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Romney & Bush Disappearance (Bill Maher Poster)
Posted on 09/03/2012 by Juan
Labor Day Question: Are you Better off than You were in 1970?
Posted on 09/03/2012 by Juan
Thoughts for a Labor Day in 2012:
The real question isn’t whether we are better off than we were four years ago. It takes a long time to recover from burst bubbles and near-depressions (the Japanese have still not recovered from their burst bubble of the early 1990s). The real question is whether the working and middle classes of the United States will go on allowing themselves to be taken advantage of by our super-rich, who are gathering to themselves more and more of the national income. The top 1% owned 25% of the privately held national wealth in the United States in the 1950s, but have 38% of it today.
In contrast, real wages per hour for the average worker in the United States, adjusted for inflation, peaked in 1970. We’re now down from that, with a generation and a half blocked from meaningful economic advancement.
h/t Faustian urGe.
But, you will say, the US is a much wealthier society now than it was in 1970 or 1990. Where has all the extra money generated by American labor and investment gone?
It has gone to the rich. Yes, folks, the rich are taking home a fifth of everything we make as a country each year, up from ten percent in 1970. We are 310 million people. About 3 million get a fifth of the annual income. Those 3 million people are 3 million Mitt Romneys. They want low taxes and they want to get rid of social security, medicare and Obamacare.
See, in general, Who Rules America?.
The rich in this country now see an opportunity to take us back to the age of the robber barons– and get rid of all government programs for the middle classes and the workers and make us wait to age 70 (when most people will be more decrepit than they expect) to retire. Because the more of the national income they take home every year, the more politicians they can buy, and the more they can cut their taxes and shift the burden of road-building and other government services to the middle classes and workers.
It is a ratcheting process that is leaving the US an increasingly unequal society, and one in which hopes of upward mobility for ordinary people are increasingly crushed. Indeed, Europe (the “Old World”) now offers more opportunities for upward mobility and getting ahead than the United States.
The way to reverse this crisis of income stagnation is to restore rights to unionize and collectively bargain and to make the rich pay their fare share for government-provided infrastructure and for educating the work force they exploit.
Guess who will do the opposite if they win in November?
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“What the World Needs Now” – In Memoriam Hal David
Posted on 09/02/2012 by Juan
Award-winning lyricist Hal David is dead at 91.. Here is one of his hits in remembrance, and the sentiment is one we could do with right about now.
Dionne Warwick sings Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love“:
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Tutu Slams Tony Blair for Illegal Iraq War, boycotts Leadership Conference
Posted on 09/02/2012 by Juan
South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu made waves by refusing to attend the recent Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg because of the presence of former British prime minister Tony Blair. His reasoning? Blair is a war criminal because of his support for and participation in the 2003 George W. Bush invasion and occupation of Iraq. Tutu is tired of African leaders being dragged off to special courts or the International Criminal Court for trial on charges of having committed crimes against humanity, while white European leaders get a pass.
Tutu is right that there should be accountability for illegal wars, because otherwise they legitimize aggression. The architects of the Iraq War in the United States are now glomming onto Mitt Romney in hopes of maneuvering themselves into a position to get up a war on Iran. That they got away scott free with their earlier atrocities has only whetted their appetites.
The leadership conference did go on, and Blair addressed it, defending himself on the Iraq War, saying that even if there had not been weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein had been a brutal dictator who killed thousands and used poison gas against his own people, and now he is gone; what, he asked, is wrong with that result? Blair’s self-defense, despite the accuracy of his charges against Saddam Hussein, is ethically and legally weak, since it takes the form of an “the ends justify the means” argument. Ironically, al-Qaeda, Blair’s arch-enemy, argues the same way in justification of its killing. One of the ugliest points Blair made in self-defense was that Iraq’s gross domestic product is now three times what it was in the late Saddam period. But Blair and the US and other UNSC members had engineered an economic blockade of Iraq that threw its economy down into fourth-world levels, so it had been Blair who set the low baseline that he said his invasion and occupation improved on! All that happened was that the invaders lifted their sanctions! Blair was paid thousands of dollars to attend the conference; if Tutu had gone, he would have spoken gratis.
