and find out how many of the skilled tradesmen there are equally skilled in English.
But Borjas and Katz point out that such effects are mitigated -- for example, certain types of businesses (hand car washes and landscapers) would not even exist without the cheap labor of illegal immigrants.
Borjas wrote in an April 18 op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal: "A larger pool of competing workers lowers relative wages. This does not imply that immigration is a net loss for the economy. After all, the wage losses suffered by workers show up as higher profits to employers and, eventually, as lower prices to consumers. Immigration policy is just another redistribution program. In the short run, it transfers wealth from one group (workers) to another group (employers). Whether or not such transfers are desirable is one of the central questions in the immigration debate."
It is amusing to see some conservatives who take a hard line on immigration latching onto the Borjas-Katz study. I never noticed that these union-busting, Wal-Mart-shopping types were ever concerned about low wages in the past. Their stand is more likely rooted in right-wing xenophobia, not concern for U.S. workers.
This brings us to the Republican Party's great divide on this issue: the bigots versus the exploiters. Among the more "moderate" elitist Republicans, they don't want to lose their gardeners or their cleaning women -- they work so cheap.
It also brings us to the reason all these millions of Mexican nationals come here illegally, often at great risk: The Mexican economy, mismanaged for decades by a corrupt, oligarchic government, can't provide jobs for its large peasant class. And this may be somewhat by design.
The history of the PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party, in Mexico tells the sordid tale of how the 1910-20 revolution was betrayed. In addition to the phony, occasionally murderous one-party "democracy" it operated for 71 years, the PRI eventually gutted many progressive reforms pushed through by legendary President Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s. It so mismanaged the economy that by the late 1970s and early 1980s, wealthy Mexicans were reinvesting assets abroad because they had little confidence in their own economy. And so, even fewer jobs were created in Mexico. And even when times were better, wealth was hoarded, not shared.
In 2004, the World Bank reported that Mexico, which is considered a middle-income nation as a whole, had a 50 percent poverty rate. Corruption remains endemic, and the country's rich seem more than happy to encourage the jobless poor to cross the U.S. border by the millions.
After fraudulent presidential elections, including one in 1988 that was stolen from Cardenas' son Cuauhtemoc, the voters finally got to throw the PRI out.
But the PAN administration that came to power after the 2000 election has proved to be the Fox in charge of the henhouse. For Mexico's poor, life has improved little, if any, under conservative President Vicente Fox.
And NAFTA's "liberalization" of agriculture in Mexico has been a disaster for peasant farmers there, throwing them into direct competition with more mechanized and heavily subsidized U.S. farming operations.
And still the future looks bleaker. Mexico's leftist hopeful for president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has fallen behind the conservative PAN candidate in a recent poll. And in America, our own steady movement toward a corrupt, Mexican-style oligarchy continues unabated under the sleazy administration of George W. Bush.
So, expect millions more illegal immigrants, and thousands more scofflaw U.S. employers who will gladly hire them. They work cheap; they don't make waves; they can't form unions; they will often work off the books, for cash; and if they get hurt on the job, they can't sue.
Forget about the Cro-Magnon Republican idea to make them felons. This is a government that couldn't handle a Category 3 hurricane in New Orleans. How is it going to round up and deport 12 million illegal immigrants?
Expect this debate to go on a long time. But let's get past peripheral questions of how much it costs to educate the immigrants' kids and provide charity health care, how much in taxes they do or don't pay, how much money they spend here or send back to Mexico.
It's the exploitation, stupid -- there, and here.
MANIFESTO JOE IS AN UNDERGROUND WRITER LIVING IN TEXAS.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 3: John Ashcroft Sings "Let The Eagle Soar"
Dig that crazy vibrato!
And, that arty thing that the camera person was doing with Old Glory! It's amazing what the lack of focus can do.
From a comment I recently left on Blue Girl, Red State (see links): One nasty, nightmarish memory: John Ashcroft, I think, recorded, and at times was called upon to sing in a stilted vocal, a ditty called "Let the Eagle Soar." It was an original composition. I recall enduring it once on TV. The 1930s versions of Guy Lombardo or Lawrence Welk wouldn't have included this. It was cheesy enough, and square enough, to have monopolized rural Wisconsin for a couple of centuries. His damage upon our culture was almost as serious as it was upon our government.
I didn't know when I left the comment that I could get the video!
And, that arty thing that the camera person was doing with Old Glory! It's amazing what the lack of focus can do.
From a comment I recently left on Blue Girl, Red State (see links): One nasty, nightmarish memory: John Ashcroft, I think, recorded, and at times was called upon to sing in a stilted vocal, a ditty called "Let the Eagle Soar." It was an original composition. I recall enduring it once on TV. The 1930s versions of Guy Lombardo or Lawrence Welk wouldn't have included this. It was cheesy enough, and square enough, to have monopolized rural Wisconsin for a couple of centuries. His damage upon our culture was almost as serious as it was upon our government.
I didn't know when I left the comment that I could get the video!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
It's Scary When Ron Paul Comes Across As The Sanest GOP Candidate
By Manifesto Joe
Yes, the late Molly Ivins dubbed him "Congressman Clueless." Yes, he's a radical libertarian who would have the U.S. go back to that unregulated capitalist utopia of 1906, when a third of Americans lived in unmitigated poverty and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published.
But he's actually making the most sense of all 10 hapless hopefuls for the Republican presidential nomination. Of course, he hasn't got a chance to win one delegate.
He's Texas' own Ron Paul, longtime congressman and one-time Libertarian Party candidate for president (1988).
