Dog Days at NPR

National Public Radio has taken a number of hits in the last few months. Ron Schiller, the fund-raising exec from NPR who recently resigned, was depicted on a video with what he thought were potential donors, but were actually guys posing as Muslims. He apparently made statements in a private conversation that were against official NPR policy ("NPR would be better off without public funding"). He seemed to laugh at their jokes ("NPR stands for National Palestinian Radio"). He appeared to say things he thought they would agree with ("Tea Partiers are racists."). None of this was said on-air, or by a reporter, or an editor, or an announcer. It was basically a sales guy saying the sorts of things sales guys always say to win an account.

And, it turns out, the video was heavily edited, making Schiller appear to say things that he never did. Schiller actually said positive things about the GOP and his own history with the Republican Party. And who was the investigative journalist that helped uncover this? None other Glenn Beck, as reported on his website, The Blaze. And this isn't the first time the "journalist" who made this video has played this trick: Jame O'Keefe did the same thing to Shirley Sherrod, getting her fired as well.

What Schiller said shouldn't have been enough to get him fired. But Schiller let himself get duped by not doing his due diligence on potential donors, and caused NPR great embarrassment. If he had checked these guys out, he wouldn't have fallen for their trick. He was not only a victim of a gotcha moment, like the governor of Wisconsin was a few weeks ago, but of a heavily edited video that completely misrepresented what he said. Still, I would have fired Schiller for doing bad research, wasting his time on phonies, and missing an opportunity to expose NPR's detractors as liars, not because he insulted Tea Partiers' delicate sensibilities.

So, really, all this episode does is paint O'Keefe as a dirty, mendacious crook, and NPR executives as timid and afraid to insult conservatives in any way possible.

It was much the same with Juan Williams. I would have fired him because he was working for a competitor, Fox News. Fox appears to have it in for NPR and CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), viewing them as serious competition. Does it really make any sense for NPR to employ a man who's dishing inside dirt to someone who wants to see their funding cut? I've listened to NPR for 30 years, and a couple of years ago I noticed that Williams' tone had changed completely. He was parroting right-wing talking points when he subbed for Daniel Schorr on the Saturday morning news analysis spot. I didn't know it at the time, but he was working for Fox. If I was at NPR I too would have been looking to cut him loose ASAP. They probably thought his fraidy-cat comments on Muslims were a good excuse. Wrong. They should have fired him months or years earlier when he went to work for a competitor.

Some people think that there's a vast right-wing conspiracy against NPR and CPB. There's not. There are many conservatives and businesses who donate millions of dollars to CPB, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and NPR. David Koch, for example, donated $7 million to the PBS show Nova. If he really believed PBS was that bad, he wouldn't have done that. Hundreds of other millionaires and corporations donate to NPR, CPB, PBS and local public radio and television stations across the country.

The "controversial firings" and "embarrassing antics" of NPR employees are rather tame compared to revelations at Fox News. There, execs demand straight news reporters to spin stories on climate change and the health care bill to skew opinion against them. Fox producers doctored coverage of Tea Party rallies to make them seem much larger than they actually were. Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, told Judith Regan to lie when she was interviewed by federal investigators when Bernard Kerik was being vetted for Homeland Security secretary. Mr. Kerik was later sent to prison.

As for political bias, NPR executives are scrupulous about avoiding the barest appearance of bias, going so far as to forbid employees not covering from attending Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. Even MSNBC sanctioned Keith Olbermann for donating to a Democratic political campaign. Meanwhile, Fox News runs non-stop rants on air against the president and Democrats, while contributing millions of dollars to Republican candidates and action committees. So much for "fair and balanced."

There are only two arguments left for eliminating federal funding for NPR, PBS and CPB: the federal government shouldn't spend money on things that duplicate the private sector, and I shouldn't be forced to pay for stuff I don't believe in or want.

PBS and NPR are the only outfits that make decent educational programming, especially for children. The History Channel and Discovery Channel pretend to do programming like PBS, but their stuff is, to be brutally honest, complete junk. It has to be written for people with a five-minute attention span because of commercials every eight to ten minutes. Every time these shows break for commercial, they spend the first five minutes when they return recapping what they told you in the previous ten-minute segment, five minutes of which was a recap from the segment before that. PBS programming does not have these interruptions and they do not spend half the program repeating themselves endlessly. Anyone who watches shows like Mythbusters (which I love and hate at the same time) knows exactly what I'm talking about. One hour of "educational" programming on commercial stations is really only 20 minutes of information, while one hour of educational programming on PBS is really one hour.

All but one basic cable channel on our system is riddled with commercial interruptions, even though I am already paying them to get this programming! That one exception is TCM, which is an absolutely fabulous channel that shows old movies in their entirety without any idiotic chopping for commercials.

Commercial interruptions are the worst thing about commercial TV. They prevent logical chains of thought in educational programming and constantly interfere with story development with fictional programming. This is why so many people use DVRs to skip commercials; DVRs may ultimately doom the entire commercial model of television.

No private broadcaster puts together news programming like PBS and NPR. All the commercial networks and newspapers are cutting back on international reporting. NPR is not. Commercial broadcasters fill their shows with fluff, or anxiety-inducing scare stories that emphasize the latest bizarre murder, or celebrity gossip (who gives a damn about Charlie Sheen?). The "news" channels like Fox, MSNBC and CNN are spectacularly barren of news. Fox has endless hours of right-wing tirades. MSNBC has endless hours of ranting from all sides. CNN has endless hours of mindless blather.

When covering major news events all three cable network news channels stand around saying nothing for hours on end, repeating themselves, reporting rumors, and soliciting speculation from "experts." They have five minutes of blather, then five minutes of ads, then five minutes of blather, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. On NPR stations they give you the news, talk with someone on the scene for a few minutes, then when they've run out of things to say, they give you actual historical background. And when that runs dry, they go on to another story about something else. Just because there's a revolt in Egypt or a tsunami in Japan doesn't mean the rest of the world has stopped.

NPR runs news stories that vary in length, from a minute, to five, to ten, to 20 minutes long. They take the time necessary to fully explain the situation. They don't break for commercial every five minutes. On NPR call-in shows they weed out the ranting nut jobs, and when loudmouths do get through the hosts try to calm them down and then shuffle them quickly off if all they can do is vent angrily.

The closest thing commercial television has to NPR programming is 60 Minutes, which is a shadow of its former self, and it's just 40 minutes a week. Other than that, no private American broadcasting company does programming remotely like what NPR and PBS do. CPB and NPR are not stepping on any private toes. They are providing a unique source of programming in the US (only the BBC is comparable, and it's not American).

Public radio stations are also the only source of classical music programming in this country. Classical music is one of the great treasures of Western Civilization, and it's wrong to let one of the great traditions of our forefathers die out in this country.

Federal funding for CPB is essential for stations that can't possibly support themselves with local contributions alone, mostly in rural and small markets that aren't served by cable or local news radio. These stations are run by local people, often at universities, and reflect local sensibilities, not the dictates of head honchos at NPR headquarters. Cutting federal funding for NPR will close down community radio stations across rural and small-town America, but leave the stations in big cities unscathed.

Many conservatives complain that they shouldn't have to pay for PBS and NPR because they're politically biased and they don't want to pay for something they don't like.

The only bias NPR has is to tell the truth. They bend over backwards to avoid bias. They don't broadcast long rants in which the host claims the president is a racist, anti-colonial communist socialist fascist. They don't even raise their voices on-air. I do my own ranting, I don't need to watch someone else do it, thank you very much.

There are things government does that all of us don't want to pay for. I didn't want to pay a trillion dollars for George Bush's invasion of Iraq. I knew that it was bogus, that there were no WMDs, that Saddam had no connection to 9/11, that it wouldn't be a cakewalk, that we would be stuck there for many years -- if not decades. Now we all know it.

I don't want to pay millions upon millions of dollars for abstinence-based sex education. How can you possibly spend millions on that? How long does it take to say, "Don't have sex. You can get pregnant and get a disease." That's the entire curriculum. What more need be said?

I don't want to pay for "faith-based initiatives." It's a scam to give government money to politicians' religious cronies.

I don't want to give oil and gas companies tax breaks for oil exploration. Selling gasoline is extremely profitable. Why do they need special treatment to do it? They use our ports and roads to deliver their oil, and our Coast Guard to drag their employees out of the drink when their oil rigs explode. Why can't they pay their fair share of taxes?

I can see giving them tax breaks for basic research into something new, but there's nothing new about searching for oil in different places. This country's having serious financial problems, and we're still handing out special breaks for companies that are charging us $3.50 a gallon for gas? Soon to be $4 if things in the Middle East continue to be hosed up?

But even though I don't like all those things, I accept the necessity that I must pay for some of them, because this is a democracy and democracies are based on compromise: everyone gives a little and everyone gets a little.