Blair’s attorney general, Lord Peter Goldsmith, reasoned that an attack on Iraq in the absence of an explicit UN Security Council resolution allowing it was very possibly illegal in international law, and might expose British cabinet members to prosecution in European courts. He admitted of a grey area, because of the first UNSC resolution demanding Iraq reveal its WMD. Blair unethically connived at keeping his cabinet members in the dark about Goldsmith’s reservations, according to Alastair Campbell. That is, Tutu is right that Blair had legal advice that what he was about to do was very likely illegal, and he did it anyway.
But Tutu seems to have been especially angered by Blair’s 2010 admission that he would have invaded Iraq even if he had known that it possessed no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Many observers took this admission as a sign that Blair actually did know that the WMD case had been weak, and that he was advocating might makes right, opening him to charges of war crimes.
British law professor Philippe Sands points out that if you look at the International Criminal Court’s web site’s listing of defendants, they are largely African. We are confronting a world, he says, reminiscent of nineteenth-century French novelist Honoré de Balzac’s observation that laws are “spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.” He argues that international law will only really advance when the playing field is leveled.
Tutu’s observations are very much of a piece with Sands’s. He argues that Blair went to war against Iraq on fabricated false pretenses, since there were no Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction,” and he implies that Blair knew this to be the case before the war was actually launched. He tells the story of how he called then US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in early March, 2003, urging that United Nations inspectors be allowed to do their job before hostilities were initiated. Bush, Blair and the UN had demanded that the weapons inspectors be sent back in under Hans Blix. They were admitted, in February. The CIA gave them a list of 600 suspected weapons sites. They got through 100 by early March and had found nothing. Zero, zilch, nada. It was clear that if they were allowed to complete the list of 600, the casus belli or cause for war trumpeted by Bush and Blair would evaporate.
Tutu says that in response to his request that the weapons inspectors be given a chance, ” Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.” Bush pulled the inspectors out and went to war.
There was, of course, no risk at all from ramshackle, beaten-down Iraq. The risk was that Bush’s shaky coalition of the willing to commit war crimes might falter or fall apart if he didn’t immediately launch a Blitzkrieg.
Tutu’s charge is that the Iraq War was a crime against humanity because it was a “fabricated” war, with no legitimate or moral casus belli, which resulted in massive deaths of Iraqis, their displacement in the millions, and continued instability in Iraq and in the region. Tutu even lays the blame for the current instability in Syria at Blair’s doorstep.
Tutu is careful to quote only the most conservative estimates of Iraqi deaths deriving from the Anglo-American war and occupation, saying 110,000 died. It likely was a much larger number, several hundred thousand. Since about 3 times the number of people are typically severely wounded as killed in such conflicts, some 300,000 to a million Iraqis likely lost limbs or suffered long term cognitive and other damage. A lot of the killed were men, forcing their widows and orphans into penury, and even sometimes sex work. Although Blair in his defense cited the Iraqis who died under Saddam, likely the US and Britain were responsible for similar numbers of Iraqi deaths.
Tutu is arguing from the black South African experience. South Africa suffered British conquest and colonialism, and then white Apartheid under the racist National Party (mainly an Afrikaaner institution, but more British whites passively supported it than would later admit to having done so).
Tutu, unlike a lot of South African intellectuals to whom I have spoken or whom I have read, is not a believer in absolute state sovereignty. He does believe that there are regimes so awful that they cry out for United Nations intervention, and he once said he would support a UN intervention against the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe.
I presume that part of Tutu’s charge against Blair is that he did not secure a UN Security Council resolution for war against Iraq, in the absence of which going to war is illegal in the post WW II international legal framework. If so, Tutu would have done us a favor by saying so. (This lack of a legal framework for war was one of the reasons I opposed the invasion of Iraq.)
I have long advocated that the criminal actions of Bush, of his vice president Richard Bruce Cheney, and of other high officials, be investigated. Bill Clinton was impeached for a fib about fellatio, but taking the US into an illegal war was treated with impunity.
The only thing I’d differ with in Archbishop Tutu’s argument against Blair is that probably the instability in Syria is not very related to the Iraq War. People in Syria were tired of Baath dictatorship and Bashar al-Assad pushed them into armed struggle. Most of those fighting al-Assad were opposed to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
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Top Ten Clint Eastwood Empty-Chair Falsehoods
Posted on 09/01/2012 by Juan
You can’t see me, but I’m talking to Clint Eastwood sitting spectrally in an empty chair, and I am replying to his confused rant.