Predictably, he's not being depicted well by the Mainstream Media. But, let's let the congressman's words stand on their own, with minimal spin. This is from one of the recent GOP debates, regarding 9/11 and the Mideast situation:
PAUL: Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.
We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)
[...]
PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- [bell rings] -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.
[...]
PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.
They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?
Congressman Paul, despite himself, was pretty articulate, and raised points that have been unheard of in Republican Party discourse for decades -- for example, the long-range stupidity of the 1953 CIA coup in Iran.
Predictably, the MSM are dog-piling on him. Time's Joe Klein writes of a "singular moment of weirdness." But Media Matters for America points out that Paul's points were supported by the official 9/11 report.
Paul for president? Nope. But I'm happy he's in the race and telling at least some of it like it is.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Yes, the late Molly Ivins dubbed him "Congressman Clueless." Yes, he's a radical libertarian who would have the U.S. go back to that unregulated capitalist utopia of 1906, when a third of Americans lived in unmitigated poverty and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published.
But he's actually making the most sense of all 10 hapless hopefuls for the Republican presidential nomination. Of course, he hasn't got a chance to win one delegate.
He's Texas' own Ron Paul, longtime congressman and one-time Libertarian Party candidate for president (1988).
Predictably, he's not being depicted well by the Mainstream Media. But, let's let the congressman's words stand on their own, with minimal spin. This is from one of the recent GOP debates, regarding 9/11 and the Mideast situation:
PAUL: Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.
We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)
[...]
PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- [bell rings] -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.
[...]
PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.
They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?
Congressman Paul, despite himself, was pretty articulate, and raised points that have been unheard of in Republican Party discourse for decades -- for example, the long-range stupidity of the 1953 CIA coup in Iran.
Predictably, the MSM are dog-piling on him. Time's Joe Klein writes of a "singular moment of weirdness." But Media Matters for America points out that Paul's points were supported by the official 9/11 report.
Paul for president? Nope. But I'm happy he's in the race and telling at least some of it like it is.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Bill Moyers Is One Of The Last Of A Dying Breed: A Real Opinion Journalist
This video is called The Cost of War. Mr. Moyers is in his 70s, and I will miss him terribly when he is gone.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Bye, Wolfman: The Neo-Con House Of Cards Keeps Crashing
By Manifesto Joe
So, Paul Wolfowitz has finally faced the music and will resign as World Bank president. It was absurd for the likes of him to serve as its chief in the first place, regardless of the scandal that led to his demise.
This was the man who was No. 2 at the Pentagon when the most senseless war in modern times -- I would dare say even more senseless than Vietnam -- was planned. How in creation did anyone think that this was the man to put in charge of a philanthropic development bank, to help the poor?
Forget about the scandal -- this is just typical of the arrogance of people in high positions. Seldom do any of them, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal or any points in between, think much about ethical issues.
Wolfowitz was clearly and immediately a ridiculous choice for the post, and the rest of the world practically laughed at it from Day One.
I have no concern about how he conducts his personal life. If we could have Bill Clinton back in the White House now, I would be personally willing to truck in the whores. (That is assuming that the right wing had an accurate take on Bill. Not likely. Anyway, just joking.)
I don't care that Wolfie had a girlfriend, and I'm not concerned that he got her lots of good pay and perks. It's naive to think that such things don't go on, in both the public and private sectors, all the time.
The point always was that appointing the likes of him to this post was like putting Leona Helmsley in charge of some hotel workers union. It was absurd on first principles.
But now, let's see whom Il Doofus will suggest for his successor!
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
So, Paul Wolfowitz has finally faced the music and will resign as World Bank president. It was absurd for the likes of him to serve as its chief in the first place, regardless of the scandal that led to his demise.
This was the man who was No. 2 at the Pentagon when the most senseless war in modern times -- I would dare say even more senseless than Vietnam -- was planned. How in creation did anyone think that this was the man to put in charge of a philanthropic development bank, to help the poor?
Forget about the scandal -- this is just typical of the arrogance of people in high positions. Seldom do any of them, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal or any points in between, think much about ethical issues.
Wolfowitz was clearly and immediately a ridiculous choice for the post, and the rest of the world practically laughed at it from Day One.
I have no concern about how he conducts his personal life. If we could have Bill Clinton back in the White House now, I would be personally willing to truck in the whores. (That is assuming that the right wing had an accurate take on Bill. Not likely. Anyway, just joking.)
I don't care that Wolfie had a girlfriend, and I'm not concerned that he got her lots of good pay and perks. It's naive to think that such things don't go on, in both the public and private sectors, all the time.
The point always was that appointing the likes of him to this post was like putting Leona Helmsley in charge of some hotel workers union. It was absurd on first principles.
But now, let's see whom Il Doofus will suggest for his successor!
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
You Didn't Get Kissed First For Your Viagra: Medicare Drug Plan Just Another Way To Pick Americans' Pockets
By Manifesto Joe
I know it's tiresome to keep saying, "I told you so." But when you see people going wrong on first principles, over and over, it's hard not to say so. The latest news about the highly touted Medicare prescription drug plan is a prime example.
If you're old enough, or if you have parents or in-laws who are, you may remember the sales pitch: coverage for everybody 65 or older who signs up, regardless of income or health status; and lower prices through federal negotiations with drug companies.
Well, guess what, Gramps -- you didn't get kissed first for your Viagra. Just like every piecemeal "reform" of the dysfunctional U.S. health-care system, this one turned out to be just one more way for the stockholders and the boardroom boys to pocket more quid. When these bills are written, the lobbyists always seem to work out the right angles.