And, yeah, I know times are tough and everyone has to pitch in. I have no problem with CPB and NPR taking a funding cut. But if you cut them off completely a lot of local stations are just going to shut down and years of investment will be lost, never to be regained.

But if you want to go with the "it's wrong for me to be forced to pay for something I don't want" argument for a moment, I can do that. Because I can fully appreciate that sentiment. And it happens not only with my taxes, but in other parts of my life.

My wife and I pay about $75 a month for cable TV. That includes all the local channels, basic cable stuff like Disney, Discovery, Comedy Central, Univision, and news channels like CSPAN, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Now, I will never watch Fox News or MSNBC or Univision or QVC, but if I want to get Comedy Central or TCM I am forced to get those channels as well. That means I am paying money to Rupert Murdoch against my will and being forced to support the right-wing propaganda machine.

And I can't escape this by using a satellite TV provider. If I want Comedy Central or TCM I am also forced to get Fox News on Dish Network and DirecTV. My only option is to not get cable or satellite TV at all, which is problematic because the on-air signal is extremely poor where we live, in a hollow 20 miles from the TV antennas in our area. That means my only "freedom" is no freedom at all. It's like me telling you to move to Mexico if you don't want to pay taxes that will be spent on the CPB.

Then there's the special treatment cable companies get. These days they're basically phone companies. They provide cable TV, Internet access, and quite frequently phone service. But they aren't bound by the same regulations phone companies are, even though they provide phone service. I never thought I'd see the day, but there are companies that I now like less than the phone company: my local Comcast provider.

Then there's the extortionist behavior of certain broadcasters, Fox in particular. At least twice in the last couple of years Fox has blackmailed cable providers by threatening to cut off local channel access to cable subscribers during football season. They charge cable companies a boatload of money to retransmit a signal the local Fox affiliates beam into the ether, free for anyone to receive. If they're giving it away, why are they charging some people so much money for it?

So, to everyone who's insisting that they shouldn't be paying for CPB, NPR and PBS: I'll agree to cutting federal funding for those organizations when the following conditions are met:

• A private broadcaster has programming of equal breadth and quality, written without the endless interruptions that destroy the pedagogic and entertainment value of the program.
• Congress stops cable companies from forcing me to buy expensive bundles of 20 or 30 channels that I'll never watch just to get the six or seven that I do (a mandatory a la carte option).
• Congress imposes the same regulations on cable companies that provide telephone and Internet service that telephone companies are subject to. Now that they're firmly established (some have been around 30-40 years) cable companies no longer need special treatment reserved for startups.
• Congress stops Fox's blackmailing of cable companies by allowing free retransmission of signals broadcast over the public airwaves, as long as the signal is unmodified and retains all advertising as is.
• Cable channels that I pay extra for should have no commercials. If I'm paying for a channel, why should I have to watch commercials?

There's no real broad-based conservative demand to end public funding for CPB, NPR and PBS and the local stations. There's a relatively small group of conservatives who want to stamp out anything that might disagree with them.

We are in a media age, and media companies are getting bigger and bigger. Comcast just bought out NBC/Universal to form a vertically integrated production/distribution monolith, intent on wiping out competitors like Netflix. Fox has always been pushing to change federal laws so they can buy more and more TV and radio stations, newspapers, movie studios, and so on. Fox is now also trying to extend its sphere of influence over the financial markets with its purchase of the Wall Street Journal.

And now, as a paean to Fox News, our moment of xenophobia:

Is it wise to allow Rupert Murdoch to have so much control over what Americans see and hear? He is, after all, really a foreigner. He only acquired American citizenship in 1985 so that he could own American TV stations. How can we trust a man who betrayed his own country out of financial convenience? How can we be sure he won't sell out out to the British or the Australians or the Chinese when it's convenient? Murdoch's papers in England have been caught hacking people's cell phones. How can we be sure he isn't doing it here?

Do I believe that crap? No. But that's the quality of the reportage at Fox News.

I trust the news I get from NPR, which in the grand scheme of things has no almost no money and never will, and has no axe to grind. How can I possibly trust the the pronouncements of reporters hamstrung by the dictates of huge, multinational corporations like News Corp and Comcast/NBC/Universal who stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars by monopolizing US media? Corporations that have no real allegiance to this country, except what can be denominated by the almighty dollar.

The Calm Before The Storm

Remember this serene moment as we are about to witness a mountain of shit squirt forth.

President Obama: We must seek agreement on gun reforms.

Upon reading this headline alone, tens of thousands are already screaming and foaming at the mouth. It gets worse.

I know some aren't interested in participating. Some will say that anything short of the most sweeping anti-gun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby. Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody's guns. And such hyperbole will become the fodder for overheated fundraising letters.

But I have more faith in the American people than that. Most gun-control advocates know that most gun owners are responsible citizens.

Sorry, Mr. President, but you have just unleashed a giant shit storm. Everything you recommended in this article makes complete sense and should be carried out immediately.

It will never fucking happen.

You have too much faith in the American people and the "others" of which you speak will grant you absolutely no fucking quarter whatsoever. Their brains aren't wired that way. In their eyes, you are a liberal/socialist/fascist/commie/fag who has been "waiting to pounce." To make matters worse, you're black which plays even more into their fears, hatred and anger. You are the enemy, sir, and even though you have done the exact opposite in your time in office, you are a gun grabber. You are an enemy of the state. You always will be.

You lost them after the word "guns." All they heard after that was "They's a comin!"

Voices in My Head

I've been waiting for this video to come out in its entirety. Sit back, pop some corn, and enjoy 44 minutes of the "voices in my head."

The Trial of the Century

Today a Minneapolis jury found against a blogger who had written a post that got someone fired from his job at the University of Minnesota. This case had been billed by many as the blogosphere "Trial of the Century." Like so many things on the Internet, this is wildly overstating the case.

The defendant, John Hoff, who blogged as "Johnny Northside," was ordered to pay $60,000 to Jerry Moore. On his blog Hoff had accused Moore of being involved in a mortgage scam that landed real estate agent Jerry Maxwell in jail for 16 years. Moore was not prosecuted in that case.

The jury found that although Moore had been involved in the mortgage, he hadn't been convicted of anything and Hoff's blog post "intentionally interfered with Moore's employment contract with the University of Minnesota Urban Outreach and Outreach/Engagement Center."

It's not clear from the story whether the jury found any validity in the charge of defamation of character, or just found for the contractual interference. So I'm not really sure that this case would have gotten anywhere if Moore had not been fired. The question is, if Hoff had simply mouthed off about Moore and Moore had kept his job, would there have been any case at all?

I've been ambivalent about blogging for a long time. I only started doing so at Markadelphia's request because he has less time now. Blogs and the bickering that accompany them seem to generate only heat and no light. No one is convinced of anything: most people seem intent on gotchas and zingers. (Yes, and in the heat of the moment I've been guilty of it too.)

Is the Johnny Northside case a warning for all bloggers? One of the issues in the case was the defamatory comments that appeared on the blog. Usually, though not always, the comments on blogs are far worse than the posts themselves. (Just read the thoughtless, hate-filled, anonymous comments on stories on news websites for millions of examples.)

The FBI can probably find out who anonymous commenters are by asking websites and ISPs for the IP address of the commenter, but there are many ways of getting around even that if you're really determined.

Though Hoff uses the pseudonym "Johnny Northside," he makes no attempt to hide his true identity. His gmail address appears on his blog, composed of his legal name. If Hoff had taken pains to make himself anonymous he could have likely have said far worse things about Moore and never been called to account.

I'm all for more civility in Internet discourse. But unfortunately this case won't change anything. The most obnoxious and inflammatory posts are general in nature, not directed at private individuals, but at groups or public figures (who cannot sue for libel). When they do attack specific individuals they're not usually accusing them of involvement in specific criminal activity, as with Moore, but simply launching petty, ad hominem attacks at bloggers or fellow commenters, or accusing politicians or groups like unions or corporations of amorphous conspiracies and working toward some secret agenda. When such accusations come to light they can easily be characterized as the rantings of an anonymous crank. When someone believes enough in their message to identify themselves it lends it somewhat more credence.

The most worrisome aspect of this case was that the jury found for the "interference with the contract." Known as SLAPP suits, corporations love to use this as a threat against individuals to prevent them from lodging protests against their activities. Don't like the deal a company made with local government? Don't like the crap a company is dumping in a local landfill? Complain about it in public and the company will sue you for interfering with their contract. Companies across the country have been suing local activists to silence them. And you never hear about them because of the gag order that always accompanies the settlement or the judgment.

From the Johnny Northside case it seems that you get into trouble when your identity can be verified and you accuse a private individual of involvement in criminal activity, and that accusation causes the victim some material harm. To stay out of trouble, don't let anyone connect you to your vitriol and keep it vague.

And, sadly, that's exactly what makes so much of the Internet a dismal place to be sometimes.

