By Manifesto Joe
The Republicans just don't get it, and it looks like they won't in the foreseeable future. With 40 cents of every federal dollar spent now being borrowed, they want to give yet more tax bonanzas to the rich while essentially abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.
This isn't what Americans voted for in 2008. A lower percentage of them, those who bothered to vote in 2010, voted for such folly whether they knew it or not.
The numbers cry out for a tax hike on the wealthy. Here's Robert Reich on the issue, courtesy of Truthout.
When one talks to earners at the upper-middle level, they are quick to point out the marginal rate of 35%, arguing that with progressive tax brackets, many of them end up paying more than lower earners as a percentage. (That's what comes of a steady mental diet of Fox News. That stuff rots brains.)
Yet such people seem to get amnesia when one points out that just 10 or so years ago, when the marginal rate was 39.6%, the U.S. was running a surplus. This was no accident. Even with the modest Clinton tax hike on the rich that barely passed in 1993, we didn't have the structural deficit we have now.
And the Mainstream Media are quick to obfuscate, talking to selected economists who keep telling the victims that raising taxes on the rich won't be enough. And who owns the MSM? Giant corporations -- and how much income tax do they pay?
Two-thirds of corporations pay no income tax
That's not news -- the first of the stories broke in 2008. Here's a link to one of them.
Although it's not news, many people don't seem to "get it," so it bears repeating, and repeating some more. Most of these "legal persons" are getting a free ride. They use the infrastructure (such as it is now), and have vast resources to fleece ordinary, unsuspecting victims out of many billions, yet they pay nothing.
In case you thought I was joking, here's a link to a more recent story about this, courtesy of Alternet.
In their 1990 book America: What Went Wrong?, investigative journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele cited IRS statistics that show that, in 1959, corporations accounted for 39% of federal tax revenue. By 1989, that was down to 17%. And it's
probably gotten worse since then.
Here's a brief roll call of Corporate America's tax slackers:
General Electric -- Last month, The New York Times reported that, in addition to paying no federal income taxes this year, GE, the largest U.S. corporation, is to get a tax credit of $3.2 billion. GE made $14.1 billion in profits in 2010, $5.1 billion of which came from its U.S. operations. The story was conspicuously absent from NBC News, part-owned by General Electric.
Goldman Sachs -- Bloomberg News, in December 2008, reported that Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, Goldman Sachs said. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern. "This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs," Doggett said. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore."
ExxonMobil -- In March 2010, Forbes magazine reported that the oil giant, "which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS":
Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.
Mother Jones magazine noted that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. It was noted at the Wonk Room that big corporations' tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers.
This list could grow to tedious proportions. You should get the picture by now.
Let's start sharing some sacrifice
Nobody likes to pay taxes. I owed the IRS far more than I expected to this year, and will probably be until fall paying it all off. But when some common slob like me is paying Uncle Sam more, year after year, than GE is, then there must be something dreadfully wrong with this system.
But alas, our Republican brethren still don't get it. They are promoting the idea of still more tax bonanzas for the wealthy. And, although a corporation enjoys the status of a "legal person" in our psychopathic system, two-thirds of them pay nothing, and even get refunds and billions in corporate welfare on top of that.
The latest news on this was from The Associated Press. It's not just corporations that are the problem. About 45% of U.S. households will pay no income tax at all, thanks to all the breaks that people, especially the super-rich, are getting.
It should be clear, if one looks at the numbers honestly, that our structural deficit has much more to do with what needs to be raised than with what needs to be cut.
Yet, the Republicans persist in their policies of the past 30-plus years, to defecate all over ordinary people while cutting sweet deals for their rich campaign contributors. And the Democrats haven't been very much better. Even President Barack "Change you can believe in" Obama hasn't been nearly candid enough on this issue.
So, what is to be done? Giant corporations and the super-rich clearly have politicians by the balls and have been gaming the system accordingly for the past 30-plus years. What can an ordinary person do?
(1) Stop believing the MSM. They obfuscate, and sometimes outright lie. And that shouldn't be surprising, given that they are generally owned by the very corporations that have been getting a free ride.
(2) Vote in the primaries. This is where people can get real Democrats, not just more corporate lackeys, to be candidates in the general election. The one positive that came out of the 2010 midterm debacle was that now, the Democrats left in Congress are more progressive on these kinds of issues. Ironically, it was largely the "Blue Dogs" and Democrats-in-name-only who went down in defeat to Tea Party challengers.
(3) Vote in the general elections. As frustrating as DINOs can be, and as agonizingly placating as Obama has been, we're better off with them than we are now, with right-wing Republican ideologues writing the agenda. President Clinton, Republicrat though he often was, presided over the last balanced federal budget, and that was largely because he demanded that the rich pay at least a modestly higher percentage of their hefty incomes in taxes. And back then, there was little talk of privatizing Medicare.
(4) General strike. In contemporary America, it will be very hard to float this idea. But if most of the work force in this country were willing to "sick out" just one day, and a few spokespeople made clear to the powers that be that this was an organized protest, it might perk up some ears.
This country is far from broke. The trick is going to be getting the rich slackers who have the bucks to fork some of them over. There are people out there who have it -- but they aren't going to let go of any of it without a fight.
Just pay your taxes today, chumps. Serious training starts tomorrow.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
From Joe's Vault: IRS Tax Gestapo Loves To Pick On Poor People
Originally posted in April 2007.
By Manifesto Joe
"... In 1976, my mother owed $300 in taxes. They were not paid due to the fact that she was diagnosed with cancer and given 12 weeks to live. In May, as she lay dying, two IRS agents showed up at my house where we had moved my mother to take care of her. They told me they were friends and had come to visit. I took them to the room, where they introduced themselves as IRS agents and served her papers to confiscate everything she owned. She was to (sic) weak to sign the paper but did make an X and I signed for her. On that day, they took everything she owned ... even the soda bottles at her place of business! She died within the week. ..."
-- IRS Abuse Report #193, from legalminds.lp.findlaw.com
Those were supposed to be the bad old days of the IRS. After countless complaints like this, in the late '90s there was a bid to reform the service into something BusinessWeek called, a bit facetiously, a "kinder, gentler IRS." The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, signed by President Clinton, was gauged to make "significant structural changes in the management and oversight ..." and strengthen and enhance "the rights of and protections applicable to taxpayers ..."
There were a few meaningful changes in the new law. But it didn't take long for the IRS to revert to stonefaced abuse of poor and financially distressed taxpayers -- while ignoring most of the cheating by the rich.
Under the Bush regime, the working poor have come under special attack over their claims of the Earned Income Credit. This is an especially valuable tax credit for people coming off the welfare rolls and into the low-wage job market, because it can bring a refund of all income tax and Social Security tax withheld from their paychecks. The bottom line: This credit is an incentive for welfare recipients to go to work. Wasn't that what the Right-Wingers wanted when they "reformed" welfare in 1996?
But, being a conservative means never having to say you're sorry. In the conservative world, the poor are a sub-species, basically faceless and worthless. If people are poor, then they must be lazy, drink too much and gamble, rent their kids to pedophiles, or such. It most certainly has to be their fault; and if you honestly try to help them, I'm told that they'll spend the money on a console and play Nintendo all day. So, as the thinking on the Right goes, we might as well kick this sort of gutter trash around a whole lot more.
So, this is where the IRS comes in. David Cay Johnson reported in this story, first published by the New York Times on Jan. 10, 2006, that:
Tax refunds sought by hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have been frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, blocking refunds for years to come, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress today.
The taxpayers, whose average income was $13,000, were not told that they were suspected of fraud, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. The advocate, Nina Olson, said her staff sampled suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.
A computer program selected the returns as part of the questionable refund program run by the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. In some cases, the criminal division ordered that taxpayers be given no hint that they were suspected of fraud, the report said.
Most of the poor people whose returns the computer flagged as fraudulent were seeking the earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor. The credit can return all of the income taxes and Social Security taxes withheld from the paychecks of poor people. Without the credit, many poor people coming off welfare and going to work would receive less money because of taxes taken out of their paychecks and the loss of health benefits, I.R.S. data and other government documents show.
The average refund sought was $3,500, which under the rules for obtaining the credit means that the vast majority of those suspected of fraud were single parents or married couples with children. The maximum benefit for singles is less than $400.
Ms. Olson said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursing questionable refunds by the poor, which she said cannot involve more than $9 billion, than to a $100 billion problem with unreported incomes from small businesses that deal only in cash, many of which do not even file tax returns.
Let's forget any discussion of "small" businesses here. And, going into the way the rich and corporate giants get by without paying taxes is a whole different post. There isn't nearly enough room here.
Suffice it to say that some of us know what this is about, from schoolyard memories. It's a lot easier to pick on little kids than to take on the big ones. The IRS is just one of many bully magnets in our society. I haven't got time or space to describe all the others. It is merely one manifestation of a rising bully culture. And conservatives seem to be leading the swagger.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
From 1944: 'Jammin' the Blues'
Featuring the great Lester Young on sax and the great Barney Kessel on guitar, among other immortals of the period. Lester's the one with the pork-pie hat who's always got a cigarette going -- it looks like he's going to burn his fingers. (But, having read about Lester, he might not have even realized it.) Barney was the only white dude there, and they kept him in the shadows a lot, sort of a role-reversal.
Dig it, kats.
Dig it, kats.
Friday, April 1, 2011
A Death In The Family
I lost someone very close to me Wednesday afternoon. This blog is doing pretty well now, and I'm grateful for all the response. But I'm going to have to take some time off. Sometimes a loss like this clarifies things, makes you realize what's important. I think it's having that effect on me. I enjoy doing this, but I think it's going to be a couple of weeks before I can post again. I thank all you visitors, and please do come back.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Hey, Robert Reich: Why We Need Voters Who Will Get Off Their Asses And Go To The Polls
By Manifesto Joe
Nearly 75 years ago, FDR gave a campaign speech condemning Big Business and its predatory practices in no uncertain terms. Something to recall from history is that he didn't have a hostile House of Representatives or a lot of right-wing Republican governors to face after the midterm elections of 1934.
Economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in an op-ed piece for Truthout, quoted FDR in "Why Governor LePage Can't Erase History, and Why We Need a Fighter in the White House." Here's a link to the entire piece, and following are some quotes:
Big business and Wall Street thought (Labor Secretary Frances) Perkins and Roosevelt were not in keeping with pro-business goals. So they and their Republican puppets in Congress and in the states retaliated with a political assault on the New Deal.
Roosevelt did not flinch. In a speech in October 1936 he condemned "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering."
Big business and Wall Street, he said,
"had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me –- and I welcome their hatred."
Fast forward 75 years.
Well, indeed, let's do exactly that.
Practical politics
FDR, on close examination, wasn't quite what the hardcore left had hoped for in America, either. Granted, he got much more done in his first 100 days than Barack Obama did in nearly two years before taking a "shellacking" at the polls. But in large part, that "shellacking" is precisely the point.
Some 29 million Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't vote in November 2010. Some 19 million McCain voters didn't vote, either, but that left Obama and the Democrats with a deficit of 10 million votes for the midterm election. That was enough to make the difference for the Tea Party. The right-wingers got their base out to vote; the "left," or what there is of it in America, simply didn't.
As a result, Obama now faces a House packed with hardcore right-wingers, enough of them to vote to defund National Public Radio (as though it were a huge contributor to the deficit). He is confronted with right-wing, Tea Party-backed governors all over the country, even in states that he carried comfortably in 2008.
Maine and Wisconsin are two big examples. Obama won those states with something like 56 or 57 percent of the popular vote. In 2010, both states elected Republican governors. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has made busting the state's public employee unions into his life's work. The right wing is touting him as a possible presidential candidate. In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage has ordered state workers to take down a mural at the state labor department depicting Maine's labor history. He's also renaming the conference rooms that had been named for American labor leaders and for Frances Perkins, the U.S. labor secretary who in 1933 became the first woman to serve on the president's Cabinet.
How could you not have known what would happen?
Excuse me, 29 million sometimes-voting Americans who voted for Obama in '08: What the hell did you think you were voting for then? And what the hell did you think was going to happen when 29 million of you sat home last November and let the radical, right-wing Republicans win high office across the land? Are you going to tell me that you're surprised that these things are happening?
To answer the first question myself: I, for one who turned out to vote both times, had hoped that I would get something more. Obama hasn't been what I had hoped. He's no FDR. Instead of enlisting people like Frances Perkins, he's surrounded himself with Wall Street-minted characters like Timothy Geithner.
But to Obama's credit, he did get some important things done for ordinary Americans. Thanks to his credit-card reform law, I'm likely to get a lower interest rate on my credit card very soon. As for the "Romneycare" health-care law that he pushed through at the federal level -- I favor single-payer for everyone, so obviously it's not what I'd hoped for. But if he'd decided to go down fighting for the public option (a compromise in itself), we'd have gotten nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip.
Obama isn't an idealist or a radical, and neither was FDR. Both were and are pragmatic, results-oriented politicians, the kind who actually get elected to high office, and sometimes even live to tell about it. And remember that FDR had "supermajorities" in both houses of Congress to put across his program. Obama, even last year, didn't have that in either house. As a pragmatist, he decided that something was better than nothing.
Yes, I've been disappointed. Like movie star and Inside Job narrator Matt Damon said, "I no longer hope for audacity."
But what I did understand is what would happen when radical right-wing Republicans got their money-grubbing paws back on the levers of power. Some won't openly say it, but they want to privatize the Social Security system that FDR and Frances Perkins fought for and made a reality in 1935. It's been the most effective anti-poverty program in the country's history, and now the right wing wants to gut it and put it in the hands of speculators who won't have to rely on it when the time comes.
The assault on organized labor has been going on for decades, and what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin should be absolutely no surprise. The reactionaries have been telegraphing that punch for many years. The thing that surprises me a bit is how so many "center-left" Americans are now shocked, shocked, that these things are happening, and that the right-wingers actually have the power and votes to get them done.
Why is this so? Because 29 million of you out there sat on your asses last November and didn't vote, in effect handing the country over to them. I sure as hell knew what was going to happen, and that's why I voted. You apparently didn't know, and hence didn't vote?
Obama may well be a Republicrat. But we know now from the Clinton presidency that a centrist Republicrat is better for most Americans than a reactionary, any day. We live in an imperfect republic, and sometimes it's necessary to hold one's nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Just remember this in November 2012; and, more importantly, remember this again in November 2014.
Like former Labor Secretary Reich, a lot of people have been disappointed that Obama hasn't shown more fire. But it's a two-way street: It's much harder to be a fighter when so many people are deserting your corner. With more reliable support, he might surprise all of us.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Nearly 75 years ago, FDR gave a campaign speech condemning Big Business and its predatory practices in no uncertain terms. Something to recall from history is that he didn't have a hostile House of Representatives or a lot of right-wing Republican governors to face after the midterm elections of 1934.
Economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in an op-ed piece for Truthout, quoted FDR in "Why Governor LePage Can't Erase History, and Why We Need a Fighter in the White House." Here's a link to the entire piece, and following are some quotes:
Big business and Wall Street thought (Labor Secretary Frances) Perkins and Roosevelt were not in keeping with pro-business goals. So they and their Republican puppets in Congress and in the states retaliated with a political assault on the New Deal.
Roosevelt did not flinch. In a speech in October 1936 he condemned "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering."
Big business and Wall Street, he said,
"had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me –- and I welcome their hatred."
Fast forward 75 years.
Well, indeed, let's do exactly that.
Practical politics
FDR, on close examination, wasn't quite what the hardcore left had hoped for in America, either. Granted, he got much more done in his first 100 days than Barack Obama did in nearly two years before taking a "shellacking" at the polls. But in large part, that "shellacking" is precisely the point.
Some 29 million Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't vote in November 2010. Some 19 million McCain voters didn't vote, either, but that left Obama and the Democrats with a deficit of 10 million votes for the midterm election. That was enough to make the difference for the Tea Party. The right-wingers got their base out to vote; the "left," or what there is of it in America, simply didn't.
As a result, Obama now faces a House packed with hardcore right-wingers, enough of them to vote to defund National Public Radio (as though it were a huge contributor to the deficit). He is confronted with right-wing, Tea Party-backed governors all over the country, even in states that he carried comfortably in 2008.
Maine and Wisconsin are two big examples. Obama won those states with something like 56 or 57 percent of the popular vote. In 2010, both states elected Republican governors. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has made busting the state's public employee unions into his life's work. The right wing is touting him as a possible presidential candidate. In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage has ordered state workers to take down a mural at the state labor department depicting Maine's labor history. He's also renaming the conference rooms that had been named for American labor leaders and for Frances Perkins, the U.S. labor secretary who in 1933 became the first woman to serve on the president's Cabinet.
How could you not have known what would happen?
Excuse me, 29 million sometimes-voting Americans who voted for Obama in '08: What the hell did you think you were voting for then? And what the hell did you think was going to happen when 29 million of you sat home last November and let the radical, right-wing Republicans win high office across the land? Are you going to tell me that you're surprised that these things are happening?
To answer the first question myself: I, for one who turned out to vote both times, had hoped that I would get something more. Obama hasn't been what I had hoped. He's no FDR. Instead of enlisting people like Frances Perkins, he's surrounded himself with Wall Street-minted characters like Timothy Geithner.
But to Obama's credit, he did get some important things done for ordinary Americans. Thanks to his credit-card reform law, I'm likely to get a lower interest rate on my credit card very soon. As for the "Romneycare" health-care law that he pushed through at the federal level -- I favor single-payer for everyone, so obviously it's not what I'd hoped for. But if he'd decided to go down fighting for the public option (a compromise in itself), we'd have gotten nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip.
Obama isn't an idealist or a radical, and neither was FDR. Both were and are pragmatic, results-oriented politicians, the kind who actually get elected to high office, and sometimes even live to tell about it. And remember that FDR had "supermajorities" in both houses of Congress to put across his program. Obama, even last year, didn't have that in either house. As a pragmatist, he decided that something was better than nothing.
Yes, I've been disappointed. Like movie star and Inside Job narrator Matt Damon said, "I no longer hope for audacity."
But what I did understand is what would happen when radical right-wing Republicans got their money-grubbing paws back on the levers of power. Some won't openly say it, but they want to privatize the Social Security system that FDR and Frances Perkins fought for and made a reality in 1935. It's been the most effective anti-poverty program in the country's history, and now the right wing wants to gut it and put it in the hands of speculators who won't have to rely on it when the time comes.
The assault on organized labor has been going on for decades, and what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin should be absolutely no surprise. The reactionaries have been telegraphing that punch for many years. The thing that surprises me a bit is how so many "center-left" Americans are now shocked, shocked, that these things are happening, and that the right-wingers actually have the power and votes to get them done.
Why is this so? Because 29 million of you out there sat on your asses last November and didn't vote, in effect handing the country over to them. I sure as hell knew what was going to happen, and that's why I voted. You apparently didn't know, and hence didn't vote?
Obama may well be a Republicrat. But we know now from the Clinton presidency that a centrist Republicrat is better for most Americans than a reactionary, any day. We live in an imperfect republic, and sometimes it's necessary to hold one's nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Just remember this in November 2012; and, more importantly, remember this again in November 2014.
Like former Labor Secretary Reich, a lot of people have been disappointed that Obama hasn't shown more fire. But it's a two-way street: It's much harder to be a fighter when so many people are deserting your corner. With more reliable support, he might surprise all of us.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Texas Young Republicans Are Retarded Liars On Teacher-Administrator Ratio
By Manifesto Joe
I believe that it was the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said something like, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." It would seem that the Texas Young Republican Federation doesn't need facts -- it can just make them up as they go along, and then opine away.
They tried to tell the people of this state that the teacher-to-administrator ratio in Texas has swelled to nearly 1-to-1 (almost one administrator for each classroom teacher). Here's a link to the PR release of this ridiculous right-wing disinformation.