This in recently from the Washington Post:
"... private insurers in the new Medicare prescription drug program may be losing their leverage over drug manufacturers as they try to hold down medicine costs for seniors and the federal government, House investigators have found.
"Prices for 10 of the most prescribed brand-name medications have gone up an average of 6.8 percent since December under Medicare private insurance plans, while wholesale prices for the same drugs have risen just 3 percent, according to House Oversight and Government Reform investigators. ...
"Premiums for Medicare drug plans have jumped 13 percent over last year, when the drug plans went into effect, the investigators say.
"And the rebates that insurance companies are getting from drug manufacturers are expected to be 4.6 percent of total drug costs, down from 5.2 percent last year. A year ago, Medicare actuaries had expected insurers in 2007 to secure manufacturers' rebates of 6 percent, then pass those savings on to seniors and the government."
It seems like every time U.S. government, at the federal or state level, tries to do some sort of piecemeal "reform" of our "system" like this, we should all check to see if we still have our wallets.
There are so many examples of how patients and taxpayers are ultimately robbed in this system, it's ad infinitum. But permit me one personal anecdote, not related to Medicare.
I have a bad foot, related to a work injury in my youth. I went to a podiatrist to get special shoes to relieve pain, and he gave me specifications to take to an orthotics provider. I didn't have to pay out of pocket for a workers comp prescription, but I was stunned by the cost for the insurer: $600. When I went back to my podiatrist with these ugly, Frankenstein-like shoes, he shook his head and commented, "They always overcharge for these."
I ended up having to jump through a lot of hoops to get those shoes paid for, because of that price. I had to drive to another city for independent medical evaluation, etc. Finally, I got approval.
Well, the shoes sucked. My foot hurt as badly or worse. I would have done as well with $16.99 trash from K-Mart. I ended up buying from a German manufacturer reputed to make shoes as good or better than orthotic companies. Cost out of pocket: $210. They're great -- I'm wearing them right now, as I type. And they don't look like something Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein's monster would wear. ("Friend -- Goooood!)
But, back to Medicare: What is very comparable is that ultimately, somebody pays for this blatant profiteering. And I can guarantee that it isn't the stockholders, the drug companies, the insurers, the hospitals or the doctors. It's us: the patients, insured and uninsured; and of course, the taxpayers.
And, don't think there aren't even more pass-ons, all of them to poor people. In Texas, where I live, Medicaid recipients have started paying co-payments for medications. This is a serious matter for people on very limited fixed incomes. Some can't afford it. But of course, these are people who have absolutely no political power.
And, guess who was governor of this state when these Medicaid cuts were passed? (His current address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.)
I eagerly await Michael Moore's new film in hopes that he will blast the cover off this clip joint of a "system." Notice that no other country on the planet is emulating ours. Wonder why?
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
I know it's tiresome to keep saying, "I told you so." But when you see people going wrong on first principles, over and over, it's hard not to say so. The latest news about the highly touted Medicare prescription drug plan is a prime example.
If you're old enough, or if you have parents or in-laws who are, you may remember the sales pitch: coverage for everybody 65 or older who signs up, regardless of income or health status; and lower prices through federal negotiations with drug companies.
Well, guess what, Gramps -- you didn't get kissed first for your Viagra. Just like every piecemeal "reform" of the dysfunctional U.S. health-care system, this one turned out to be just one more way for the stockholders and the boardroom boys to pocket more quid. When these bills are written, the lobbyists always seem to work out the right angles.
This in recently from the Washington Post:
"... private insurers in the new Medicare prescription drug program may be losing their leverage over drug manufacturers as they try to hold down medicine costs for seniors and the federal government, House investigators have found.
"Prices for 10 of the most prescribed brand-name medications have gone up an average of 6.8 percent since December under Medicare private insurance plans, while wholesale prices for the same drugs have risen just 3 percent, according to House Oversight and Government Reform investigators. ...
"Premiums for Medicare drug plans have jumped 13 percent over last year, when the drug plans went into effect, the investigators say.
"And the rebates that insurance companies are getting from drug manufacturers are expected to be 4.6 percent of total drug costs, down from 5.2 percent last year. A year ago, Medicare actuaries had expected insurers in 2007 to secure manufacturers' rebates of 6 percent, then pass those savings on to seniors and the government."
It seems like every time U.S. government, at the federal or state level, tries to do some sort of piecemeal "reform" of our "system" like this, we should all check to see if we still have our wallets.
There are so many examples of how patients and taxpayers are ultimately robbed in this system, it's ad infinitum. But permit me one personal anecdote, not related to Medicare.
I have a bad foot, related to a work injury in my youth. I went to a podiatrist to get special shoes to relieve pain, and he gave me specifications to take to an orthotics provider. I didn't have to pay out of pocket for a workers comp prescription, but I was stunned by the cost for the insurer: $600. When I went back to my podiatrist with these ugly, Frankenstein-like shoes, he shook his head and commented, "They always overcharge for these."
I ended up having to jump through a lot of hoops to get those shoes paid for, because of that price. I had to drive to another city for independent medical evaluation, etc. Finally, I got approval.
Well, the shoes sucked. My foot hurt as badly or worse. I would have done as well with $16.99 trash from K-Mart. I ended up buying from a German manufacturer reputed to make shoes as good or better than orthotic companies. Cost out of pocket: $210. They're great -- I'm wearing them right now, as I type. And they don't look like something Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein's monster would wear. ("Friend -- Goooood!)