Just Fucking Ugly

It was only a few months ago that Boehner and the GOP took over the house. They said their number one priority was jobs. Instead, we've had the repeal of health care, defunding planned parenthood and NPR, anaphylaxis about the Defense of Marriage Act and now the McCarthy like hearings on Muslims. So much for focusing on jobs.

Contrary to Robert Mueller's prediction six years ago, we haven't had any Muslims blowing themselves up in shopping malls. The Muslims that move here do so to get away from all the scumbags back in their home countries who are blowing everything up. They come here because this the land of opportunity and freedom. They have integrated in our society quite well and their children (many of whom I have taught in the last few years) are as American as iPhones, incessant texting, gross farting noises, and loud yelling over something that someone said to someone who heard it from someone else after 2nd block.

Oh, and wing nuts? Check your feed to see if some loco weed has been mixed in with it. Sharia law is not going to be instituted in this country.

King is actually making things worse and it's pretty fucking sad. I'm not surprised, of course, that the fear, hate and anger crowd in their never ending quest to manufacture a problem have done it again. Al Qaeda is officially on the wane. Revolutions in the Middle East happened without their input. Their ideas have now been proven to be completely without merit as this article in the Times so eloquently demonstrates. and they have failed to capture the imagination of the youth.

For many specialists on terrorism and the Middle East, though not all, the past few weeks have the makings of an epochal disaster for Al Qaeda, making the jihadists look like ineffectual bystanders to history while offering young Muslims an appealing alternative to terrorism.

Indeed. So how moronic does King look now?

King's political theater and pandering to paranoids reminds me of one of my favorite comic books (yes, I am a comic book geek) from the Miracleman series. In the issue written by Neil Gaiman, Mircaleman has to create an area of the world for former spies from both the Soviet Union and the United States to live out their lives. Y'see, they can't function in any sort of peaceful and cooperative environment. They only know adversarial types of interaction and relationships. So, they lived out their days in this little corner of the world...spying and killing each other....until they are all dead.

I can't think of a better solution for the xenophobes in our country and the hirabists scattered around the world. Let's find a nice place for them where they can live out their hate, anger, fear, and paranoia of one another. South Carlina maybe? Texas? They can fight each other until they are all dead which suits me just fine. The rest of us can go about solving the real problems of the world which would now be much easier with these two groups out of the way.

Who knows, though? They are all conservative so maybe they'll figure out a way to get along:)

Lazy, Cheating Wisconsin Public Employees

There's a group of Wisconsin public employees that make $49,943 year, plus up to an $88 dollar a day "per diem," which many of them have been collecting under false pretenses for years.

These people only work part time: according to their own schedule they're working at most 70 days this year. Not only do they get to collectively bargain for their own wages: they get to decide what their wages are.

Yeah, these guys make the same salary as your average Wisconsin teacher, get a public pension, but every day they go to work they also get their breakfast, lunch and dinner paid for at tax-payer expense! In addition, they get a whopping $30,000 a year for "office expenses!" They can rake in almost $100K a year with a little creative accounting!

And the worst thing is, all they do is sit around and argue! They don't do any actual work! They don't teach any kids, build any houses, or sweep any floors.

Who are these lazy, good-for-nothing public employee layabouts?

Wisconsin state senators.

Do these arguments misrepresent the true extent of what a state senator does and their value to the state? Yes. Has all the ranting about Wisconsin teachers and other public employees in the last month misrepresented what those people do, and their value to the state? Oh, yeah...

Classic Overreach

After last night's vote in Wisconsin, I received a flurry of panic emails and calls. Most of you know that I have a vested interest in what is happening in WI as both my mother and best friend (John Waxey) are public employees of the state. While I am concerned about the vote, I guess I'm looking at the bigger picture.

In the short run, it will be interesting to see what the AG of WI does. Will he allow the vote? Regardless of what he does, the recall effort of Senators is underway. It's reasonable to assume that a few are going to be recalled and voted out of office. So, in the next few months, we could see a shift in the WI state senate that would put Democrats in chage. In the long term, you can bank on Walker being recalled. The question is...how much damage can he do in a year? If some Senators get recalled, it will be limited.

So, I guess I'm not of the mind today that we are all being thrown into a boiling pit of sewage yet. Honestly, I think it's classic GOP overreach. My chief concern right now is the pensions. There is no fucking doubt whatsoever that private concerns who have backed Walker want to rob the pensions in Wisconsin. That's where this is headed and where the ultimate battle will be fought. This is my mother's retirement and I shudder at the thought of those despicable people doing what they did back in 2008 to the entire country.

The Reagan "Doctrine"

When I was a grad student in 1979 I had two friends: Rommel, who was from Nicaragua, and Said, who was from Iran. Even though they were from opposite sides of the world, they had a lot in common: both their countries were torn by revolution and civil war. You could see the mutual understanding in their eyes whenever our group talked about the situation, something the rest of us couldn't really understand.

Those two revolutions, as far as they were from the United States, had a tremendous effect on American politics. The revolution in Iran cost Jimmy Carter his reelection, and the intertwining of Iran and the Nicaraguan counter-revolution that Reagan supported could have cost him his.

In Iran the American-backed dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown by Islamic revolutionaries. The American embassy was stormed and 50-some hostages were taken. In Nicaragua the American-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza, was overthrown by the Sandinistas, who eventually established a liberal democracy and held elections after a bitter civil war, funded in part by Reagan.

This history is important because some people's hazy memories of those days are leading them to the wrong conclusions about events in the Middle East, in particular, Libya. A recent column written by Marc Thiessen, a commentator at the Washington Post, tries to explain what a smashing success Reagan's doctrine was:

From his days as deputy CIA director during the Reagan administration, Gates knows there are options for removing a dictator short of sending in "a big American land army." In the 1980s, U.S. policymakers figured out a way to roll back Soviet expansionism without committing American ground forces to every flashpoint around the world. There were motivated people willing to fight their own wars of liberation. They did not want American soldiers to fight for them. They wanted America to provide weapons, training, intelligence and other support so they could fight and win those wars themselves. By providing such assistance, America helped resistance fighters in places such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan liberate their countries. It was called the "Reagan Doctrine," and the time has come to apply it in Libya.

Thiessen's thesis is that we should help the rebels in Libya in the same way that we helped the Taliban in Afghanistan and the right-wing death squads who killed American clergy in Nicaragua.

But a closer examination of the facts -- actually, just remembering what happened -- shows that the Reagan Doctrine caused many of the problems we face today.

When the shah of Iran, who had been installed in the 1950s by the CIA, MI6, and oil companies like BP, was overthrown the American embassy was overrun and hostages were taken. The hostages were held for more than a year, during which there was a presidential election in the United States. The hostage-taking was probably the last nail in the coffin of Jimmy Carter's presidency.

The thing Reagan's campaign feared the most was an "October Surprise," where the hostages would be released during the last phase of the campaign, and the good feeling of their homecoming would give Carter the boost he needed. That never happened.

However, there was an "Inauguration Day Surprise:" the day Reagan assumed office the hostages were freed. Coincidence? Wait and see what happens next...

During 1980 Iran and Iraq went to war. Reagan publicly supported Iraq; the US allowed war materiel to be sent to Saddam. This included chemicals that could be used for manufacturing nerve gas.

In the Iran-Contra affair, as it was known, Oliver North arranged for weapons to be sold to Iran. The proceeds of those arms sales went to finance the Contras, right-wing forces aligned with the former dictator Somoza trying to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Congress had passed a law making it illegal to supply arms to the Contras. Ultimately the Contras and their death squads were defeated; Nicaragua remains a democracy, but the Sandinistas have been in and out of power since then. Not from Reagan's secret machinations but because of elections held by the Nicaraguan people.

Was there a quid-pro-quo involved with the arms sales to Iran? Was Reagan paying for the delay of the release of the hostages until Inauguration Day? Many people believed so, and Reagan's CIA chief apparently went to Iran in the months before the election. Did Casey make a deal with the Iranians to release the hostages after the election, to seal a Carter defeat? He's dead, he died of a brain tumor about the time people started asking the question, so we'll never know.

Oliver North went to jail over Iran-Contra, and George Bush pardoned the high-level decision makers before they were convicted, preventing embarrassing details from coming out in court, and exposing the extent of Reagan's and Bush's involvement.

But back to Saddam. Using materiel provided by the US and Europe, Saddam made nerve gas which he used on Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians -- Iraqi citizens. The US Senate passed a resolution condemning Saddam and threatened to cut off all support to Iraq. Reagan vetoed this.

During the Bush presidency Saddam stated that Kuwait was part of Iraq. The American ambassador at the time made a statement to the effect the United States had no position on Iraq's territorial claims. Saddam apparently took this as a green light to invade Kuwait, resulting in the Gulf War.

Now, this has bearing on the other part of the Reagan Doctrine because, during the war in Afghanistan, Reagan funded the Taliban and proto-Al Qaeda against the Soviet occupation. Osama bin Laden was one of the guys we supported in Afghanistan. After the Soviets left, the Taliban turned the place into a misogynistic hell hole and haven for terrorists.