Many people realize that their jobs are at stake as the Legislature considers $9.8 billion in education budget cuts. So, the snot-nosed, trust-fund-suckled Young Republicans should have realized that somebody was going to check up on their "facts."
None other than the Texas Education Agency did just that. Here's the link to that story.
The Young Piss Ants claimed that the teacher-administrator ratio had gone from about 4-to-1, favoring classroom teachers, in Texas in the 1970s to nearly 1-to-1 now. But TEA data show that the actual ratio is now nearly 13-to-1, weighted to the classroom.
Here's how the Young Rethuglicans explained their data:
Kristy Moore, chairwoman of the federation, said the group's statistic includes all nonteaching staffers -- including superintendents, bus drivers and counselors -- who fill "administrative" roles.
So, janitors and bus drivers are now "administrators?" What about crossing guards?
Here's more from that story:
Among those saying the ratio is misleading is Moak, Casey & Associates, an Austin-based school finance consulting firm. The firm notes that the second-largest group of school employees is auxiliary staff, which can include bus drivers and nurses aides.
"I'm not sure why this keeps getting repeated, other than folks trying to beat the drum that schools are overstaffed," said Dan Casey, a partner in the firm.
None of this is shocking, just foolishly predictable. Right-wingers have a nasty habit of "cooking the books" when it comes to their "factual" data.
I recall getting into a strange exchange with some bozo clerking in a cigar store back in the 1990s. He claimed to me that the U.S. had spent "$6 trillion" on welfare in 30 years (since 1965). I told the man that he was misinformed. He went looking for some book, probably by Rush Lardbaugh, to back up his claim. He had a hard time finding the passage -- I think he hadn't actually finished the book and was afraid of losing his place in it. Anyway, I just paid for my smokes and left. The problem with trying to argue with fools is that you may be mistaken for one yourself.
Later, I realized what his bogus "argument" was, because I ran across it again. What his "book" was putting forth was the notion that any and all spending on anything that could be construed as "social welfare spending" at all by the federal government, which would include Social Security and Medicare, would come under the category of "welfare." When I hear someone say "welfare," I think of the specific program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children. He and his "source" were including anything that could be even remotely called "social welfare spending."
The 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill once said something to the effect that, while not all conservatives are stupid people, most stupid people are conservatives. This is how so many common slobs, who have no common interests with the trust-fund babies comprising the Young Republicans, are pathetically demagogued. They read some initial "claim," then don't bother to check the facts in any detail.
What this boils down to is that there are some people who can be believed, and others who can't. The common word for them is liar.
And when they're stupid liars, it seems even worse.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I believe that it was the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said something like, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." It would seem that the Texas Young Republican Federation doesn't need facts -- it can just make them up as they go along, and then opine away.
They tried to tell the people of this state that the teacher-to-administrator ratio in Texas has swelled to nearly 1-to-1 (almost one administrator for each classroom teacher). Here's a link to the PR release of this ridiculous right-wing disinformation.
Many people realize that their jobs are at stake as the Legislature considers $9.8 billion in education budget cuts. So, the snot-nosed, trust-fund-suckled Young Republicans should have realized that somebody was going to check up on their "facts."
None other than the Texas Education Agency did just that. Here's the link to that story.
The Young Piss Ants claimed that the teacher-administrator ratio had gone from about 4-to-1, favoring classroom teachers, in Texas in the 1970s to nearly 1-to-1 now. But TEA data show that the actual ratio is now nearly 13-to-1, weighted to the classroom.
Here's how the Young Rethuglicans explained their data:
Kristy Moore, chairwoman of the federation, said the group's statistic includes all nonteaching staffers -- including superintendents, bus drivers and counselors -- who fill "administrative" roles.
So, janitors and bus drivers are now "administrators?" What about crossing guards?
Here's more from that story:
Among those saying the ratio is misleading is Moak, Casey & Associates, an Austin-based school finance consulting firm. The firm notes that the second-largest group of school employees is auxiliary staff, which can include bus drivers and nurses aides.
"I'm not sure why this keeps getting repeated, other than folks trying to beat the drum that schools are overstaffed," said Dan Casey, a partner in the firm.
None of this is shocking, just foolishly predictable. Right-wingers have a nasty habit of "cooking the books" when it comes to their "factual" data.
I recall getting into a strange exchange with some bozo clerking in a cigar store back in the 1990s. He claimed to me that the U.S. had spent "$6 trillion" on welfare in 30 years (since 1965). I told the man that he was misinformed. He went looking for some book, probably by Rush Lardbaugh, to back up his claim. He had a hard time finding the passage -- I think he hadn't actually finished the book and was afraid of losing his place in it. Anyway, I just paid for my smokes and left. The problem with trying to argue with fools is that you may be mistaken for one yourself.
Later, I realized what his bogus "argument" was, because I ran across it again. What his "book" was putting forth was the notion that any and all spending on anything that could be construed as "social welfare spending" at all by the federal government, which would include Social Security and Medicare, would come under the category of "welfare." When I hear someone say "welfare," I think of the specific program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children. He and his "source" were including anything that could be even remotely called "social welfare spending."
The 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill once said something to the effect that, while not all conservatives are stupid people, most stupid people are conservatives. This is how so many common slobs, who have no common interests with the trust-fund babies comprising the Young Republicans, are pathetically demagogued. They read some initial "claim," then don't bother to check the facts in any detail.
What this boils down to is that there are some people who can be believed, and others who can't. The common word for them is liar.
And when they're stupid liars, it seems even worse.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Must Viewing: Jon Stewart Exposes The Lavish Lifestyle Of Teachers
This should be required viewing!
Please watch.
Seems like Michele Bachmann could have used a better-paid high school history teacher, or at least an effective one. She was in Concord, N.H., and told them that they should be proud to be one of the places where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. (That Concord is in Massachusetts.)
Please watch.
Seems like Michele Bachmann could have used a better-paid high school history teacher, or at least an effective one. She was in Concord, N.H., and told them that they should be proud to be one of the places where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. (That Concord is in Massachusetts.)
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Governor Goodhair, Moron: Says That Texas Teacher Layoffs Are A Local Problem
By Manifesto Joe
Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry ran for re-election last year on a platform of no new taxes, and many Texans were gullible enough to buy it, casting 55% of the votes for him. Now we're looking at mass teacher layoffs across the state, and Goodhair has the nerve to say at a press conference that it's "a local decision."
This comes as Texas legislators are considering nearly $10 billion in budget cuts to education. The overall proposal would eliminate up to $31.1 billion in state services over the next two years.
According to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Carroll school district Trustee Sue Armstrong described Perry's comments as "comical." She went on:
noting that Carroll has already cut $2 million from its budget, mostly from the central office and via teacher attrition. "The next cuts we're looking at are to our gifted and talented program," Armstrong said.
Goodhair does a lot of talking about jobs. Of course, he's talking out of his ass. For one thing, a new UCLA study shows that Texas extracts more tax money out of its businesses than blue-state California does. Here's the link.
Bear in mind, though, that these taxes are being extracted from middle-class businesses, mostly. Now, he's got the state eating its seed corn so that his very rich friends can be spared any more nasty new taxes -- as though they were paying a lot already. With fewer teachers, less money spent on education, etc., where is this skilled work force going to come from?
Right-wingers would have you believe that merely throwing money at education doesn't improve it. I can tell you firsthand that when it comes to quality of education, money matters. I have a vivid memory of high school biology. We didn't have enough microscopes to serve all the students in the class -- we had to share, and it usually wasn't equal sharing. And the microscopes we had were from about 1948, so even the students who got first dibs at them weren't getting much. My high school graduating class was small -- about 100 -- but I can't remember one, not even one, member of the Class of '74 who ever did well in hard sciences. I didn't even try, because I knew I lacked the background. That's why I ended up a journalist (fool!).
Now Goodhair is going to preside over draconian cuts in education. Of course, his kids and grandkids won't be affected, but millions of young Texans will be. This is what comes of electing to the governorship a right-wing Republican who pulled a 2.3 GPA majoring in animal husbandry at Texas A&M. This stuff gives Aggies a bad name.
Here's the link to the story about Perry's rationalizations.
Well, Texans, I hate to keep saying that I told you so, but I did tell you so. But, of course, this sort of thing is happening all over the country. At least in Wisconsin they have the balls to raise some hell about it. I understand that some Texas teachers are going to Austin this weekend to protest. Good luck -- the Legislature is controlled 2-to-1 by Republicans in a state in which that party is one of the most kook-right of them all. The damage will already be done before you know it.
Just remember that the next time you sit home and don't vote during a midterm election. Even a DINO is usually better than a kook-right, Tea Party Republican. Y'all are fixin' to find that out, the hard way.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry ran for re-election last year on a platform of no new taxes, and many Texans were gullible enough to buy it, casting 55% of the votes for him. Now we're looking at mass teacher layoffs across the state, and Goodhair has the nerve to say at a press conference that it's "a local decision."
This comes as Texas legislators are considering nearly $10 billion in budget cuts to education. The overall proposal would eliminate up to $31.1 billion in state services over the next two years.
According to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Carroll school district Trustee Sue Armstrong described Perry's comments as "comical." She went on:
noting that Carroll has already cut $2 million from its budget, mostly from the central office and via teacher attrition. "The next cuts we're looking at are to our gifted and talented program," Armstrong said.
Goodhair does a lot of talking about jobs. Of course, he's talking out of his ass. For one thing, a new UCLA study shows that Texas extracts more tax money out of its businesses than blue-state California does. Here's the link.
Bear in mind, though, that these taxes are being extracted from middle-class businesses, mostly. Now, he's got the state eating its seed corn so that his very rich friends can be spared any more nasty new taxes -- as though they were paying a lot already. With fewer teachers, less money spent on education, etc., where is this skilled work force going to come from?