But, back to Medicare: What is very comparable is that ultimately, somebody pays for this blatant profiteering. And I can guarantee that it isn't the stockholders, the drug companies, the insurers, the hospitals or the doctors. It's us: the patients, insured and uninsured; and of course, the taxpayers.
And, don't think there aren't even more pass-ons, all of them to poor people. In Texas, where I live, Medicaid recipients have started paying co-payments for medications. This is a serious matter for people on very limited fixed incomes. Some can't afford it. But of course, these are people who have absolutely no political power.
And, guess who was governor of this state when these Medicaid cuts were passed? (His current address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.)
I eagerly await Michael Moore's new film in hopes that he will blast the cover off this clip joint of a "system." Notice that no other country on the planet is emulating ours. Wonder why?
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Good Riddance: Blair Helped Lead Anglo-American Alliance Into Disgrace
By Manifesto Joe
I'm convinced that history will remember Tony Blair as Bush's enabler: the ally who lent tragic "legitimacy" to rogue actions that at least temporarily destroyed both U.S. and British credibility on the world stage. After 10 years, this is his only legacy, and it has a very bitter look.
Blair has announced that he will step down as prime minister soon, leaving the Labour Party to see what can be salvaged of its damaged reputation at home. I doubt that Britons really want to go through many more rounds of Thatcherism or John Major, so someone will probably be able to resurrect Labour for a new generation.
But the harm Blair has done has been staggering on many levels. He has announced his imminent departure just as two British officials have been convicted of leaking a classified memo about a meeting between "Poodle" Blair and Il Doofus himself, in violation of something called the Official Secrets Act. (I suppose I shouldn't sound condescending here. The U.S. appears to be moving far beyond the likes of this.)
This news from The Canadian Press:
David Keogh, a cipher expert who was convicted on two counts, had admitted passing on the secret memo about April 2004 talks between the two leaders in which Bush purportedly referred to bombing Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera.
Keogh was accused of passing the memo to co-defendant, Leo O'Connor, 44, who in turn handed it to his boss, Tony Clarke, then a legislator who voted against Britain's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Keogh, 50, told London's Central Criminal Court he felt strongly about the memo, which he had to relay to diplomats overseas using secure methods, and hoped it would come to wider attention.
"The main person in my mind was John Kerry, who at the time was American candidate for the U.S. presidential election in 2004," Keogh had testified.
He admitted holding "unfavourable" views on Bush, but said he did not think publishing the document would hurt Britain's security or international relations.
The Daily Mirror newspaper reported that the memo showed Blair arguing against Bush's suggestion of bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Mirror said its sources disagreed on whether Bush's suggestion was serious.
Yeah, so Il Doofus was just joking. I had honestly hoped that he was kidding when he started talking about invading a foreign country with no solid evidence for such an action. The problem with his jokes is that they are "practical" ones, with enormous consequences.
And, there are more problems plaguing The Poodle Dude. This from The Associated Press:
Blair's last months in office also have been overshadowed by a police investigation into claims that his party and the opposition traded political honors for cash. Senior Blair aide Ruth Turner, Blair's chief fundraiser Lord Levy and two others have been arrested during the police inquiry into claims that seats in the House of Lords and other honors were awarded in exchange for party donations. Prosecutors are considering whether anyone should be charged.
Blair was questioned twice by police as a witness, but is not considered a suspect.
Blair had a unique opportunity to have stood against a manifestly unbalanced leader of the Western world and resisted an action that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people; one that has seriously set back U.S.-British relations with the rest of the world for at least a generation. He chose to be led on a leash.
There are those who defend Blair based on domestic policies. He is said to have done much to help Britain's poor. Sadly, whatever he did in this regard will always be overshadowed by his decision to blindly follow the most foolish and reckless leader the U.S. has ever had. It will be his albatross for life.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I'm convinced that history will remember Tony Blair as Bush's enabler: the ally who lent tragic "legitimacy" to rogue actions that at least temporarily destroyed both U.S. and British credibility on the world stage. After 10 years, this is his only legacy, and it has a very bitter look.
Blair has announced that he will step down as prime minister soon, leaving the Labour Party to see what can be salvaged of its damaged reputation at home. I doubt that Britons really want to go through many more rounds of Thatcherism or John Major, so someone will probably be able to resurrect Labour for a new generation.
But the harm Blair has done has been staggering on many levels. He has announced his imminent departure just as two British officials have been convicted of leaking a classified memo about a meeting between "Poodle" Blair and Il Doofus himself, in violation of something called the Official Secrets Act. (I suppose I shouldn't sound condescending here. The U.S. appears to be moving far beyond the likes of this.)
This news from The Canadian Press:
David Keogh, a cipher expert who was convicted on two counts, had admitted passing on the secret memo about April 2004 talks between the two leaders in which Bush purportedly referred to bombing Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera.
Keogh was accused of passing the memo to co-defendant, Leo O'Connor, 44, who in turn handed it to his boss, Tony Clarke, then a legislator who voted against Britain's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Keogh, 50, told London's Central Criminal Court he felt strongly about the memo, which he had to relay to diplomats overseas using secure methods, and hoped it would come to wider attention.
"The main person in my mind was John Kerry, who at the time was American candidate for the U.S. presidential election in 2004," Keogh had testified.
He admitted holding "unfavourable" views on Bush, but said he did not think publishing the document would hurt Britain's security or international relations.
The Daily Mirror newspaper reported that the memo showed Blair arguing against Bush's suggestion of bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Mirror said its sources disagreed on whether Bush's suggestion was serious.