Many people credit Reagan for breaking the Soviet Union, but in reality Mikhail Gorbachov deserves most of the credit. The real reasons the Soviet Union fell were his policy of glasnost and allowing Poland to escape Soviet domination. Previous Soviet regimes had invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia under similar circumstances. The Soviet Union fell because they finally had a decent man in charge, as much as the dire state of their economy and their corrupt system.

When Saddam attacked Kuwait George Bush assembled a grand coalition against Iraq. The world beat Saddam rather quickly. One thing we did was base our troops in Saudi Arabia, in order to protect that country and improve logistics for the Gulf War. Bush stopped short of deposing Saddam because he knew that Iraq was an important counterweight to Iran (a lesson his son never understood and Cheney soon forgot).

But after the war we kept our bases in Saudi Arabia. This raised the ire of Osama bin Laden, and was the direct cause of the bombings of the embassies in Africa and ultimately 9/11. George W. Bush quietly closed the bases in Saudi Arabia during the Iraq war, finally giving bin Laden exactly what he wanted.

The lesson we can learn from this is pretty simple: all the petty machinations instigated by the Reagan doctrine -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, Nicaragua -- all either backfired and gave us more death and destruction, or were contrary to democracy and peace. George W. Bush tried to extend the Reagan Doctrine with the unilateral invasion of Iraq, using lies and nonexistent threats to justify it. A trillion dollars and thousands of American lives later, can we really say we got a good deal?

We rarely get a good result when we overtly meddle in foreign countries. We used to be a lot more covert about it -- as in Iran in 1953 -- but in this day of CNN, Al Jazeera, Facebook, Twitter and Wikileaks, that's all but impossible.

Sending in "advisors," as Thiessen would have us do, was the first step we took in Viet Nam. If we send such advisors to Libya and they're killed, say by a bombing of their barracks, the way 241 Americans were killed in Lebanon in 1983, what will people like Thiessen demand Obama do? Certainly some kind of retribution, otherwise the world will perceive us as weak.

But what did Reagan do when those marines died in Lebanon? Nothing. We got the hell out of there because we had no business being there. We blamed Iranian-backed terrorists, but never did a thing about it. Perhaps because Reagan was selling missiles to the Iranians on the sly?

We should give the Libyan rebels our moral support, and lobby in the UN for international action. But charging in there on our own, setting up a no-fly zone and sending in advisors and weapons would be a colossal, Reagan/W caliber mistake.

Action against dictators can be taken and can succeed. The ejection of Saddam from Kuwait was a good example, and Clinton's bombing of Serbia -- with NATO's involvement -- deposed Slobodan Milosevic and sent him to the Hague for trial. So unified international action against tyrants is completely reasonable, and that's what we should do. Or even better yet, let the people of those countries do it for themselves, as they have in Tunisia and Egypt.

But any unilateral action taken in Libya without the consent of the Arab world is doomed to failure. Perhaps not in the next year, but most certainly in the next 20 or 30. And that's what we should be concerned about: not that gas might hit $4.00 a gallon next month.

Truly Ashamed

Such hypocrisy on the right. Somewhere along the line, CEOS, Wall Street folks, bankers and the wealthy became Holy. And teachers are the ones being vilified...there are days when I am truly ashamed to be an American.

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Tell The Truth and Run

Things seem to be getting more interesting and stranger by the minute in Wisconsin. Meetings at the state line...a few GOP Senators starting to question supporting the bill....a pregnant Democrat who might give birth sometime soon...

So, while we watch this all unfold, let's take a step back and take a look at the 20 lies Scott Walker has been peddling over the last few weeks (courtesy of Russ Filtered News). These are some of the same lies we have seen in comments as well so it's nice to be able to finally dispense with them.

Walker: His bill is about fixing a budget crisis.

The truth: Even Fox News’ Shepherd Smith couldn’t swallow that one, declaring that it’s all about politics and union busting, and “to pretend that this is about a fiscal crisis in the state of Wisconsin is malarkey.”

Walker: says he campaigned on his budget repair plan, including curtailing collective bargaining.

“We introduced a measure last week, a measure I ran on during the campaign, a measure I talked about in November during the transition, a measure I talked about in December when we fought off the employee contracts, an idea I talked about in the inauguration, an idea I talked about in the state of the state. If anyone doesn’t know what’s coming, they’ve been asleep for the past two years.”

The truth: Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the sketchiest outline of his far-reaching plans to kill collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. In fact, he was caught on tape boasting to what he thought was his billionaire backer that he had “dropped the bomb.”

Walker: keeps saying that “almost all” of the protesters at the Capitol are from outside the state

The truth: “The vast majority of people protesting are from here — Wisconsin and even more from Dane County,” said Joel DeSpain, public information officer for the Madison Police Department.

Walker: He wants to negotiate.

The truth: He won’t negotiate, but he’ll pretend to so he can trick the 14 Dem senators into allowing a vote on his bill. Walker recently offered to actually sit down and speak with the minority leader – something he should have done anyway and long ago – but only if the rest of the senators came back with him. Why?


“…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have a quorum because they started out that way…But that would be the only, if you heard that I was going to talk to them, that would be the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them. And my sense is, hell, I’ll talk to them. If they want to yell at me for an hour, you know, I’m used to that, I can deal with that. But I’m not negotiating.”

Walker: says his budget-repair bill would leave collective bargaining “fully intact”

The truth: Walker revealed his own lie in the same radio interview when he said it was necessary to use his bill to strip collective bargaining rights, and in his own Feb. 11, 2011 letter to employees about his plan cited “various changes to limit collective bargaining” to the rate of base pay.

Walker: claims that states without collective bargaining having fared better in the current bad economy.

The truth: According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, three of the 13 non-collective bargaining states are among the 11 states facing budget shortfalls at or above 20% (Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina). Another, South Carolina, comes in at a sizable 17.4%. Nevada, where state employees have no collective bargaining rights (but local employees do) has the largest percentage shortfall in the country, at 45.2%. All in all, eight non-collective-bargaining states face larger budget shortfalls than Wisconsin.

Walker: Public employees are more richly compensated than their public sector counterparts.

The truth: According to the Economic Policy Institute, wages and salaries of state and local employees are lower than those for private sector employees with comparable earnings determinants such as education and work experience. State workers typically are under-compensated by 8.2% in Wisconsin.

Walker: said we needed a “repair” bill to address a payment owed to Minnesota of nearly $60 million and money owed to the Patient’s Compensation Fund in the tune of $200-plus million.

The truth: Walker’s budget repair bill addresses neither issue.

Walker: said that our budget problems are largely due to employee wages.

The truth: Total salaries and compensation in the last budget were 8.5% of the entire state budget.

Walker: “The alternative” to higher state worker pension and health care payments “is to look at 1,500 layoffs of state employees or close to 200,000 children who would be bumped off Medicaid-related programs.”

The truth: Federal law prevents Walker from taking away the health care coverage of 200,000 low-income and disabled children. Later, Walker told a Madison radio station that the layoff was merely a ploy to gain some political leverage: “I needed to get their attention to show how serious we were about having a balanced budget,” Walker said on the “Sly in the Morning” show on WTDY radio.

Walker: “We’ve seen local union after local union rush to their school boards, their city councils, their technical school boards and rush through contracts in the past two weeks that had no contributions to the pension and no contribution to health care. And, in fact, in one case in Janesville, they actually were pushing through a pay increase. Actions do speak louder than words.”

The truth: Of the 11 such contracts provided as examples by Walker’s staff, all 11 include some employee contributions to health insurance. PolitiFact Wisconsin, which too frequently gets the facts wrong and arrives at strained conclusions, did, at least, contact the 11 communities:

Madison: Unions in the state’s second biggest city have been negotiating contracts for more than a year. Their pacts expired at the beginning of 2010. Contracts with two of Madison’s biggest public unions settled before Walker was inaugurated Jan. 3, 2011, said Brad Wirtz, Madison human resources director. He said who said those deals set the template for the remaining unions, who reached agreement on wages and other key financial issues after Walker took office but before Feb. 11, when Walker announced his plan.


Sheboygan County: Adam Payne, the county’s administrator, said the county’s agreement with the unions was reached between negotiators before Feb. 11 and it mirrors pacts reached with other unions late last year. “There was no special treatment,” Payne said noting the County Board approved the contract at a regularly scheduled meeting.


Janesville: The tentative agreement for school custodians was reached Jan. 25, 2011 — before Walker’s proposals were made public. Eric Levitt, city manager, said that in January he had set a mid-February target to settle contracts with city workers, so the talks continued on the previously set timetable. The two sides were close to reaching tentative agreements prior to Walker’s Feb. 11 announcement, Levitt said. He said the city felt that because of its obligation to negotiate in good faith, it was necessary to continue the talks after the governor made his call for increased payments by employees.