Right-wingers would have you believe that merely throwing money at education doesn't improve it. I can tell you firsthand that when it comes to quality of education, money matters. I have a vivid memory of high school biology. We didn't have enough microscopes to serve all the students in the class -- we had to share, and it usually wasn't equal sharing. And the microscopes we had were from about 1948, so even the students who got first dibs at them weren't getting much. My high school graduating class was small -- about 100 -- but I can't remember one, not even one, member of the Class of '74 who ever did well in hard sciences. I didn't even try, because I knew I lacked the background. That's why I ended up a journalist (fool!).
Now Goodhair is going to preside over draconian cuts in education. Of course, his kids and grandkids won't be affected, but millions of young Texans will be. This is what comes of electing to the governorship a right-wing Republican who pulled a 2.3 GPA majoring in animal husbandry at Texas A&M. This stuff gives Aggies a bad name.
Here's the link to the story about Perry's rationalizations.
Well, Texans, I hate to keep saying that I told you so, but I did tell you so. But, of course, this sort of thing is happening all over the country. At least in Wisconsin they have the balls to raise some hell about it. I understand that some Texas teachers are going to Austin this weekend to protest. Good luck -- the Legislature is controlled 2-to-1 by Republicans in a state in which that party is one of the most kook-right of them all. The damage will already be done before you know it.
Just remember that the next time you sit home and don't vote during a midterm election. Even a DINO is usually better than a kook-right, Tea Party Republican. Y'all are fixin' to find that out, the hard way.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Debbie Riddle On Them Illegals: They's Only Good To Mow My Lawn And To Clean My House
By Manifesto Joe
We have a new nominee for most ignorant person in the world: Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball (Houston area). Riddle has introduced a bill in the Texas Legislature that would hit employers of illegal immigrants with heavy penalties. But she makes a very, very large exception -- for "single-family" employers thereof.
In other words, in the world according to Debbie Riddle (a Tea Party fave, by the way), about one-third of the restaurants in Texas would be forced out of business if they were to comply with such a law. But she could go on hiring nannies, gardeners, cooks, ditch-diggers and maids as long as they are employed by a single family.
Riddle should have known that she was setting herself up for "ridicule" here. In the first place, she resembles a cartoon character. There's a picture of her in an outfit that suggests the Texas flag, with white fences and horses and green pastures in the background. She appears to be about a size 6, but one can guess that she can afford plenty of arugula with her salads, and can't remember ever missing a meal involuntarily. She's a blonde who appears to have spent too much time out in the sun. It's taken a bit of a toll.
I don't recall the subject, but Anderson Cooper apparently tore her another one during an interview a short while back. She admittedly wasn't prepared for a grilling from a more-or-less real journalist.
Now, she comes up with this little legislative gem, House Bill 1202. Here's a link to a recent report from the Houston Chronicle.
I could find no biographical information on Riddle, other than that she's listed as a "horse breeder" by profession, and that her husband, Mike, is a lawyer. Oh, and she apparently attended Southwestern University. If that's the one in Georgetown, Texas, I remember it as a private school that's mostly the domain of rich kids.
Anyway, Riddle is being "ridiculed" widely for this stupid bill, which she depicts as a common sense approach to the problem of illegal immigration. A fellow Republican House member, one who happens to be Hispanic, explained that if no such exceptions were made, a pretty substantial portion of the Texas population (and rich 'uns, too, I will add) would go to jail.
I suppose that an "all or nothing" approach to this problem wouldn't be practical. But Riddle's solution is, at the very least, patronizing, and at worst just flat-out racist. Her lawn man and her housekeeper would be OK to stay. (Well, as long as they themselves weren't caught.) Just don't expect your fajitas to be as fast or as cheap the next time you visit a Tex-Mex eatery -- those that are still there. And the cost of car washes and roofing will go through the roof.
It's time to face reality about this. About 1.6 million illegal immigrants currently live in Texas, by one estimate. They are an integral and rather permanent part of the economy. Scholarly studies have indicated that their effect on wages here is very slight, and there are actually some kinds of businesses (car washes and lawn care come to mind) that could not even exist without their cheap labor.
So, where is Riddle coming from? This quote from a 2003 interview with the El Paso Times is a good indication:
"Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell. And it's cleverly disguised as having a tender heart. It's not a tender heart. It's ripping the heart out of this country."
Well, Debbie, I hate to break this to you, but none of that stuff is free in Moscow, and it never has been free here, either. People have to pay taxes for it -- except, of course, in Debbieland. In Debbieland (2011 America), the rich pay little or no tax, because they are the ones who create jobs -- for maids, gardeners, nannies, housekeepers, lawn men, etc. Preferably, those with brown skin.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
We have a new nominee for most ignorant person in the world: Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball (Houston area). Riddle has introduced a bill in the Texas Legislature that would hit employers of illegal immigrants with heavy penalties. But she makes a very, very large exception -- for "single-family" employers thereof.
In other words, in the world according to Debbie Riddle (a Tea Party fave, by the way), about one-third of the restaurants in Texas would be forced out of business if they were to comply with such a law. But she could go on hiring nannies, gardeners, cooks, ditch-diggers and maids as long as they are employed by a single family.
Riddle should have known that she was setting herself up for "ridicule" here. In the first place, she resembles a cartoon character. There's a picture of her in an outfit that suggests the Texas flag, with white fences and horses and green pastures in the background. She appears to be about a size 6, but one can guess that she can afford plenty of arugula with her salads, and can't remember ever missing a meal involuntarily. She's a blonde who appears to have spent too much time out in the sun. It's taken a bit of a toll.
I don't recall the subject, but Anderson Cooper apparently tore her another one during an interview a short while back. She admittedly wasn't prepared for a grilling from a more-or-less real journalist.
Now, she comes up with this little legislative gem, House Bill 1202. Here's a link to a recent report from the Houston Chronicle.
I could find no biographical information on Riddle, other than that she's listed as a "horse breeder" by profession, and that her husband, Mike, is a lawyer. Oh, and she apparently attended Southwestern University. If that's the one in Georgetown, Texas, I remember it as a private school that's mostly the domain of rich kids.
Anyway, Riddle is being "ridiculed" widely for this stupid bill, which she depicts as a common sense approach to the problem of illegal immigration. A fellow Republican House member, one who happens to be Hispanic, explained that if no such exceptions were made, a pretty substantial portion of the Texas population (and rich 'uns, too, I will add) would go to jail.
I suppose that an "all or nothing" approach to this problem wouldn't be practical. But Riddle's solution is, at the very least, patronizing, and at worst just flat-out racist. Her lawn man and her housekeeper would be OK to stay. (Well, as long as they themselves weren't caught.) Just don't expect your fajitas to be as fast or as cheap the next time you visit a Tex-Mex eatery -- those that are still there. And the cost of car washes and roofing will go through the roof.
It's time to face reality about this. About 1.6 million illegal immigrants currently live in Texas, by one estimate. They are an integral and rather permanent part of the economy. Scholarly studies have indicated that their effect on wages here is very slight, and there are actually some kinds of businesses (car washes and lawn care come to mind) that could not even exist without their cheap labor.
So, where is Riddle coming from? This quote from a 2003 interview with the El Paso Times is a good indication:
"Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell. And it's cleverly disguised as having a tender heart. It's not a tender heart. It's ripping the heart out of this country."
Well, Debbie, I hate to break this to you, but none of that stuff is free in Moscow, and it never has been free here, either. People have to pay taxes for it -- except, of course, in Debbieland. In Debbieland (2011 America), the rich pay little or no tax, because they are the ones who create jobs -- for maids, gardeners, nannies, housekeepers, lawn men, etc. Preferably, those with brown skin.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Michele Bachmann: Sarah Palin With A Brain? Paleeeeaze ...
By Manifesto Joe
It appears that some Republican activists are beginning to see U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., as a better presidential alternative to fading GOP star Sarah Palin. Believe it or not, one such person described Bachmann as "Sarah Palin with a brain." Here's the link.
To quote John McEnroe, "You can't be serious!" Whose brain would that be?
Bachmann is the imbecile who cited the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" as an example of bad economic policy, and she alleged that it was passed during FDR's watch and was part of his policies. (It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, named after Sen. Reed Smoot and U.S. Rep. Willis Hawley, passed in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover.)
There's even more ludicrous nonhistory in this C-Span footage of Bachmann speaking on the floor of the U.S. House:
Dumb and dumber?
Bachmann is, to anyone who has any real knowledge of U.S. history, a drooling idiot who has no business even being in the House of Representatives, let alone under any serious consideration as a presidential contender.
One thing that worries me is that we've already had at least one semiliterate fool in the White House (Il Doofus), and it was very recently. Given the rank ignorance of the current American electorate, it isn't outside the realm of imagination that someone even worse could soon find their way there.
I wish Joe could say it ain't so.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It appears that some Republican activists are beginning to see U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., as a better presidential alternative to fading GOP star Sarah Palin. Believe it or not, one such person described Bachmann as "Sarah Palin with a brain." Here's the link.
To quote John McEnroe, "You can't be serious!" Whose brain would that be?
Bachmann is the imbecile who cited the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" as an example of bad economic policy, and she alleged that it was passed during FDR's watch and was part of his policies. (It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, named after Sen. Reed Smoot and U.S. Rep. Willis Hawley, passed in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover.)
There's even more ludicrous nonhistory in this C-Span footage of Bachmann speaking on the floor of the U.S. House:
Dumb and dumber?
Bachmann is, to anyone who has any real knowledge of U.S. history, a drooling idiot who has no business even being in the House of Representatives, let alone under any serious consideration as a presidential contender.
One thing that worries me is that we've already had at least one semiliterate fool in the White House (Il Doofus), and it was very recently. Given the rank ignorance of the current American electorate, it isn't outside the realm of imagination that someone even worse could soon find their way there.
I wish Joe could say it ain't so.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Funniest Monty Python Ever
It probably helped that, back in 1975, I was stoned at the time.
I just watched it straight, and it seemed funny then, too.
I just watched it straight, and it seemed funny then, too.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 11: Mr. Magoo Wins The Cold War
By Manifesto Joe
Revisionist history has it that Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War" by, in essence, outspending the Soviet Union on a military buildup. Those evil commies just couldn't compete, the myth has it, and they were suddenly forced to fold their empire all over the world.