Yeah, so Il Doofus was just joking. I had honestly hoped that he was kidding when he started talking about invading a foreign country with no solid evidence for such an action. The problem with his jokes is that they are "practical" ones, with enormous consequences.
And, there are more problems plaguing The Poodle Dude. This from The Associated Press:
Blair's last months in office also have been overshadowed by a police investigation into claims that his party and the opposition traded political honors for cash. Senior Blair aide Ruth Turner, Blair's chief fundraiser Lord Levy and two others have been arrested during the police inquiry into claims that seats in the House of Lords and other honors were awarded in exchange for party donations. Prosecutors are considering whether anyone should be charged.
Blair was questioned twice by police as a witness, but is not considered a suspect.
Blair had a unique opportunity to have stood against a manifestly unbalanced leader of the Western world and resisted an action that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people; one that has seriously set back U.S.-British relations with the rest of the world for at least a generation. He chose to be led on a leash.
There are those who defend Blair based on domestic policies. He is said to have done much to help Britain's poor. Sadly, whatever he did in this regard will always be overshadowed by his decision to blindly follow the most foolish and reckless leader the U.S. has ever had. It will be his albatross for life.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
From Joe's Vault: George W. Bush Is No Conservative
By Manifesto Joe. First published on Marc McDonald's beggarscanbechoosers.com, June 24, 2005. Reprinted in progressivedailybeacon.com
The day before Iran held the first round of its presidential election, George W. Bush issued a statement basically calling the Iranian process a sham: this from a man whom the Supreme Court appointed to the presidency on rather zany legal grounds, and whose "re-election" was suspect, given the shenanigans in Ohio and other states.
Ostensibly, Bush was motivated by a desire to one day see U.S.-style democracy in Iran. One would have to read his mind to be sure.
The result: Iran's hard-liners exhorted Islamic fundamentalists to get to the polls; evidently, they went, and the reformers lost. Regime officials snidely thanked Bush repeatedly the day after the vote. It would appear that he helped ensure the life span of their theocracy.
This was one small example of this administration's moronic hubris -- but it was quintessential Bush. In campaign politics, he leads a charmed life. But in policy-making, he and his team have, time after time, shown virtually no circumspection.
Bush's lack of genuine compassion has long been documented, going back to when he was governor of Texas. He mocked a woman whom he refused to pardon from Death Row ("Please don't kill me," he said to an interviewer in a falsetto voice).
Now it is easy to conclude that he is not only a phony as a "compassionate conservative," but as any kind of conservative.
This is not to say that I am a fan of conservatives. I confess that, long ago, I was once one of them. Experience taught me their true intentions -- to rationalize and defend privilege, most of it unearned; and to dupe as many of the underprivileged as possible into thinking it's in their best interests to side with the winners.
Also, they tend to cite the longevity of human institutions as proof of their purity and soundness; tell that to the victims of pedophile Roman Catholic priests. The typical "thinking" conservative's professed dark view of human nature seems to turn into naive optimism when they encounter power and privilege. Their pessimism seems to apply only to the weak and destitute.
Conservatism is largely an ideology of opportunism. Historically, they have not been unwilling to use illegal force, ranging from CIA-engineered coups to union busting by company goons, to get their way. Their platitudes about the rule of law have a hollow ring.
But even if one really tries to regard conservatives as they would like to be seen, as those who strive to preserve what was best about our past -- it is clear that Bush is a right-wing radical, not a conservative. He has more in common with the hard-line Iranian mullahs whom he reviles than he will ever realize.
Would Winston Churchill have gone on supporting tax bonanzas for the rich in the middle of an expensive war? Would Senator Robert Taft have wanted to drag us into invading a country that had not attacked us, based on intelligence that sounded flimsy even before it was proved bogus? Would Barry Goldwater have approved of the most sweeping rollback of legal rights and protections in decades? Would Ronald Reagan have mined the harbors of Nicaragua? (Oh, yeah, he did do that! -- but then, one could argue that Reagan wasn't a true conservative, either.)
Russell Kirk, regarded as an intellectual founding father of the modern conservative movement in America, wrote an essay, The Essence of Conservatism, in 1957, in which he identified 10 chief principles of American conservative thought.
Among the principles, presented as quotes:
"Power is full of danger; therefore, the good state is one in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and customs."
Packing the courts with extremist ideologues, defying a Congress controlled by his own party, bullying the media, running the executive branch with Nixonian secrecy -- the Bush-Cheney-Rove gang has ignored that admonition so many times, it is pointless to go on. Suffice it to say that, very early, one pundit dubbed them "The Mayberry Machiavellians."
"The past is a great storehouse of wisdom."
Did Vietnam, or the disastrous British occupation of Iraq after World War I, enter Bush's mind during the run-up to the war? He is reported to have majored in history at Yale, yet he has again and again displayed profound ignorance of it. As the poet George Santayana, a bona fide conservative, warned, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"In the affairs of nations, the American conservative feels that his country ought to set an example to the world, but ought not to try to remake the world in its image."
Do the words "regime change" sound familiar? Has Gitmo set a good example for democracy wannabes?
"Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not identical; moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as beneficial."
The Bushies should have been told this when they set out to debase Social Security, America's most successful and venerable anti-poverty program, so as to furnish more lucre for Wall Street.
On several counts, Bush and his cohorts fail at what Kirk called essential principles of conservatism. They lack the respect for diversity -- the hallmark of a high civilization, as Kirk described it -- and the foresight, the wise caution, the mature judgment, that has characterized the best classic Burkean conservatives. Bush's consistent failure to learn from mistakes, or even admit them when they are obvious, is not prudent conservative governance.