LaCrosse County Administrator Steve O’Malley said the county didn’t rush things since negotiations started last year and the first tentative agreement with a local was reached in December.


Racine City Administrator Thomas Friedel that Racine had been negotiating with bargaining units representing Department of Public Works and clerical workers since summer of 2010 and reached tentative agreements well before Walker made his move.


Milwaukee Area Technical College: Like all of the other governments, the technical college and the union representing teachers and other workers had been talking for months, well before Walker was elected. The board and the American Federation of Teachers Local 212 reached tentative agreement on Feb. 10 — the day before Walker’s announcement. The agreement froze wages for two years.

Walker: “I don’t have anything to negotiate. We are broke in this state. We have been broke for years.” and “We’re broke. We don’t have any more money.”

The truth: The NY Times says “It’s all obfuscating nonsense, of course, a scare tactic employed for political ends.” Even the hyper-conservative Wall Street Journal calls out Walker on this lie. The notion that the state needs to refinance the debt because it’s broke and can’t make its debt payments is “completely wrong,” said Frank Hoadley, the state finance director. Joshua Zeitz, municipal finance analyst for MF Global, said, the shortfall — about 0.5% of the state’s overall budget — is a fairly inconsequential amount. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that this is a question more of politics than it is of a budget crisis,” Zeitz added. ”There’s a good amount of political theater in what you’re seeing,” said Tom Kozlik, municipal credit analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott.

If Walker were truly serious about balancing the budget, he would not be proposing a $36 million cut in the state’s capital gains tax or a $46 million corporate tax cut, on top of the millions of dollars in tax cuts he and the Republican legislature have already approved. Walker could balance his current budget by ending a variety of special interest tax dodging that is occurring in his state.

Walker: state employees pay next to nothing for their pensions and that it is all a big taxpayer give-away

The truth: Forbes — yes, the conservative Forbes! — says Walker is lying:


If the Wisconsin governor and state legislature were to be honest, they would correctly frame this issue. They are not, in fact, asking state employees to make a larger contribution to their pension and benefits programs as that would not be possible — the employees are already paying 100% of the contributions.


What they are actually asking is that the employees take a pay cut.


Pulitzer Prize winning tax reporter, David Cay Johnston, said so, too, at tax.com

Walker: said his budget repair bill, which guts the right of most public employees across the state to engage in collective bargaining, will deliver “the tools” local governments and school districts need to balance their budgets. “We cannot put this burden on local governments.”

The truth: Walker is going to both slash state aids and block local governments and school boards from raising taxes. And, of course, Walker’s numbers don’t match anything like reality.

Walker: claims he’s supported by silent majority.

The truth: Majority of Wisconsin residents (nearly 6 in 10) — and a majority of Americans — oppose his attack on collective bargaining and support the Dem 14 blocking it. Gallup found it. The CBS/NY Times poll found it. NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found it, too. The polls are so strong, even the reliably Republican Rasmussen couldn’t spin away from it. The public also overwhelmingly rejects the whole “public employees vs taxpayers” canard.

Walker: He wants to avoid layoffs.

The truth: Layoffs are implicit in his budget. Walker’s budget eliminates 21,325 state jobs

Walker: “To protect our schools, to protect our local governments, we need to give them the tools they’ve been asking for, not just for years but for decades.”

The truth: All four major state associations representing schools and local governments (not their employees) say this isn’t true.

Walker: The Dem 14 who are in Illinois to deny a Senate quorum needed to pass Walker’s budget repair bill are to blame for the layoffs he says he’s about to make to state workers.

The truth: Walker spoke of using layoff threats as political leverage: “We might ratchet that up a little bit, you know.” in his phony phone call with the faux Koch brother. Also, as noted above, Walker’s budget eliminates 21,325 state jobs.

Walker: “I have great respect for those who have chosen a career in government. I really do.”

The truth: Comedian Jon Stewart noted: ”‘I really do’ is a dead giveaway for ‘I really don’t,’ That’s what’s known in the business as the convincing clause. ‘I love you. I really do. That’s why breaking up with you right now is so difficult.’” The contempt he has displayed — in his bill, in his refusal to negotiate with the unions, in his refusal to negotiate with the Democrats and in his phony phone call — reveals why he felt the need for a convincing clause.

Walker admin: The protesters did $7.5 million of damage to the Capitol building by putting signs on marble walls with tape.

The truth: No professional estimate for clean-up has been performed. The Walker-appointed state facilities administrator would not support that estimate and said he’s not seen any damage by the protesters.

No Monopoly

For many years, I refused to go to church. Perhaps it was my youthful and rebellious streak in my younger years or my general distaste for organized religion but I stopped going when I was around 15 years old. I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't Christianity that was turning me off. Rather it was other people's child like interpretations of it that made me ill.

Today, things are a whole lot different. I don't go to church regularly but I do more often than I did in my youth which was never. More importantly, though, I spend more time with the Bible than I ever have and my faith is incredibly strong. In fact, it's so strong that I have to wonder why people get pissed off when they hear about people like John Dominic Crossan and Rob Bell. I don't agree with everything either of them say but I don't consider them any less Christian than me. Others, however, do. Why?

Because their faith is weak

I'm willing to be that the majority of people that are in anaphylactic shock over Crossan and Bell are the same people likely to end up having meth anphetamine fueled gay sex in some video on the internet. Without their strict interpretation of the Bible (most of which is contradictory in and of itself) and it's "code of condcuct," they would succumb to "temptation." In other words, they need the threat of Lake Hellfire in their daily lives or they will be out of control. I don't need that threat and therein lies the problem.

As I have said many times on here, people assume that everyone perceives the world in the same way they do. They don't. People also expect everyone to be as miserable as they are and when they see someone else that is happier, more mature, and has a handle on something as important as spirituality, for example, that's when the tantrums usually erupt and great umbrage is invariably taken. As a side note, these same hyper offended people are often incredibly self involved. One such person recently told me of how "God didn't want him looking at so much porn." My reply to him was, "Do you think that you are that important that God is worried about your porn viewing?" My comment, as you could imagine, didn't go over well.

The fury over Bell's book, which hasn't even been released yet, is hilarious. A simple examination of the Bible shows a mountain of contradictory information regarding the issue of sin and forgiveness. Of course, if one doesn't need to have the "sinners in the hands of an angry God" motif in their lives, it's quite apparent that God has forgiven us of our sins, through Jesus Christ, and we are now in a period of Grace. This is supposed to be a good thing but I guess some people can't take "Yes" for an answer as we see in this example from the Crossan article.

Some critics say he's trying to debunk Christianity. Some question his personal faith. At a college lecture, Crossan says an audience member stood up and asked him if he had "received the Lord Jesus" as his savior. Crossan said he had, but refused to repeat his questioner's evangelical language to describe his conversion.


"I wasn't going to give him the language; it's not my language," Crossan says. "I wasn't trying to denigrate him, but don't think you have the monopoly on the language of Christianity."

Exactly. No one has the monopoly on the language of Christianity. I know I don't. This is where the similarities come in between conservative Christians and conservative Muslims. If you don't believe as I do, they say, you will burn in hell. Never mind the fact that the myth of hell is largely been created by men, twisted in multiple translations and, in reality, simply means a life without Christ.

This overall issue of monopoly plays into other areas as well. In fact, it's illustrative of the giant chasm between liberals and conservatives. Liberals cheer diversity as well as organic and ever changing ideas. Conservatives believe in literal, rigid and strict interpretations of  the issues surrounding religion, government, economics, history, and morality. They completely believe that they have the monopoly on the language. Why?

Because their faith is weak.

The Generation Question

A friend and I were at a birthday party talking about the problems of our educational system, and he posited that the problem -- apply the cranky old man voice here -- with kids these days was that they'd been brought up by children of baby boomer parents. I disagreed with that -- I'm lumped in with the baby boom and my siblings and same-age friends have kids that are still in grade school or have just barely graduated from college and haven't started their own families yet.

A combination of a warmer-than-usual night and having eaten too much high-calorie food caused me to have some weird dreams and to wake up at 4:30 AM, leaving me to thinking about that conversation.

The whole narrative about the baby-boom generation, Generation X, Gen Y, etc., has always bugged me. For years I've watched commentators on TV talk about "baby boomers," attributing various characteristics and motivations to them as though they were some alien species -- even though these same commentators were totally oblivious to the fact they they themselves were baby boomers.

The truth is, people in my age cohort (1957) have little in common with people born 10 years earlier. I was too young to be drafted for Viet Nam (I never even had to register for the draft, though a friend born in February did), I completely missed out on the sexual revolution, school integration was a done deal when I hit junior high. I vaguely remember JFK's funeral (because Saturday morning cartoons were preempted). But I was too young for the signal events of the baby boom generation to affect me the way they affected people five or ten years older.