What utter right-wing hogwash.
Let's look a bit more closely at the situation as it really was in those days. The U.S., typically, has spent perhaps as much as 6% of its GDP on the military. The old Soviet Union often spent as much as 25% of its GDP on military outlays, depriving its civilian population of many basic needs so that lonely, unhappy young men could sit around on military bases in the Soviet part of the world, getting sick on boiled carp and bad vodka.
I remember all the right-wing alarmist BS of the time. I read in the National Review in 1985 (that was when I could still read that rag without tossing my cookies and making the pages stick together) that the Red Army was arguably the most formidable fighting force that the world had seen up to that time.
We know now that, around 1985, the Soviet military was a large, but largely ineffective, fighting force, ill-equipped and with miserable morale. Hell, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan kicked 100,000 of their asses for years and years, finally forcing them out of the country. (And yet, nobody now seems to be arguing that U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, won the Cold War. The argument seems at least as plausible.)
After the Soviet Union collapsed, conservatives all of a sudden crowed about the superiority of American fighting forces over those hapless commies. The story kept changing whenever it was convenient. So, which was it, right-wingers? The most formidable fighting force the world had ever seen, or a bunch of homesick clowns who couldn't beat a ragtag guerrilla force in one of the world's poorest countries?
The Soviet economy was at the root of the empire's decline, and it had been in trouble for a very long time. Its centrally planned economy was stagnating by the mid-1970s, when Reagan was still sticking his foot in his mouth as governor of California. Here's a passage from answers.com that summarizes this pretty well:
The vigorous Soviet economy of the late-1960s and early 1970s quickly fell victim to the very factors that had contributed to its success, central planning and raw materials allocation. Brezhnev recognized that the Soviet economy was slowing, and attempted to patch problems rather than completely overhaul the system. His efforts failed. Even if Brezhnev had attempted to overhaul the Soviet economy, the highly entrenched special interests that made their living by manipulating the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy could have defeated Brezhnev's efforts.
Throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union's GNP and industrial output continued to increase, but at a lessening pace, eventually leading to economic stagnation. The Ninth Five Year Plan (1970–1975) saw a growth rate of approximately 3%. The period of 1975–1980 experienced a growth rate of between 1% and 1.9%, depending on whether revised Soviet numbers or the West's estimate is examined. Likewise, 1980–1985 saw a further decline in economic growth, between 0.6% and 1.8%. Declining economic growth rates were not confined to the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe, with its economies intertwined with the Soviet Union's, suffered a similar fate.
This declining growth rate in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in the Soviet Union receiving a diminishing rate of return on capital investment. This proved disastrous for the Soviet economy, because by 1980, the Soviet Union was spending nearly one-third of its GNP on capital investment, with most of the sum dedicated to the military. The military was consuming such a large portion of the Soviet economy for two reasons: the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the arms race with the United States. These two events would weigh heavily in the Soviet economic demise and lead to its inevitable fall. A weak economy prevented the Soviet Union from reacting appropriately to each experience.
Now, what Reagan admirers would have one believe from this is that the U.S. military buildup of the 1980s was what "won" the Cold War. The Cold War had been going on for about 35 years by the time Reagan even took his first oath of office. Did he hasten the Soviet collapse by a year or two? Perhaps -- but it's pretty clear from what we now know that the Soviet Union's economy was already, in essence, a dead man walking by 1980. Just a basic maintenance of the U.S. military for another 11 years was quite sufficient to see them run out of gas.
I've read that when one says something to Russian economists nowadays about Reagan winning the Cold War, they are unable to restrain their laughter. Everybody knew what the problems were in those days, they would say, and they were all right here.
Does this demonstrate the superiority of capitalism? Well, yes and no. Many of those who led the U.S. through the Cold War were Democrats, who advocated a mixed economy and were regarded by capitalism's right-wing ideologues as heretics. The Democrats weren't fans of the Soviet command economy, either, or of its police state. But they recognized a need for a reformist approach to capitalism, which one would be at a loss to explain to the typical Tea Party activist of 2011.
Now, less than 20 years after the final collapse of the Soviet Union, it looks like it is capitalism that is in trouble all over the world, and that seems largely for similar reasons -- its apparent inability to reform itself. For over 30 years in the U.S., wealthy individuals and giant corporations have insisted on gaming the political system to evade taxes, and on demagoguing much of the public into believing that any sort of tax increase will ultimately be a tax increase on them.
We now have the vantage point of seeing, from the second term of the Clinton administration, that it is quite possible for the federal government to raise enough revenue to run comfortably in the black without damaging the economy. But one wouldn't know that, if one listens to rich people and Corporate America, and takes their swill seriously.
Back to the Cold War -- it came to an end because of a general collapse of the Soviet economy, and that was something that was many years in the making. A military empire has to be paid for, and the Soviet empire had their system overextended long before Reagan became president. Less than 20 years later, it looks increasingly like something similar is happening here.
Years ago, there was a saying that the U.S. didn't win the Cold War -- Japan won it. Now I'd say it's looking more and more as though China was the real winner. The U.S. is so deeply indebted to them, and largely because of war expenses, that we aren't likely to get out of that debt within any living American's lifetime.
Now, as for Reagan and Mr. Magoo
Ronald Reagan was apparently an inspirational leader for many people. In contrast, what I generally saw for 8 years was a "Teflon" presidency and the amusing rightness of his critics' comparison to the cartoon character Mr. Magoo.
For those perhaps too young to remember, Mr. Magoo was a cartoon character whose life span was from about 1949 to 1965. The late character actor Jim Backus was his voice. Mr. Magoo doesn't get a lot of retro TV airplay nowadays, because I think he's regarded as far too politically incorrect, sort of like comedian Bill Dana's character Jose Jimenez or advertising's The Frito Bandito. I'll explain.
Mr. Magoo was a rich old dude who had poor eyesight and was hard of hearing, yet he insisted on continuing to drive his outdated flivver and to stroll through life as though there were nothing wrong. He would instigate catastrophes everywhere he went, but would himself walk away unscathed and oblivious about anything that had happened. People who had impaired eyesight and hearing were eventually offended by the character, so despite great popularity in his day, Magoo had a pretty short shelf life on the rerun circuit.
Compare this to a president who cut and ran after hundreds of Marines got blown up in Lebanon, yet today few call him a coward. (If it had been Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, there would have been all kinds of editorial comments about how yellow is not a color that goes with the decor of the Oval Office.)
Compare this to a president who was basically giving his blessings to a tradeoff with terrorists of arms for hostages -- and yet now few seem to remember this.
Compare this to a president whose policies led to the most expensive failure of U.S. financial institutions since the Great Depression. Not many seem to remember that, either.
Compare this to a president who created record deficits by cutting taxes broadly on wealthy Americans and big corporations, so much that now you can't reason with the average shithead on the street about how these people are looting the store and pushing the burden onto him or her.
This is a litany that could go on a long time -- but finally, compare this to a president who just happened to be sitting there, on the edge of dementia, at the time that Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the Soviet system was no longer workable. And now, right-wing revisionist historians are strutting about, posturing as though this were a feat that Reagan pulled off all by himself. Few seem to recall the reality of the situation -- they just remember glittering speeches about the myth of some "shining city on a hill."
Mr. Magoo, I sez. The senile old fool walked away from multiple disasters unmarked. And he's still doing it posthumously.
"Magoo, you've done it again!"
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Revisionist history has it that Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War" by, in essence, outspending the Soviet Union on a military buildup. Those evil commies just couldn't compete, the myth has it, and they were suddenly forced to fold their empire all over the world.
What utter right-wing hogwash.
Let's look a bit more closely at the situation as it really was in those days. The U.S., typically, has spent perhaps as much as 6% of its GDP on the military. The old Soviet Union often spent as much as 25% of its GDP on military outlays, depriving its civilian population of many basic needs so that lonely, unhappy young men could sit around on military bases in the Soviet part of the world, getting sick on boiled carp and bad vodka.
I remember all the right-wing alarmist BS of the time. I read in the National Review in 1985 (that was when I could still read that rag without tossing my cookies and making the pages stick together) that the Red Army was arguably the most formidable fighting force that the world had seen up to that time.
We know now that, around 1985, the Soviet military was a large, but largely ineffective, fighting force, ill-equipped and with miserable morale. Hell, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan kicked 100,000 of their asses for years and years, finally forcing them out of the country. (And yet, nobody now seems to be arguing that U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, won the Cold War. The argument seems at least as plausible.)
After the Soviet Union collapsed, conservatives all of a sudden crowed about the superiority of American fighting forces over those hapless commies. The story kept changing whenever it was convenient. So, which was it, right-wingers? The most formidable fighting force the world had ever seen, or a bunch of homesick clowns who couldn't beat a ragtag guerrilla force in one of the world's poorest countries?
The Soviet economy was at the root of the empire's decline, and it had been in trouble for a very long time. Its centrally planned economy was stagnating by the mid-1970s, when Reagan was still sticking his foot in his mouth as governor of California. Here's a passage from answers.com that summarizes this pretty well:
The vigorous Soviet economy of the late-1960s and early 1970s quickly fell victim to the very factors that had contributed to its success, central planning and raw materials allocation. Brezhnev recognized that the Soviet economy was slowing, and attempted to patch problems rather than completely overhaul the system. His efforts failed. Even if Brezhnev had attempted to overhaul the Soviet economy, the highly entrenched special interests that made their living by manipulating the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy could have defeated Brezhnev's efforts.
Throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union's GNP and industrial output continued to increase, but at a lessening pace, eventually leading to economic stagnation. The Ninth Five Year Plan (1970–1975) saw a growth rate of approximately 3%. The period of 1975–1980 experienced a growth rate of between 1% and 1.9%, depending on whether revised Soviet numbers or the West's estimate is examined. Likewise, 1980–1985 saw a further decline in economic growth, between 0.6% and 1.8%. Declining economic growth rates were not confined to the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe, with its economies intertwined with the Soviet Union's, suffered a similar fate.