His idea of conserving the environment is to punch holes in a fragile wildlife refuge; to invade and disastrously occupy a Third World country for its oil, so America can keep driving those gas-guzzling SUVs; and to reject an important treaty that other major world powers have signed on to. A true conservative would want his or her children to inherit a planet worth living on. But when it comes to the environment, this administration ignores sound science and apparently lets oil companies determine policy. Exactly what is being conserved? It's obvious -- profits.
Fortunately, as the screw-ups mount and the body count grows, the court of public opinion seems to be slowly turning against Bush. Real conservatives, or what's left of them, should be worried; Bush's simple-minded, Messianic right-wing radicalism could very well bring down their entire movement.
I pray, literally, that it does, and before this smug fool's second term ends.
If he were to leave office tomorrow, it would take America's so-called liberals decades to pay off some debts, salvage our infrastructure, curtail the putrification of our air and water, and somewhat restore our standing in the world community.
Since our "liberals" and "progressives" have long been, by the standards of Europe and elsewhere, establishment centrists, it shouldn't be much of a stretch for them to, ironically, serve as our country's de facto post-Bush conservatives. I hope they can save the best elements of our recent past.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
The day before Iran held the first round of its presidential election, George W. Bush issued a statement basically calling the Iranian process a sham: this from a man whom the Supreme Court appointed to the presidency on rather zany legal grounds, and whose "re-election" was suspect, given the shenanigans in Ohio and other states.
Ostensibly, Bush was motivated by a desire to one day see U.S.-style democracy in Iran. One would have to read his mind to be sure.
The result: Iran's hard-liners exhorted Islamic fundamentalists to get to the polls; evidently, they went, and the reformers lost. Regime officials snidely thanked Bush repeatedly the day after the vote. It would appear that he helped ensure the life span of their theocracy.
This was one small example of this administration's moronic hubris -- but it was quintessential Bush. In campaign politics, he leads a charmed life. But in policy-making, he and his team have, time after time, shown virtually no circumspection.
Bush's lack of genuine compassion has long been documented, going back to when he was governor of Texas. He mocked a woman whom he refused to pardon from Death Row ("Please don't kill me," he said to an interviewer in a falsetto voice).
Now it is easy to conclude that he is not only a phony as a "compassionate conservative," but as any kind of conservative.
This is not to say that I am a fan of conservatives. I confess that, long ago, I was once one of them. Experience taught me their true intentions -- to rationalize and defend privilege, most of it unearned; and to dupe as many of the underprivileged as possible into thinking it's in their best interests to side with the winners.
Also, they tend to cite the longevity of human institutions as proof of their purity and soundness; tell that to the victims of pedophile Roman Catholic priests. The typical "thinking" conservative's professed dark view of human nature seems to turn into naive optimism when they encounter power and privilege. Their pessimism seems to apply only to the weak and destitute.
Conservatism is largely an ideology of opportunism. Historically, they have not been unwilling to use illegal force, ranging from CIA-engineered coups to union busting by company goons, to get their way. Their platitudes about the rule of law have a hollow ring.
But even if one really tries to regard conservatives as they would like to be seen, as those who strive to preserve what was best about our past -- it is clear that Bush is a right-wing radical, not a conservative. He has more in common with the hard-line Iranian mullahs whom he reviles than he will ever realize.
Would Winston Churchill have gone on supporting tax bonanzas for the rich in the middle of an expensive war? Would Senator Robert Taft have wanted to drag us into invading a country that had not attacked us, based on intelligence that sounded flimsy even before it was proved bogus? Would Barry Goldwater have approved of the most sweeping rollback of legal rights and protections in decades? Would Ronald Reagan have mined the harbors of Nicaragua? (Oh, yeah, he did do that! -- but then, one could argue that Reagan wasn't a true conservative, either.)
Russell Kirk, regarded as an intellectual founding father of the modern conservative movement in America, wrote an essay, The Essence of Conservatism, in 1957, in which he identified 10 chief principles of American conservative thought.
Among the principles, presented as quotes:
"Power is full of danger; therefore, the good state is one in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and customs."
Packing the courts with extremist ideologues, defying a Congress controlled by his own party, bullying the media, running the executive branch with Nixonian secrecy -- the Bush-Cheney-Rove gang has ignored that admonition so many times, it is pointless to go on. Suffice it to say that, very early, one pundit dubbed them "The Mayberry Machiavellians."
"The past is a great storehouse of wisdom."
Did Vietnam, or the disastrous British occupation of Iraq after World War I, enter Bush's mind during the run-up to the war? He is reported to have majored in history at Yale, yet he has again and again displayed profound ignorance of it. As the poet George Santayana, a bona fide conservative, warned, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"In the affairs of nations, the American conservative feels that his country ought to set an example to the world, but ought not to try to remake the world in its image."
Do the words "regime change" sound familiar? Has Gitmo set a good example for democracy wannabes?
"Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not identical; moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as beneficial."
The Bushies should have been told this when they set out to debase Social Security, America's most successful and venerable anti-poverty program, so as to furnish more lucre for Wall Street.
On several counts, Bush and his cohorts fail at what Kirk called essential principles of conservatism. They lack the respect for diversity -- the hallmark of a high civilization, as Kirk described it -- and the foresight, the wise caution, the mature judgment, that has characterized the best classic Burkean conservatives. Bush's consistent failure to learn from mistakes, or even admit them when they are obvious, is not prudent conservative governance.