Perhaps as importantly, my parents were not part of the Greatest Generation. My father was 12 when WWII ended; my mother turned nine the day they bombed Hiroshima. They were alive during the Depression, but they were just little kids. Kids remember hard times, but it doesn't affect them in the same way it affects people who actually have to make the hard decisions about who eats and who doesn't. My dad was in the Army during the Korean war, but he served in Germany at the tail end of the occupation and never saw a lick of combat. My wife's dad is a little older. He joined the Navy but the war ended before he shipped out and they just released him. Like his father, my wife's oldest brother was practically on the boat, but the Viet Nam war ended before he had to serve. Yet my wife and I and all but one of our 10 siblings are lumped into the baby boom generation.

Generations are conventionally defined by demographers who care about the numbers for insurance companies and the Social Security Administration. Other people use those definitions to try to describe social trends. What matters more is what events affected you during the formative period of your personality, plus whatever effects your parents' generational cohort might have on your upbringing. The region of the country you're in is also important, because social change does not occur uniformly: school integration, for example, was a big deal in the south and many big cities, but in places like Hawaii and Wyoming it was mostly irrelevant.

And finally, you have to consider social strata and personal experience. Certain segments of society just aren't affected the same way. Black boomers in the south who lived through all that turmoil in the schools and served in Viet Nam learned a completely different set of lessons than rich white boomers who went to private schools and got college deferments to avoid Viet Nam altogether.

The idea of a "generation" is also too long a period of a time. How long is a generation? My mom was 21 when I was born. I have many friends who were 40 when their first child was born. Is a generation 20 or 40 years?

It makes more sense to segment up "generations" into the decade of your adolescence, the formative period of your life when the outside world is most likely to make an impression. The real baby boomers, born of WWII veterans coming home from the war, who went to high school and college during the 60s, had a completely different experience than people who went during the 70s, as I did. Yet I'm counted as a baby boomer, even though my dad wasn't a WWII vet and I never went to a war protest or experienced free love (dang!).

Maybe a better generational classification would use the terms of the presidents during adolescence. This is in the grand old traditions of Japan and Egypt, where the calenders were segmented up by the reigns of emperors and pharaohs.

We often look to presidents as the bellwether of the times. The mood of the country and its problems are often attributed to the president, though they're often as much victims of the times as we are.

People in their adolescence during the Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson years have a different set of experiences than someone who went through the Johnson/Nixon years, or the Nixon/Ford/Carter years. My parents were Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower kids. WWII vets were Roosevelt kids. Reagan/Bush kids grew up with "Just Say No!" while Clinton/Bush kids grew up with discussions of semen-stained dresses.

In the end, though, the concept of generations is as preposterous as the sign of the zodiac you were born under. What common characteristic do Bill Clinton, George Bush, Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Mel Gibson, Jon Stewart, Dennis Miller, and Ann Coulter have that defines them as baby boomers?

Bril!

WISCONSIN from @pawlmadethis on Vimeo.

A Question Answered

A recent New York Times headline:

Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?

Short Answer: Because the people that are dishing it out waver back and forth between an 8 year old having a temper tantrum and an adolescent power fantasy.

Even Shorter Answer: Because they are assholes.

Uh...guys? We Might Need A Bigger Boat

A recent article from Politico has answered a question I have been mulling over the last few weeks. Why haven't any folks in the GOP announced their candidacy? Aside from enjoying the mouth foaming without any real questions put to them or consequences for their ideas, the answer is obvious: Barack Obama is going to be tough to beat.

He's hovering around 47 percent approval now and that's with a still crappy economy. If it improves or if he bombs someone, his ratings will go above 50 percent and then it's more or less a done deal. With all the trappings of being in office, he has the advantage right now and the other candidates aren't necessarily prepared to go up against him. 2016 is looking mighty inviting with with its wide open arena and all. Who are the Democrats going to put up anyway? Hillary? She actually might be their best bet and if I were Mitt Romney, I'd wait. He has the best chance of being president and if he tries now it might ruin his chances in 2016.

I'm betting the 2012 pool from the GOP is pretty weak. We'll see Gingrich, Santorum, Huckabee and maybe even Bachmann. But the guys with the real chance to win like Romney, Daniels or Thune might wait it out. At least, they'd be smart to do so.

Pulling A Palin

I guess I've been too busy lately to grok what Governor Walker is up to in Wisconsin because I feel slow on the up take. It's so fucking obvious. Why didn't I think of it before? He's pulling a Palin.

In order to be recalled, there must be 50 thousand signatures and one year's time passed. Likely, that is what will happen. It remains to be seen whether or not he will be voted out but I don't think he cares. He will not budge an inch regardless of the cost (both personal and financial) to the people of Wisconsin. Seems like political suicide, eh? Not in this day and age. He will be crowed a hero by the Right. His prize?

A lucrative radio show coupled with a Fox News gig will be his for the taking. Within a day of being voted out of office, Scott Walker's career will be set.  Look at how great it worked out for Sarah Palin. More power to both or any of them, I say. They have an army of devoted followers ready to plunk down their hard earned cash for a fear, hate and anger stew.

It's the American Dream and....(wait for it) good capitalism!

The Drumbeat of Prison

"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."

Charles Ferguson, director of the film "Inside Job," has been saying the same thing over and over again since his film came out: Not a single prosecution related to the financial crisis of 2008. Now, Matt Taibbi (the quote above is from his new article in Rolling Stone) is beating the drum as well. I'm hoping it gets louder.

Taibi's piece is nothing short of brilliant. I'm certain that many of you (the same many of you who hilariously accuse me of falling in to the genetic fallacy trap) won't go and read it so here is an excerpt which sums it up well.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."


I put down my notebook. "Just that?"


"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

If you are curious as to the particulars, read on and you will discover the massive amount of fraud that has gone on for years with a limp noodled government which has either been bought off, is lazy, or is afraid to do anything for fear of being accused of overreach.

Sit back and think about it for a moment. None of these guys have gone to jail. None. Worse, they still have all of their money and are doing everything in their power to convince America that it should stay that way. They've certainly been successful with far too many of my readership.

See, it's not that I want more government power. I want the government to do their fucking job and they can't do it with a bunch of pathological adolescents running around bitching about statism. They have a whole other set of systemic problems to deal with and this just makes it worse. This would be one of the main reasons I am so monumentally frustrated.

The moment Blankfein or Cassano or Fuld goes to pound me in the ass prison for six months that's when we'll see Tea Party groups and Koch backed organizations go to work. The government will be painted as the enemy and nothing will get done. No one will go to jail. Adding insult to injury is the propaganda that they peddle to your average citizen. "Someday, you will eventually make money like me if we join together to stop the government." What a colossal load of bull shit. This needless worship makes me sick to my stomach.

With gas and food prices on the rise, what's left of the middle class is being squeezed out of every last nickel they have. You want to know how corporations are fucking you over? The entire system is set up that way. The people that own oil and food companies know that these are goods that have inelastic demand. Even if the prices go up, people will still buy them in the short run. They may become more elastic in the long run and some behavior may be adjusted but how likely is that considering there are no real substitutes for food and gas. These are but two examples. Throw in prescription drugs and watch your average wallet become empty quickly.

In so many ways, your average consumer is trapped. This, in turn, traps our economy from coming out of the hole and into recovery. The middle class is the engine that drives this economy, not these assholes who have gotten away with fraud. That's why I'm joining the drum circle on prison time for guys like Blankfein, Fuld and Cassano. Put these fuckers in jail. Yesterday.

Our economy simply can't take it anymore.

Divide and Conquer

When I was a kid my dad owned a window cleaning and janitorial company. He hired other guys to do some of the work, but it was basically a one-man show. He often took me to work with him, and at first I was too small to do anything but drink soda from the fountain at the pizza joint he cleaned. Later I was able to do light work like dusting the woodwork in newly constructed houses.

Eventually my dad got out of the business. I remember him telling me that it was because of unions, but it really seemed due to large janitorial firms that were snatching up all the business from the small operators. I don't remember the logic behind his anti-union statements, just the sentiment. Maybe he couldn't compete with the big companies on salaries (he also got in trouble with the federal government because he would pay workers cash, in order to avoid paying the corporate part of Medicare and Social Security taxes). But now, thinking back on it, most likely it was that big companies were able to underbid him, or were large enough to provide janitorial services for all the stores in a chain, or they used their high-level business connections to schmooze with company bigwigs to get new work. Big businesses will trounce one-man operations every time.

And so it went with my dad. He folded his janitorial business and went into real estate, working for a small company. During that period I started college and moved out, and eventually got married. Not long after that my dad quit real estate -- big companies with offices city- and nation-wide were crushing him, cutting deals that he couldn't match. He went to work for the metropolitan bus company as a driver. Eventually he wearied of this (he had no patience for old ladies that dawdled as they boarded the bus with all their packages) and became a bus cleaner, working nights in the garage clearing the buses of the detritus from the day. After 20-some years on the job he retired.