This declining growth rate in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in the Soviet Union receiving a diminishing rate of return on capital investment. This proved disastrous for the Soviet economy, because by 1980, the Soviet Union was spending nearly one-third of its GNP on capital investment, with most of the sum dedicated to the military. The military was consuming such a large portion of the Soviet economy for two reasons: the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the arms race with the United States. These two events would weigh heavily in the Soviet economic demise and lead to its inevitable fall. A weak economy prevented the Soviet Union from reacting appropriately to each experience.
Now, what Reagan admirers would have one believe from this is that the U.S. military buildup of the 1980s was what "won" the Cold War. The Cold War had been going on for about 35 years by the time Reagan even took his first oath of office. Did he hasten the Soviet collapse by a year or two? Perhaps -- but it's pretty clear from what we now know that the Soviet Union's economy was already, in essence, a dead man walking by 1980. Just a basic maintenance of the U.S. military for another 11 years was quite sufficient to see them run out of gas.
I've read that when one says something to Russian economists nowadays about Reagan winning the Cold War, they are unable to restrain their laughter. Everybody knew what the problems were in those days, they would say, and they were all right here.
Does this demonstrate the superiority of capitalism? Well, yes and no. Many of those who led the U.S. through the Cold War were Democrats, who advocated a mixed economy and were regarded by capitalism's right-wing ideologues as heretics. The Democrats weren't fans of the Soviet command economy, either, or of its police state. But they recognized a need for a reformist approach to capitalism, which one would be at a loss to explain to the typical Tea Party activist of 2011.
Now, less than 20 years after the final collapse of the Soviet Union, it looks like it is capitalism that is in trouble all over the world, and that seems largely for similar reasons -- its apparent inability to reform itself. For over 30 years in the U.S., wealthy individuals and giant corporations have insisted on gaming the political system to evade taxes, and on demagoguing much of the public into believing that any sort of tax increase will ultimately be a tax increase on them.
We now have the vantage point of seeing, from the second term of the Clinton administration, that it is quite possible for the federal government to raise enough revenue to run comfortably in the black without damaging the economy. But one wouldn't know that, if one listens to rich people and Corporate America, and takes their swill seriously.
Back to the Cold War -- it came to an end because of a general collapse of the Soviet economy, and that was something that was many years in the making. A military empire has to be paid for, and the Soviet empire had their system overextended long before Reagan became president. Less than 20 years later, it looks increasingly like something similar is happening here.
Years ago, there was a saying that the U.S. didn't win the Cold War -- Japan won it. Now I'd say it's looking more and more as though China was the real winner. The U.S. is so deeply indebted to them, and largely because of war expenses, that we aren't likely to get out of that debt within any living American's lifetime.
Now, as for Reagan and Mr. Magoo
Ronald Reagan was apparently an inspirational leader for many people. In contrast, what I generally saw for 8 years was a "Teflon" presidency and the amusing rightness of his critics' comparison to the cartoon character Mr. Magoo.
For those perhaps too young to remember, Mr. Magoo was a cartoon character whose life span was from about 1949 to 1965. The late character actor Jim Backus was his voice. Mr. Magoo doesn't get a lot of retro TV airplay nowadays, because I think he's regarded as far too politically incorrect, sort of like comedian Bill Dana's character Jose Jimenez or advertising's The Frito Bandito. I'll explain.
Mr. Magoo was a rich old dude who had poor eyesight and was hard of hearing, yet he insisted on continuing to drive his outdated flivver and to stroll through life as though there were nothing wrong. He would instigate catastrophes everywhere he went, but would himself walk away unscathed and oblivious about anything that had happened. People who had impaired eyesight and hearing were eventually offended by the character, so despite great popularity in his day, Magoo had a pretty short shelf life on the rerun circuit.
Compare this to a president who cut and ran after hundreds of Marines got blown up in Lebanon, yet today few call him a coward. (If it had been Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, there would have been all kinds of editorial comments about how yellow is not a color that goes with the decor of the Oval Office.)
Compare this to a president who was basically giving his blessings to a tradeoff with terrorists of arms for hostages -- and yet now few seem to remember this.
Compare this to a president whose policies led to the most expensive failure of U.S. financial institutions since the Great Depression. Not many seem to remember that, either.
Compare this to a president who created record deficits by cutting taxes broadly on wealthy Americans and big corporations, so much that now you can't reason with the average shithead on the street about how these people are looting the store and pushing the burden onto him or her.
This is a litany that could go on a long time -- but finally, compare this to a president who just happened to be sitting there, on the edge of dementia, at the time that Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the Soviet system was no longer workable. And now, right-wing revisionist historians are strutting about, posturing as though this were a feat that Reagan pulled off all by himself. Few seem to recall the reality of the situation -- they just remember glittering speeches about the myth of some "shining city on a hill."
Mr. Magoo, I sez. The senile old fool walked away from multiple disasters unmarked. And he's still doing it posthumously.
"Magoo, you've done it again!"
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, February 18, 2011
More Evidence That Fox News Is Like Soviet State TV
By Manifesto Joe
I have sincerely tried to keep an open mind about this. I tried to watch it. The straight news seemed credible for short periods, but would be followed quickly by brazen opinion, with no transitions or labeling. The coverage of Barbra Streisand's brief involvement in politics a few years back was most revealing. The "crawls" leading up to the story said things like "Babs' babble," and "Has Yentl gone mental?" 'Scuse me -- "Fair and balanced"?
Now we're seeing more. Here's the latest on the right-wing answer to Soviet state television:
Here's the link.
I have to admit that I saw a few things on CBS News back in the 1980s that I couldn't say were entirely balanced. But two wrongs don't make a right, especially when the second "wrong" is so baldfaced and blatant. Fox "News" should have absolutely no credibility now. This is the result of the right wing ruthlessly grabbing control of the debate about broadcast news so single-mindedly that they have totally lost any sense of objectivity. Clearly, these people will do anything to advance "the agenda." The bias is now blatantly and shamelessly on the other side of the spectrum.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I have sincerely tried to keep an open mind about this. I tried to watch it. The straight news seemed credible for short periods, but would be followed quickly by brazen opinion, with no transitions or labeling. The coverage of Barbra Streisand's brief involvement in politics a few years back was most revealing. The "crawls" leading up to the story said things like "Babs' babble," and "Has Yentl gone mental?" 'Scuse me -- "Fair and balanced"?
Now we're seeing more. Here's the latest on the right-wing answer to Soviet state television:
Here's the link.
I have to admit that I saw a few things on CBS News back in the 1980s that I couldn't say were entirely balanced. But two wrongs don't make a right, especially when the second "wrong" is so baldfaced and blatant. Fox "News" should have absolutely no credibility now. This is the result of the right wing ruthlessly grabbing control of the debate about broadcast news so single-mindedly that they have totally lost any sense of objectivity. Clearly, these people will do anything to advance "the agenda." The bias is now blatantly and shamelessly on the other side of the spectrum.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 10: Reagan Is Still 100
By Manifesto Joe
OK, plus one day. Cut me some slack -- I had to work on Super Bowl Sunday.
Ronald Reagan's presidency seems to have become bogus nostalgia for some people. I suppose that for some, it's appropriate. If you hate labor unions and love union-busting, you'd love Reagan. If you hate poor people and think they ought to be punished for being poor, Ronnie was your man. If you think keeping a country in a state of perpetual war is good for it, then Reagan would happily oblige you.
Let's look at some of the real Reagan legacy.
Supply-side economics
It's not hard to see that the timing for supply-side theory was right. The America of the late 1970s and early '80s was suffering from demand-pull inflation -- too many dollars chasing too few goods. A correction was needed.
What we got was an overcorrection. The misery index of, at one point, 13% inflation and 21% interest rates gave Reagan what he needed to sell a large dose of snake oil to the public. Economist Arthur Laffer's supply-side theory was that cutting taxes would actually increase federal revenue, because (1) with lower rates, more of the wealthy and big corporations would be willing to pay rather than seek tax shelters or be scofflaws, and (2) the resulting economic growth would in itself create revenue.
Well, in 1981, taxes were cut broadly, with the rich and corporate America as the main beneficiaries. So, we sat back and waited. And waited. Almost 30 years later, I'm still waiting for my trickle-down from the first time. It generally felt more like "tinkle-down."
What this did in reality was create a structural deficit, with too many government obligations (including Reagan's defense buildup that amounted to a 40% increase in military spending) versus too little federal revenue. Deficits ballooned to record numbers.
The second year, 1982, Reagan and members of Congress led by Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas overhauled Social Security, raising taxes on it and thereby mitigating some of the revenue-anorexic effects of the tax cuts of the previous year. At least Social Security would be sound enough for another generation or so. But the effect was to raise taxes on less affluent people, and in a way that most of them had no clue thereof. The Social Security tax, you see, is regressive, ceasing after a certain level of income. Rich people don't pay it past a certain income figure. Apparently this was once gauged as a way of getting them on board with the program. But de facto, when Social Security taxes are raised, it's the working class that pays most of it.
Anyway, we kept waiting, and the deficits just got bigger. All that extra revenue that was supposed to come in -- well, it didn't. Supply-side just turned out to be a massive fraud that greatly enriched the wealthy while the incomes of ordinary people stagnated. The mantra we kept hearing from Reagan was simply that "Congress spends too much."
Looking back, there was method in this madness. If you're a laissez-faire economic conservative, you want, as Grover Norquist said, government to be shrunk down to the size that it can be "drowned in the bathtub." That's one good way of accomplishing that.
Self-fulfilling prophesies
Despite the Democratic House of Representives' insistence that much of the social safety net be preserved, big cuts did ensue. The financial deregulation that began during the Carter presidency accelerated under Reagan. Government subsidies for housing and the like were slashed -- the HUD budget ended up something like 40% of what it had been, in real dollars. And regulation of any kind was curtailed as too expensive. What that did was essentially tell all the foxes that the henhouse was theirs for the taking.
Thus, the bromides about government being so inept, being so unable to function efficiently, etc., gain credibility of sorts. Naturally, when you put inept and inefficient political appointees in charge of diminished government regulation, you're going to get inept and inefficient "regulation." With such an approach, government indeed becomes the problem, not the solution, as Reagan famously said.