His idea of conserving the environment is to punch holes in a fragile wildlife refuge; to invade and disastrously occupy a Third World country for its oil, so America can keep driving those gas-guzzling SUVs; and to reject an important treaty that other major world powers have signed on to. A true conservative would want his or her children to inherit a planet worth living on. But when it comes to the environment, this administration ignores sound science and apparently lets oil companies determine policy. Exactly what is being conserved? It's obvious -- profits.
Fortunately, as the screw-ups mount and the body count grows, the court of public opinion seems to be slowly turning against Bush. Real conservatives, or what's left of them, should be worried; Bush's simple-minded, Messianic right-wing radicalism could very well bring down their entire movement.
I pray, literally, that it does, and before this smug fool's second term ends.
If he were to leave office tomorrow, it would take America's so-called liberals decades to pay off some debts, salvage our infrastructure, curtail the putrification of our air and water, and somewhat restore our standing in the world community.
Since our "liberals" and "progressives" have long been, by the standards of Europe and elsewhere, establishment centrists, it shouldn't be much of a stretch for them to, ironically, serve as our country's de facto post-Bush conservatives. I hope they can save the best elements of our recent past.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 2
"If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer."
-- California Gov. Ronald Reagan, on what to do about student disruptions at UC-Berkeley, quoted in the Los Angeles Times (1970-04-08). I remember this every time I'm tempted to think that Il Doofus makes me nostalgic for Reagan. (Note: The Kent State killings happened in Ohio the following month. Did somebody take him seriously?)
-- California Gov. Ronald Reagan, on what to do about student disruptions at UC-Berkeley, quoted in the Los Angeles Times (1970-04-08). I remember this every time I'm tempted to think that Il Doofus makes me nostalgic for Reagan. (Note: The Kent State killings happened in Ohio the following month. Did somebody take him seriously?)
Manifesto Joe's Great Moments in Conservative History: Chapter 1
"During the General Strike of 1926, [Winston] Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns be used on the striking miners. ... he controversially claimed that the Fascism of Benito Mussolini had 'rendered a service to the whole world,' showing, as it had, 'a way to combat subversive forces' — that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat of Communist revolution. At one point, Churchill went as far as to call Mussolini the 'Roman genius… the greatest lawgiver among men.'
"He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India ... He denigrated the father of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, as 'a half-naked fakir' who 'ought to be laid, bound hand and foot, at the gates of Delhi and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new viceroy seated on its back.'"
-- From Wikipedia's biography of Sir Winston Churchill. Just goes to show that even the best of conservatives have their Ann Coulter Prozac moments.
"He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India ... He denigrated the father of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, as 'a half-naked fakir' who 'ought to be laid, bound hand and foot, at the gates of Delhi and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new viceroy seated on its back.'"
-- From Wikipedia's biography of Sir Winston Churchill. Just goes to show that even the best of conservatives have their Ann Coulter Prozac moments.
Friday, April 27, 2007
McGovern Rips Cheney A New One
This excellent piece requires little introduction, nor any epilogue. It's from latimes.com. -- MJ
GEORGE MCGOVERN: CHENEY IS WRONG ABOUT ME, WRONG ABOUT WAR
The 1972 presidential nominee strikes back at the vice president for comparing today's Democrats to the McGovern platform.
By George S. McGovern
GEORGE S. MCGOVERN, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.
April 24, 2007
VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.
Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.
He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.
In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.
Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.
They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.
Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney's top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).
In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of "that old party of the early 1970s," Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.
The Democrats' 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.
Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.
On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.
The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.
Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.
The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.
There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.
Who was the real loser of '72?
THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.
It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.
Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?
We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.
On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."
GEORGE MCGOVERN: CHENEY IS WRONG ABOUT ME, WRONG ABOUT WAR
The 1972 presidential nominee strikes back at the vice president for comparing today's Democrats to the McGovern platform.
By George S. McGovern
GEORGE S. MCGOVERN, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.
April 24, 2007
VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.
Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.
He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.
In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.
Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.
They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.
Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney's top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).
In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of "that old party of the early 1970s," Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.
The Democrats' 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.
Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.
On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.
The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.
Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.
The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.
There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.
Who was the real loser of '72?
THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.
It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.
Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?
We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.
On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."
Friday, April 20, 2007
How Bush Thugs In Armani Suits Stole Elections: Chapter 87
By MANIFESTO JOE
If there were still any doubt that the last two presidential elections were blatantly stolen, a story that was all but buried by the Mainstream Media this week should dispel that. I realize that it was a busy news week, with the horror of the Virginia Tech massacre. But this revelation should have rated lead-story treatment at least one day. As the The Sun of Baltimore reported on April 19:
WASHINGTON -- For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. ...
Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.
The administration ... has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.
Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.
On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.
The chief of the Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, Joseph D. Rich, saw the partisan pattern firsthand. Rich wrote in the March 29 edition of latimes.com:
THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.
I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.
Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.
It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.
At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. ...
This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.
Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.
At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions. ...
The implications of the Bush hooligans' election thefts are enormous. And yet, the allegedly liberal Mainstream Media mostly gave this story passing, secondary coverage. At last count, U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at 3,309. It is unlikely that we will ever know approximately how many Iraqis have died. British government scientists recently endorsed the validity of a study that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
And, it's even more unlikely that this needless and vastly damaging war would have occurred had just 1,000 or so legitimate voters not been disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.
Of course, this critically important story just wasn't enough to compete with, say, the real daddy of Anna Nicole's baby, as the day's lead.