My dad only has a high school education. But in retirement he has a decent pension and Social Security, and has full medical benefits -- my mom and dad pay a fraction of what my wife and I do for health insurance every month. And his union medical benefits even paid for the pacemaker they installed a few years ago, probably saving his life. My parents live in a small house in rural Minnesota. Hardly an opulent lifestyle, but they're comfortable enough and even had enough money to buy a fixer-upper in a small town to renovate it for resale.

What made this possible? The union he worked for, the government job he had for the last 20-odd years of his working life, and the Social Security Administration he tried to stiff when he ran his own business.

I've got a college education and have worked in well-paying tech jobs. I've never been a union member, and don't particularly like the tactics that unions have used. I don't like the antagonistic attitude they foster against companies, or the silly work rules and featherbedding they negotiate. But those who complain of the hard-ball tactics unions use neglect to mention the even harsher tactics corporations used to try to crush them, often conspiring with government to use lethal force in the early years of the union movement.

But given all that history my dad is inexplicably a rabid Tea Party conservative, who rants about Obama's socialist policies ruining this country. This is the magic of the conservative spin machine. They are able to make people believe things that are against their best interests again and again. How? It's the oldest game in the political book: divide and conquer.

During the last 15 years the Republican party has been a political monolith. There is only one Republican party line and anyone who strays from it is put down quickly: abortion, tax cuts, the war in Iraq, you name it. Except in one area: immigration reform. On the one hand guys like Bush and McCain wanted to liberalize immigration and allow more immigrant labor in the country. On the other hand the anti-immigrant forces -- like my dad -- blamed every problem in this country on illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly Hispanic ones. These attacks usually have a nasty racist undercurrent.

So, over the last thirty years businesses and country club Republicans have been undermining the earning power of low-income Americans by hiring illegal immigrants, while cracker conservatives have been blaming those illegal immigrants for taking away jobs from low-income Americans. Jobs like picking tomatoes, cleaning hotel rooms and cutting up chickens -- all jobs that are back-breaking and often dangerous, and pay far too little for most Americans to survive on.

Meanwhile, the private-sector unions that my dad blamed for his business's demise have all but disappeared. Corporate union busting tactics -- inspired by Reagan's breakup of the air traffic controllers union and the influx of immigrant labor destroyed them. And now that basically all private sector unions in construction, janitorial services and meat packing are gone, Republicans like McCain have now changed their tune and are adopting the anti-immigrant fervor.

That brings us to the current day. After turning low-income Americans against illegal immigrants, the Republicans are now turning low-income workers against unionized government workers in states like Wisconsin. They are making an all-out attack on the last vestiges of unions in this country, characterizing them as lazy and overpaid.

The New York Times investigated public vs. private sector pay. From the numbers they cite I'm not clear on why people think government employees are so overpaid:

The janitors who buff floors and empty wastebaskets for the State of California earn a median wage of a little over $31,000 a year, which is 45 percent more than janitors in the private sector earn there. Georgia’s janitors, by contrast, earn less than $21,000, about 6 percent below their private sector counterparts.

First, even if you include medical and retirement benefits in those numbers, those salaries are appallingly small, much less than what the average American makes.

And second, why do public-sector janitors in California make more than private sector janitors? Could it have anything to do with a steady supply of illegal immigrants in the private sector? And third, could the absence of unions have anything to do with the scathingly low pay of public-sector janitors in Georgia?

No matter how you slice it, even the "highly paid" public-sector janitors who make $31,000 in California are living on abysmally low salaries. And the private-sector janitors who are making 45% less are pulling down a scant $21K. How could a guy like my dad, with six kids and a stay-at-home-wife, possibly make it $21K? How could you even afford a place to live in California? Much less buy a house? Or send your kids to college?

But if you dig deeper:

When workers are divided into two groups — those with bachelor’s degrees and higher and those without — a very different pattern emerges. State workers with college degrees earn less, often substantially less, than private sector workers with the same education in all but three states — Montana, Nevada and Wyoming.

This is the core of what unions do: make it possible for regular, red-blooded, high-school-graduated, beef-eating, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching Americans to make enough money to live and retire on. Well-educated people who have more personal leverage with employers can make more money in the private sector than in government, where employers have less latitude to give raises and merit pay. What a surprise.

Republicans like Scott Walker are hell-bent on destroying the unions, making sure that the least-well off in this country have even less power than they already do.

But destroying public sector unions and reducing wages of public sector employees will result in the reduction of wages in the private sector as well. As the incentive for working in government goes away, there'll be more competition for private sector jobs, which will drive wages down. It's Econ 101.

And it's not going to end there. A major problem for many state and local governments is overcommitted pension funds. Republicans are attacking these next, proposing 401(k) style plans instead. But many public pensions are in serious trouble right now, and no doubt Republicans will propose the private-sector response: foist the problem on someone else. Several airlines have already used this trick, intentionally underfunding pension funds and then dumping their obligations on the federal government after declaring bankruptcy.

Will the Republicans succeed at defunding existing public pensions and destroying my father's "cushy" lifestyle before he dies? I hope not. But maybe then my dad will finally get it.

The genius of the Republican propaganda machine is that they are able to take guys like my dad, whose entire life history reflects the propensity of big companies to crush the little guy, and turn them against institutions like unions, Social Security and Medicare that gave them a shot at decent life and retirement.

Because in the end, this is a very rich country. There's more than enough wealth to pay for decent retirements for all Americans like my dad. But corporations and guys like the Koch brothers have used their position to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us (a good example of this is the recent runup of gas prices because of instability in the Middle East -- no real disruptions in the oil supply have occurred, but it's a great excuse to jack up prices).

The Kochs need American workers more than American workers need the Kochs. The people who actually do the work of the Koch companies are responsible for the vast wealth generated, not the Kochs. We need the people who drill oil, clean floors, drive trucks, build houses, design buildings, pave roads, grow food and cut up meat. Those people need to make a decent living so that they can afford to buy the stuff that makes our economy work. We don't need highly paid corporate execs like the Kochs who do no actual work and inherited their positions through the divine right of kings.

The Republicans are using their divide and conquer strategy on the people in the mean streets, getting the poor and middle class to duke it out over crumbs while they and the other corporate elites eat brie and swill champagne in the penthouse.

Unions ain't perfect. But they're the only shot at a decent life most regular Joes have in an age where Walmart has dismantled every mom-and-pop outfit in the country.

I think this joke my wife just got in an email today after I had written the above pretty much sums it up:

A CEO, a tea party activist and a public union employee are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies laid out before them.

The CEO takes eleven cookies for himself, turns to the Tea Partyer and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie."

And The Oscar Goes To...

INSIDE JOB for Best Documentary Feature. Congratulations to Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs for being recognized as making the film of the year...hell...the century!

As Last in Line said after he saw it, "It's "House of Cards" on steroids."

Simply Stunning

And I wonder why I can't seem to get anywhere with people. Scroll down to the fourth question in this poll and take a look.

1 in 5 Americans think that the Health Care Law has been repealed. And another 25 percent don't know or refused to answer the question. Wow.

With this complete lack of involvement, it's amazing to me that our country is still functioning.

Even More "Failure" at GM

General Motors has just posted its first full year profit since 2004.

They posted a 4.7 billion dollar profit for 2010.

"I'm not sure anyone would have predicted a year ago that GM will deliver net income of $4.7 billion," Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said Thursday. The annual profit, fueled by strong sales in China and the U.S. as the global auto market began to recover, gave GM its best year since 1999, when it made $6 billion at the height of the pickup truck and sport utility vehicle boom.

Pretty great considering where they were. So...are we still sticking to the story that "Government Motors" is a failure?

Stripping Away The Douche

According to David Cay Johnston, the general public has been done a great disservice in terms of the the reporting of FACTS regarding the situation in Wisconsin.After reading his article, it's clear to me that language of douche (spoken frequently in comments here on the subject of Wisconsin) has hijacked this issue and, with the help of Mr. Johnston, needs a little translating.

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

Kindly take a moment and ask the nearest friend to clean up your exploded head.

Done? Now let's continue.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.

So, they take less money in order to get the better benefits. Since I don't speak douche, this seems reasonable to me. But why are they all pissed off about Governor Walker's plan then?

State workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

Perhaps if Governor Walker hadn't cut taxes or reduced audits the budget might be in a better place right now. The article goes on to detail exactly how every reporter (and some of my commenters) are factually wrong when they say, "the state workers are being asked to contribute more." Johnston makes a great argument and is quite detailed in the rest of the piece as to why this is the case. The state is paying their pensions. THE WORKERS ARE!!

And that brings us to the collective bargaining part of the equation. Why is this so important?