Rampant corruption
Reagan appointees became notorious, producing a federal government that had more officials either indicted or under investigation than any in recent memory. I believe that the count was over 100 at one point. With the foxes in charge of all the henhouses, how could we have expected anything different?
But obviously, many Americans don't remember any of that now. What they remember, with hazy nostalgia, is a telegenic actor-president who spoke to them about "a shining city on a hill." Some of us -- unfortunately, not enough -- remember that this hill had a curious odor of dung about it.
The savings-and-loan scandal
I'll lift a bit of material from Wikipedia to cover this:
The deregulation of S&Ls gave them many of the capabilities of banks, without the same regulations as banks. Savings and loan associations could choose to be under either a state or a federal charter. Immediately after deregulation of the federally chartered thrifts, state-chartered thrifts rushed to become federally chartered, because of the advantages associated with a federal charter. In response, states such as California and Texas changed their regulations so to be similar to federal regulations.[citation needed]
More important, however, was the moral hazard of insuring already troubled institutions with public dollars. In the view of a savings and loan president or manager, the trend line was fatal over the long haul, thus to get liquid, the institution had to take on riskier assets, particularly land. When the real estate market crashed, the S&Ls went with it. By insuring the risk, the government guaranteed that desperate S&L owners and managers would engage in ever more risky investments, knowing that if they were successful, the institution would be saved, and if unsuccessful, their depositors would still be bailed out.
The S&Ls went on to do a lot of imprudent real estate lending (sound familiar?), among other things that led to the failure of 747 of them. The Resolution Trust Corp. was created to clean up the mess. We have a family friend who worked for the RTC, taking possession of failing S&Ls on behalf of the government. She told us that at one site, she went to the second floor and found a well-stocked wet bar with cut-glass nudes and such decorating the place. Things like this had been apparently done with depositors' money.
Not all of this occurred on Reagan's watch. But for eight years, he championed the sort of deregulation that led to such gross abuses.
More from Wikipedia:
The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government via a financial bailout under the leadership of George H.W. Bush. The remainder of the bailout was paid for by charges on savings and loan accounts —- which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.
Bogus nostalgia for "Doctor Feelgood"
People like to be told bright, glittering things by politicians, and Reagan was undoubtedly a master of that. My wife and I never quite understood the appeal. She hated him as an actor in his Hollywood days, and always commented on that turkey neck. I saw him similarly to Gore Vidal, who bemusedly called Reagan "grandmotherly."
Sadly, the man was almost all shine and very little substance. I understand that President Obama would like to pick up some of that shine, so as to rally faltering support for his programs. But Obama has the misfortune of being an intellectual, so despite also being a fine speechmaker, he usually ends up telling people a lot of grim truths that they don't want to hear. Reagan, about as far from an intellectual as it gets, never had that problem, and that was a major reason for his political success.
Coming soon: Reagan is still 100, third chapter.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
OK, plus one day. Cut me some slack -- I had to work on Super Bowl Sunday.
Ronald Reagan's presidency seems to have become bogus nostalgia for some people. I suppose that for some, it's appropriate. If you hate labor unions and love union-busting, you'd love Reagan. If you hate poor people and think they ought to be punished for being poor, Ronnie was your man. If you think keeping a country in a state of perpetual war is good for it, then Reagan would happily oblige you.
Let's look at some of the real Reagan legacy.
Supply-side economics
It's not hard to see that the timing for supply-side theory was right. The America of the late 1970s and early '80s was suffering from demand-pull inflation -- too many dollars chasing too few goods. A correction was needed.
What we got was an overcorrection. The misery index of, at one point, 13% inflation and 21% interest rates gave Reagan what he needed to sell a large dose of snake oil to the public. Economist Arthur Laffer's supply-side theory was that cutting taxes would actually increase federal revenue, because (1) with lower rates, more of the wealthy and big corporations would be willing to pay rather than seek tax shelters or be scofflaws, and (2) the resulting economic growth would in itself create revenue.
Well, in 1981, taxes were cut broadly, with the rich and corporate America as the main beneficiaries. So, we sat back and waited. And waited. Almost 30 years later, I'm still waiting for my trickle-down from the first time. It generally felt more like "tinkle-down."
What this did in reality was create a structural deficit, with too many government obligations (including Reagan's defense buildup that amounted to a 40% increase in military spending) versus too little federal revenue. Deficits ballooned to record numbers.
The second year, 1982, Reagan and members of Congress led by Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas overhauled Social Security, raising taxes on it and thereby mitigating some of the revenue-anorexic effects of the tax cuts of the previous year. At least Social Security would be sound enough for another generation or so. But the effect was to raise taxes on less affluent people, and in a way that most of them had no clue thereof. The Social Security tax, you see, is regressive, ceasing after a certain level of income. Rich people don't pay it past a certain income figure. Apparently this was once gauged as a way of getting them on board with the program. But de facto, when Social Security taxes are raised, it's the working class that pays most of it.
Anyway, we kept waiting, and the deficits just got bigger. All that extra revenue that was supposed to come in -- well, it didn't. Supply-side just turned out to be a massive fraud that greatly enriched the wealthy while the incomes of ordinary people stagnated. The mantra we kept hearing from Reagan was simply that "Congress spends too much."
Looking back, there was method in this madness. If you're a laissez-faire economic conservative, you want, as Grover Norquist said, government to be shrunk down to the size that it can be "drowned in the bathtub." That's one good way of accomplishing that.
Self-fulfilling prophesies
Despite the Democratic House of Representives' insistence that much of the social safety net be preserved, big cuts did ensue. The financial deregulation that began during the Carter presidency accelerated under Reagan. Government subsidies for housing and the like were slashed -- the HUD budget ended up something like 40% of what it had been, in real dollars. And regulation of any kind was curtailed as too expensive. What that did was essentially tell all the foxes that the henhouse was theirs for the taking.
Thus, the bromides about government being so inept, being so unable to function efficiently, etc., gain credibility of sorts. Naturally, when you put inept and inefficient political appointees in charge of diminished government regulation, you're going to get inept and inefficient "regulation." With such an approach, government indeed becomes the problem, not the solution, as Reagan famously said.
Rampant corruption
Reagan appointees became notorious, producing a federal government that had more officials either indicted or under investigation than any in recent memory. I believe that the count was over 100 at one point. With the foxes in charge of all the henhouses, how could we have expected anything different?
But obviously, many Americans don't remember any of that now. What they remember, with hazy nostalgia, is a telegenic actor-president who spoke to them about "a shining city on a hill." Some of us -- unfortunately, not enough -- remember that this hill had a curious odor of dung about it.
The savings-and-loan scandal
I'll lift a bit of material from Wikipedia to cover this:
The deregulation of S&Ls gave them many of the capabilities of banks, without the same regulations as banks. Savings and loan associations could choose to be under either a state or a federal charter. Immediately after deregulation of the federally chartered thrifts, state-chartered thrifts rushed to become federally chartered, because of the advantages associated with a federal charter. In response, states such as California and Texas changed their regulations so to be similar to federal regulations.[citation needed]
More important, however, was the moral hazard of insuring already troubled institutions with public dollars. In the view of a savings and loan president or manager, the trend line was fatal over the long haul, thus to get liquid, the institution had to take on riskier assets, particularly land. When the real estate market crashed, the S&Ls went with it. By insuring the risk, the government guaranteed that desperate S&L owners and managers would engage in ever more risky investments, knowing that if they were successful, the institution would be saved, and if unsuccessful, their depositors would still be bailed out.
The S&Ls went on to do a lot of imprudent real estate lending (sound familiar?), among other things that led to the failure of 747 of them. The Resolution Trust Corp. was created to clean up the mess. We have a family friend who worked for the RTC, taking possession of failing S&Ls on behalf of the government. She told us that at one site, she went to the second floor and found a well-stocked wet bar with cut-glass nudes and such decorating the place. Things like this had been apparently done with depositors' money.
Not all of this occurred on Reagan's watch. But for eight years, he championed the sort of deregulation that led to such gross abuses.
More from Wikipedia:
The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government via a financial bailout under the leadership of George H.W. Bush. The remainder of the bailout was paid for by charges on savings and loan accounts —- which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.
Bogus nostalgia for "Doctor Feelgood"
People like to be told bright, glittering things by politicians, and Reagan was undoubtedly a master of that. My wife and I never quite understood the appeal. She hated him as an actor in his Hollywood days, and always commented on that turkey neck. I saw him similarly to Gore Vidal, who bemusedly called Reagan "grandmotherly."
Sadly, the man was almost all shine and very little substance. I understand that President Obama would like to pick up some of that shine, so as to rally faltering support for his programs. But Obama has the misfortune of being an intellectual, so despite also being a fine speechmaker, he usually ends up telling people a lot of grim truths that they don't want to hear. Reagan, about as far from an intellectual as it gets, never had that problem, and that was a major reason for his political success.
Coming soon: Reagan is still 100, third chapter.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Manifesto Joe's Great Moments In Conservative History, Chapter 9: Reagan Turns 100
By Manifesto Joe
I remember the time well. It was the 1980s, the prime of my young adulthood. He was supposed to be rebuilding America, and millions of jobs went overseas or to Mexico. Suddenly there were all these homeless people on the streets, hitting on you for spare change -- in 1980 they had either been living in Section 8 housing or were in mental asylums. You could see Reaganvilles beneath the bridges and underpasses in every city, with tents pitched and fires burning in garbage cans. He was supposed to be a fiscal conservative, but the deficit ballooned to record numbers. Yet, I noticed that I was suddenly paying more tax for Social Security than I was before.
He was supposed to be this badass patriot, yet hundreds of Marines were blown up in a defenseless position in Lebanon, and then we tucked tail and ran out of there. Arms appeared to be traded to terrorists for hostages. The example of Cold War conquest was overrunning some little halfass country called Grenada, where they found a cache of commie weapons that were, like, World War I vintage.
This is the guy we're supposed to be honoring on what would have been his 100th birthday?