And this is why our "free" press is in serious trouble -- almost as much as is our pseudo-republic.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
If there were still any doubt that the last two presidential elections were blatantly stolen, a story that was all but buried by the Mainstream Media this week should dispel that. I realize that it was a busy news week, with the horror of the Virginia Tech massacre. But this revelation should have rated lead-story treatment at least one day. As the The Sun of Baltimore reported on April 19:
WASHINGTON -- For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. ...
Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.
The administration ... has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.
Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.
On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.
The chief of the Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, Joseph D. Rich, saw the partisan pattern firsthand. Rich wrote in the March 29 edition of latimes.com:
THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.
I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.
Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.
It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.
At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. ...
This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.
Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.
At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions. ...
The implications of the Bush hooligans' election thefts are enormous. And yet, the allegedly liberal Mainstream Media mostly gave this story passing, secondary coverage. At last count, U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at 3,309. It is unlikely that we will ever know approximately how many Iraqis have died. British government scientists recently endorsed the validity of a study that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
And, it's even more unlikely that this needless and vastly damaging war would have occurred had just 1,000 or so legitimate voters not been disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.
Of course, this critically important story just wasn't enough to compete with, say, the real daddy of Anna Nicole's baby, as the day's lead.
And this is why our "free" press is in serious trouble -- almost as much as is our pseudo-republic.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas.
Monday, April 16, 2007
IRS Tax Gestapo Loves To Pick On Poor People
By Manifesto Joe
"... In 1976, my mother owed $300 in taxes. They were not paid due to the fact that she was diagnosed with cancer and given 12 weeks to live. In May, as she lay dying, two IRS agents showed up at my house where we had moved my mother to take care of her. They told me they were friends and had come to visit. I took them to the room, where they introduced themselves as IRS agents and served her papers to confiscate everything she owned. She was to (sic) weak to sign the paper but did make an X and I signed for her. On that day, they took everything she owned ... even the soda bottles at her place of business! She died within the week. ..."
-- IRS Abuse Report #193, from legalminds.lp.findlaw.com
Those were supposed to be the bad old days of the IRS. After countless complaints like this, in the late '90s there was a bid to reform the service into something BusinessWeek called, a bit facetiously, a "kinder, gentler IRS." The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, signed by President Clinton, was gauged to make "significant structural changes in the management and oversight ..." and strengthen and enhance "the rights of and protections applicable to taxpayers ..."
There were a few meaningful changes in the new law. But it didn't take long for the IRS to revert to stonefaced abuse of poor and financially distressed taxpayers -- while ignoring most of the cheating by the rich.
Under the Bush regime, the working poor have come under special attack over their claims of the Earned Income Credit. This is an especially valuable tax credit for people coming off the welfare rolls and into the low-wage job market, because it can bring a refund of all income tax and Social Security tax withheld from their paychecks. The bottom line: This credit is an incentive for welfare recipients to go to work. Wasn't that what the Right-Wingers wanted when they "reformed" welfare in 1996?
But, being a conservative means never having to say you're sorry. In the conservative world, the poor are a sub-species, basically faceless and worthless. If people are poor, then they must be lazy, drink too much and gamble, rent their kids to pedophiles, or such. It most certainly has to be their fault; and if you honestly try to help them, I'm told that they'll spend the money on a console and play Nintendo all day. So, as the thinking on the Right goes, we might as well kick this sort of gutter trash around a whole lot more.
So, this is where the IRS comes in. David Cay Johnson reported in this story, first published by the New York Times on Jan. 10, 2006, that:
Tax refunds sought by hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have been frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, blocking refunds for years to come, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress today.
The taxpayers, whose average income was $13,000, were not told that they were suspected of fraud, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. The advocate, Nina Olson, said her staff sampled suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.
A computer program selected the returns as part of the questionable refund program run by the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. In some cases, the criminal division ordered that taxpayers be given no hint that they were suspected of fraud, the report said.
Most of the poor people whose returns the computer flagged as fraudulent were seeking the earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor. The credit can return all of the income taxes and Social Security taxes withheld from the paychecks of poor people. Without the credit, many poor people coming off welfare and going to work would receive less money because of taxes taken out of their paychecks and the loss of health benefits, I.R.S. data and other government documents show.
The average refund sought was $3,500, which under the rules for obtaining the credit means that the vast majority of those suspected of fraud were single parents or married couples with children. The maximum benefit for singles is less than $400.
Ms. Olson said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursing questionable refunds by the poor, which she said cannot involve more than $9 billion, than to a $100 billion problem with unreported incomes from small businesses that deal only in cash, many of which do not even file tax returns.
Let's forget any discussion of "small" businesses here. And, going into the way the rich and corporate giants get by without paying taxes is a whole different post. There isn't nearly enough room here.
Suffice it to say that some of us know what this is about, from schoolyard memories. It's a lot easier to pick on little kids than to take on the big ones. The IRS is just one of many bully magnets in our society. I haven't got time or space to describe all the others. It is merely one manifestation of a rising bully culture. And conservatives seem to be leading the swagger.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A Brief Memorial To Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Manifesto Joe was very saddened to hear of the death of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 84. Although Kurt lived a long and interesting life, it is tragic that our society is losing so many of the great, unique characters like him. Kurt was a hero of mine back in the '70s, and one of the inspirations for me to start writing. He was an unreconstructed socialist, and a chain-smoker of Pall Malls, until the day he died, as far as I know. It's no longer fashionable, none of this; but I have to admire a contrarian that stubborn. We could use a few more. I hope for humanity's great cycle to eventually bring a few back. -- MJ
Sunday, April 1, 2007
A Special Post For April Fool's Day
If Bush had been a Roman emperor:
All hail to Dyslexius the First.
All hail to Dyslexius the First.
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