The fact is that all of the money going into these plans belongs to the workers because it is part of the compensation of the state workers. The fact is that the state workers negotiate their total compensation, which they then divvy up between cash wages, paid vacations, health insurance and, yes, pensions. Since the Wisconsin government workers collectively bargained for their compensation, all of the compensation they have bargained for is part of their pay and thus only the workers contribute to the pension plan. This is an indisputable fact.

Part of their fee for their service is the collective bargaining for all the benefits. Taking this away diminishes their value of their service...which is EXACTLY  the point. The message is clear once you see it. The people that stand against the state workers don't value public employees. It's just that simple.

Witness a fine and shining example of the pathological war on all the things public sector by a group of pissed off and frightened bullies blaming the completely wrong people. It's like I said yesterday...misery loves company. And if you aren't miserable, there's a whole bunch of people that want you right down in the sewage with them.

When The Tide Goes Out, I Want To Make Sure That I Drag You Down With Me

Whether he knew it or not, Stephen Colbert (in the video I posted yesterday) summed up exactly how the conservative movement of this country has as many followers as it does. I also now understand the motivations of some of my posters.

If you take a look at most conservatives these days, they are pissed off about something. Abortion, gay marriage, the debt, unions...whatever...and each of these things are demonized to such a point of irrationality that it's quite befuddling. For years, I thought they were just dicks. Recently, I have to come think that they are mostly just bullies and adolescents but I didn't take that extra step until reading this article in the Times and hearing Colbert two days ago.

I was so blind.

What do most bullies have in common? They all have a bunch of crappy things going on in their personal lives so they act out when they are at school. Or, in this case since they are "adults," the act like creeps when they are out with people and/or posting on blogs. Take the example of Rick Hahan from the Times article.

“Something needs to be done,” he said, “and quickly.”

Across Wisconsin, residents like Mr. Hahan have fumed in recent years as tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished, and as some of the state’s best-known corporations have pressured workers to accept benefit cuts.

 Fumed...there's the anger that they tap into as easy as pie which is why something needs to be done "quickly," I wonder if Mr. Hahan understands that this problem could have been easily remedied by not cutting taxes as the Governor did upon taking office. Taxes that were cut,  I might add, to favor the people that are (in reality) the reason why Mr. Hahan is out of a job.

And see how easily anger becomes resentment in the case of Mary Kay Horter.

Ms. Horter said she was forced to work more hours as an occupational therapist, but had not seen a raise or any retirement contributions from her employer for the last two years. All told, her family’s income has dropped by about a third.

“I don’t get to bargain in my job, either,” she said.

Ah, I see. Since Ms. Horter and Mr. Hahan don't have the same benefits, why should anyone else? Everyone, I guess, should be as miserable as them regardless of how hard they have worked to get to where they are today.

Misery does indeed love company. In American today there a fuck load of people, like Ms. Horter and Mr. Hahan, who are miserable and don't really like themselves very much. It's become increasingly obvious that these folks are ripe fruit for the pickins.

Guess who are the produce collectors?

So Brilliant I Can Hardly Contain Myself...

This is a nice front load to my post tomorrow which will contain an epiphany I had recently. In fact, Colbert says it in this segment.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
A Less Perfect Union - Randi Weingarten
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

So That's Where That Came From

A while back, someone linked a pajamas TV video in comments which essentially said the city was in ruins because of liberal policies. Stuff like this always makes me scratch my head...what fucking planet do they live on? At least now we have an explanation as to the origin of the story.

THIS.

Not simply a lie but a Pants on Fire lie. Wow. And a chain email source to boot. Those are always reliable.

Let's take a look at some of the facts.

Since 1950, Detroit has lost more than 80 percent of its jobs because manufacturers embraced new technologies and moved their businesses to the suburbs.That destroyed retail  businesses and led to a drastic drop in the city’s population; from the 1950 peak of 1.85 million, the population had fallen to about 900,000 by 2009.

So, no one is really to blame. This is what happened when we shifted from an agrarian culture to a manufacturing society. Further...

Detroit’s decline began shortly after World War II, he said, for the same reasons Dewar cited.
If welfare were the problem, Sugrue said, then one could expect to see hollowed out sections of Stockholm or Paris, cities in nations with generous welfare programs.

Yes, they are very generous. And we don't see the issues there that we see here. I wonder why that is?

The Corporate Takeover in Wisconsin

Tucked away on page 24 of the bill to strip some government employee unions (the ones that didn't support Walker's election) of collective bargaining rights is an interesting provision. It allows the state of Wisconsin to sell power plants without a competitive bidding process to whomever the department feels like, defining "public interest" as whatever the governor's lackey department head says it is.

Now, who would be interested in buying power plants in Wisconsin? Could it be the Koch brothers, who bought Governor Walker's election?

Why does corporate America always have its hand out, begging for government money and special deals? Why does every pro football team in the country need the government to build their stadiums for them? Why do oil companies need special tax breaks for finding new oil when the price of oil is so high and they're making money hand over fist? Why do conservatives love "privatization," where the government does all the heavy lifting (building freeways that become private tollways, privatized prisons in North Carolina, the state office buildings in Arizona, the power plants in Wisconsin), and then companies move in and take all the profit?

And then when corporations have obligations they no longer feel like living up to, they just declare bankruptcy and get out of jail free. Which several airlines did, foisting their employee pension obligations off on the federal government.

The shakedown of America by the financiers of the Tea Party has begun. The real agenda is now laid bare. They bought their elected officials; it's time to cash in.

Only Themselves to Blame

While there is no doubt in my mind that most of the people protesting in Madison right now turned out to vote last November, had the other half of eligible voters in Wisconsin actually participated in choosing a new governor, Scott Walker would not be in power.

I find it sad that the "record" was 52 percent back in 1962 and it speaks volumes about our pathetically apathetic culture. The simple fact is that lower voter turnout favors the GOP. This would be why they use the tactics they use (ACORN, Scare the Old, White Person etc.). They work. Many young people didn't turn out and vote and it's their future on the line. I'm certain as well that there were many people that were too busy with work and their lives so they just skipped the 15 minutes it would take to vote.

Now they have to live with it and they have only themselves to blame. Regardless of how this ends in Wisconsin, it's not going to go well for the individual. I use this word because I am attempting (in what I'm sure will result in failure) to get through to some of the thick skulls who read this blog (who laughingly champion individualism) that they are doing the bidding of corporate fascists. YOU (yes, you) are going to be affected adversely by this.

It's only a matter of time...

Most Excellent

I don't think I've seen a more accurate cartoon in my entire life.

Presidents Day Pageant (5)

The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

--Harry Truman, 1947

Presidents Day Pageant (4)

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.

--Jimmy Carter, 1979

Presidents Day Pageant (3)

‎I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state, and I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state. I believe it is in the interest of the world that a truly free state develop.

--George W. Bush, 2004

Presidents Day Pageant (2)

‎Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

---Ronald Reagan, 1981

Presidents Day Pageant (1)

Dedicated to the men and women sitting in the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

--Dwight David Eisenhower, 1954

So Much For States Rights

Now the Tea Party has showed up down in Madison which means that their list of hypocrisies has grown by yet another item. I'm still shaking my head in bewilderment regarding their name (no one is being taxed without representation) but this latest move demonstrates how completely full of shit they are.

It was my understanding (correct me if I am wrong, please) that their rasion d'etre is less national government and more state government. Each state is left to their own devices to operate as they see fit. Someone from Minnesota, for example, has no business telling someone from Wisconsin what type of government they should have. This would be why I have largely been silent on the issue and let Mr. Waxey make his case. Of course, I'm not a conservative so, as a Democrat, I would still be operating in line with my beliefs if I did try to force my views on the Cheezers.

And I lived there from age 6 to age 18 (with my mom still living there and being directly affected by this bill as a state employee of 32 years) so even with just that I could say something if I wanted. So could Jesse Jackson and all the other folks from the left that have descended on Madison. They could be called meddlesome but not hypocritical.

That badge of honor falls squarely on the chest of the various NATIONAL Tea Party organization and their army of professional protesters. Apparently they have chucked their principles down the toilet and headed off the to the prairie to thump their chests about how evil government is and how blessed (from the Lord himself) we all are to have corporations.

Because that's what this is really all about. Scott Walker is one of many who has been funded by the Koch Brothers. Their vision for America, like Walker's, is one in which everyone works for private companies and workers have zero rights. They knew that their time is now and, with a very base of angry, hateful, and frightened older people, they are attempting to assert their will. I'm sorry...VILL!

Must be nice to have so many true believers. I'm happy, though, that my best friend (since 7th grade) John Waxey is on the case. Hopefully, we will get some more updates soon. He's been down at the capital every day!

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: I was just informed by John Waxey that the union supporters to Tea Partier ratio was 50 to 1 and not 2 to 1. Most of the major media are reporting that the crowd doubled when the Tea Party showed up. I did as well in the first sentence (which I have now corrected) but I wanted to leave a note about it down here as well to say that it was not true. 

Do you think the media enjoys divisiveness?