Not the sharpest pencil in the box
We've certainly discovered that it isn't necessary for a U.S. president to be an intellectual of any sort. But Ronald Reagan lowered the bar a lot, and paved the way for the likes of Il Doofus, and now Klondike Hottie, to parade about on the national stage. Here is what some notables (and Reagan himself) said about Uncle Ronnie, courtesy of the website, "The Reagan Years":
"I never knew anything above Cs."
--President Reagan, in a moment of truthfulness, describes his academic record to Barbara Walters, November 27, 1981
"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was.... They said he wouldn't come to work--all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
--Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan's underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88
"Reagan's only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile] throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution."
--Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) interviewed by Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
"This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days."
--Columnist Richard Cohen
"What planet is he living on?"
--President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
"During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times--during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope--that they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'"
--Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency
"He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."
--David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist
"an amiable dunce"
--Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)
"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"...like reinventing the wheel."
--Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House
"The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."
--Columnist David Broder
"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
--Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father, The Way I See It
"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."
--Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error
"President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
--former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
"Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy."
--James David Barber, presidential scholar, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard
"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
--Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986
Sage words from the Gipper himself
These quotes are from the same source:
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), cited in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)
"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, cited in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980. (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, cited in Time, May 17, 1976
"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April 19, 1985. ("In costume" is more like it. Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)
"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)
"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)
Well, that's enough to digest for one day. But wait awhile -- there's more.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I remember the time well. It was the 1980s, the prime of my young adulthood. He was supposed to be rebuilding America, and millions of jobs went overseas or to Mexico. Suddenly there were all these homeless people on the streets, hitting on you for spare change -- in 1980 they had either been living in Section 8 housing or were in mental asylums. You could see Reaganvilles beneath the bridges and underpasses in every city, with tents pitched and fires burning in garbage cans. He was supposed to be a fiscal conservative, but the deficit ballooned to record numbers. Yet, I noticed that I was suddenly paying more tax for Social Security than I was before.
He was supposed to be this badass patriot, yet hundreds of Marines were blown up in a defenseless position in Lebanon, and then we tucked tail and ran out of there. Arms appeared to be traded to terrorists for hostages. The example of Cold War conquest was overrunning some little halfass country called Grenada, where they found a cache of commie weapons that were, like, World War I vintage.
This is the guy we're supposed to be honoring on what would have been his 100th birthday?
Not the sharpest pencil in the box
We've certainly discovered that it isn't necessary for a U.S. president to be an intellectual of any sort. But Ronald Reagan lowered the bar a lot, and paved the way for the likes of Il Doofus, and now Klondike Hottie, to parade about on the national stage. Here is what some notables (and Reagan himself) said about Uncle Ronnie, courtesy of the website, "The Reagan Years":
"I never knew anything above Cs."
--President Reagan, in a moment of truthfulness, describes his academic record to Barbara Walters, November 27, 1981
"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was.... They said he wouldn't come to work--all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
--Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan's underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88
"Reagan's only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile] throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution."
--Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) interviewed by Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
"This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days."
--Columnist Richard Cohen
"What planet is he living on?"
--President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
"During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times--during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope--that they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'"
--Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency
"He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."
--David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist
"an amiable dunce"
--Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)
"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"...like reinventing the wheel."
--Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House
"The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."
--Columnist David Broder
"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
--Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father, The Way I See It
"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."
--Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error
"President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
--former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
"Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy."
--James David Barber, presidential scholar, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard
"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
--Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986
Sage words from the Gipper himself
These quotes are from the same source:
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), cited in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)
"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, cited in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980. (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, cited in Time, May 17, 1976
"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April 19, 1985. ("In costume" is more like it. Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)
"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)
"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)
Well, that's enough to digest for one day. But wait awhile -- there's more.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Glenn Beck's Self-Serving Recklessness Endangers Professor's Life
By Manifesto Joe
Frances Fox Piven is a lefty academic, a sociologist who advocates reforms of welfare in the U.S. that would eventually lead to a guaranteed annual income for all Americans. I've read one of the professor's books, and can't say that I agree with her entirely.
But now that TV-radio demagogue Glenn Beck has put her in his ludicrous right-wing crosshairs, I find that I must come to her defense. Because the 78-year-old professor urges a certain level of militancy among America's unemployed, in the form of mass protests, Beck has made her a verbal target, and some of the lunatics who hang on his toxic words appear to be cleaning and oiling their firearms.
Wikipedia summarizes the controversy thusly:
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has repeatedly criticized Piven, labeling her references to the May 2010 Greek protests a call to violence. Beck stated that she is an enemy of the Constitution, and that the Cloward-Piven strategy would "intentionally collapse our economic system", which in turn has led to multiple death threats against her. Comparing Beck to 1930s fascist broadcaster Charles Coughlin, Piven has replied that her references to riots are "not a call for violence"; that her critics are using "a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent."
When somebody gets on Beck's shitlist, threats often follow. The Care2 Petition Site reported:
After Beck's outrageous remarks against Piven, threatening comments surfaced on his website, including:
"Somebody tell Frances I have 5,000 rounds ready and I will give my life to take our freedom back"
"we should blow up Piven's office and home"
The irony, of course, is that Piven now appears to be a target of potential violence, after Beck drew attention to her by accusing her of advocating violence.
It's not news that Beck is a reckless and dangerous demagogue. The development here is the obvious chilling effect that a braying jackass like him can have on any kind of opposition rhetoric. When an emotionally disturbed man with the power of a mass broadcaster can incite an army of right-wing goons to potential violence, that smells of de facto fascism.
By the way, I'm sure Care2 would be happy for you to sign their petition to Roger Ailes, president of the neo-fascist propaganda TV network also known as Fox News. Here's the link to the petition site.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Frances Fox Piven is a lefty academic, a sociologist who advocates reforms of welfare in the U.S. that would eventually lead to a guaranteed annual income for all Americans. I've read one of the professor's books, and can't say that I agree with her entirely.
But now that TV-radio demagogue Glenn Beck has put her in his ludicrous right-wing crosshairs, I find that I must come to her defense. Because the 78-year-old professor urges a certain level of militancy among America's unemployed, in the form of mass protests, Beck has made her a verbal target, and some of the lunatics who hang on his toxic words appear to be cleaning and oiling their firearms.
Wikipedia summarizes the controversy thusly:
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has repeatedly criticized Piven, labeling her references to the May 2010 Greek protests a call to violence. Beck stated that she is an enemy of the Constitution, and that the Cloward-Piven strategy would "intentionally collapse our economic system", which in turn has led to multiple death threats against her. Comparing Beck to 1930s fascist broadcaster Charles Coughlin, Piven has replied that her references to riots are "not a call for violence"; that her critics are using "a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent."
When somebody gets on Beck's shitlist, threats often follow. The Care2 Petition Site reported:
After Beck's outrageous remarks against Piven, threatening comments surfaced on his website, including:
"Somebody tell Frances I have 5,000 rounds ready and I will give my life to take our freedom back"
"we should blow up Piven's office and home"
The irony, of course, is that Piven now appears to be a target of potential violence, after Beck drew attention to her by accusing her of advocating violence.
It's not news that Beck is a reckless and dangerous demagogue. The development here is the obvious chilling effect that a braying jackass like him can have on any kind of opposition rhetoric. When an emotionally disturbed man with the power of a mass broadcaster can incite an army of right-wing goons to potential violence, that smells of de facto fascism.
By the way, I'm sure Care2 would be happy for you to sign their petition to Roger Ailes, president of the neo-fascist propaganda TV network also known as Fox News. Here's the link to the petition site.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Bertha Lewis Was Right: Tea Party Is "A Bowel Movement"
By Manifesto Joe
I hate to break it to all you Tea Partiers out there, but even after the results of the demagogued 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party isn't doodley-squat in Washington. In the Senate, it appears to be some kind of crude joke.
The Chicago Tribune reported that "The first meeting of the Senate Tea Party Caucus on Thursday (last week) attracted just four senators willing to describe themselves as members."
Newly minted Rethuglican senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, passed on the meeting.
Predictably, the first meeting of this "caucus" was organized by Rand Paul of Kentucky. He persuaded three other senators to attend. This sounds like decent news to me, considering what young Mr. Paul wants to do. According to the Tribune, "He recommended gutting the Interior and State departments, eliminating the Energy Department and cutting all funding for public radio and television and the National Endowment for the Arts."
I think somebody left out killing the Department of Education, and also gutting and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Fortunately, in view of the Senate turnout, few are taking much of this seriously. The Tea Party attracted a lot of attention just with its smell. I doubt that it's going to have much staying power in Washington.
It's hard to witness mass stupidity and not call it by its rightful name.
Regarding the title of this piece, here's a link to a "fair and balanced" account from Fox News of former ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' speech last April. Read on, but prepare for resulting bowel movements. And don't say I never left a link to a Fox News article.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
I hate to break it to all you Tea Partiers out there, but even after the results of the demagogued 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party isn't doodley-squat in Washington. In the Senate, it appears to be some kind of crude joke.
The Chicago Tribune reported that "The first meeting of the Senate Tea Party Caucus on Thursday (last week) attracted just four senators willing to describe themselves as members."
Newly minted Rethuglican senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, passed on the meeting.
Predictably, the first meeting of this "caucus" was organized by Rand Paul of Kentucky. He persuaded three other senators to attend. This sounds like decent news to me, considering what young Mr. Paul wants to do. According to the Tribune, "He recommended gutting the Interior and State departments, eliminating the Energy Department and cutting all funding for public radio and television and the National Endowment for the Arts."
I think somebody left out killing the Department of Education, and also gutting and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Fortunately, in view of the Senate turnout, few are taking much of this seriously. The Tea Party attracted a lot of attention just with its smell. I doubt that it's going to have much staying power in Washington.
It's hard to witness mass stupidity and not call it by its rightful name.Regarding the title of this piece, here's a link to a "fair and balanced" account from Fox News of former ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' speech last April. Read on, but prepare for resulting bowel movements. And don't say I never left a link to a Fox News article.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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