1. Mr. Eastwood, you called the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay penitentiary a broken promise. President Obama was prevented from closing Guantanamo by the Republicans in Congress, which refused to allocate the funds necessary to end it. Do you remember this this Washington Post headline, “House acts to block closing of Guantanamo”?
2. Mr. Eastwood you called “stupid” the idea of trying terrorists who attacked New York in a civilian courtroom in New York. But what would have better vindicated the strengths of America’s rule of law, the thing about the US most admired abroad? Mr. Eastwood, perhaps you spent so many years playing vigilantes who just blew people away (people who in the real world we would have needed to try to establish their guilt or innocence) that you want to run our judicial system as a kangaroo court.
3. You complained that there are 23 million unemployed Americans. Actually there are 12.8 million unemployed Americans. But there are no measures by which W. created more jobs per month on average during his presidency than has Obama, and there is good reason to blame current massive unemployment on Bush’s policies of deregulating banks and other financial institutions, which caused the crash of 2008.
4. You criticized President Obama for giving a target date for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan of 2014, and alleged that Romney said, “Why don’t you just bring them home tomorrow morning?” But George W. Bush set a target date of 31 December, 2011, for withdrawal from Iraq, and did so in negotiation with the Iraqi parliament. Was that also a bad idea? Have you considered that NATO allies and the government of President Hamid Karzai may have demanded an announced withdrawal date as a prerequisite of continued cooperation with the US there? And, just for your information, Gov. Romney hasn’t called for US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately.
5. Mr. Eastwood, you made fun of Joe Biden as the ‘intellect of the Democratic Party.’ Vice President Biden was chair or ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, helped to save the Bosnian Muslims from genocide, and passed the Violence against Women Act. I haven’t always agreed with him myself, but he has been among our more thoughtful contributors to American foreign policy. You, on the other hand, like to pretend to shoot down large numbers of people over the course of a violent two-hour fantasy.
6. You criticized President Obama for ‘talking about student loans.’ The Republican Party, especially Paul Ryan, wants to take away the government-backed loans on which millions of students depend, at a time when student indebtedness is at an all-time high. Just because some people are way overpaid for play-acting doesn’t mean that ordinary people don’t need student loans to get the credentials that allow them to make a better life for themselves.
7. Mr. Eastwood, you criticized President Obama for saying he is an ‘ecological man’ but flying in Air Force One. Under President Obama, non-hydro forms of green energy in the United States have doubled from 3 percent of electricity production to 6 percent. Obama’s tax credits have been a big reason why. In contrast, Mr. Romney wants to get rid of credits for wind energy, which will hurt the Iowa economy, e.g., and is in the back pocket of Big Oil, so that he will stand in the way of green energy. I think doubling renewables rather offsets an occasional jet ride. And, it is Obama’s policies that will get us to the solar-driven airplane, not Romney’s.
8. You made fun of Obama because he has a law degree from Harvard. I just want you to sit in your empty chair for a while, and think about that.
9. You called Mr. Romney a ‘stellar businessman,’ but his business appears to have been to send American jobs to China.
10. I don’t know who suggested to you that you address us at the end and say, “Make my day,” with the implication that we should vote Romney-Ryan. But what I remember is, that phrase is a threat you are going to do bad things to us.
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Top Green Energy Advances Mitt Romney doesn’t Want to Hear About
Posted on 08/31/2012 by Juan
As the deleterious effects of hydrocarbons like coal, gas and oil continue to be felt in the world, the peculiar US dedication to these poisons that produce illness and climate change will increasingly disadvantage it. The US will be open to lawsuits or diplomatic and trade reprisals for acid rain, ocean acidification, rising sea levels, and drought and crop failures. Moreover, other countries with more extensive green energy will have economic advantages over the dirty old US. And, developing countries will look to wind and solar innovators elsewhere than the US for their energy plants. Pakistan is contracting with a Czech firm, not an American one. Others are turning to China for solar panels. Romney’s US will be left behind.
Production prices are falling in wind and solar, and efficiencies are increasing, literally by the month. Since we are going to get there eventually, and since carbon emissions are so damaging, the world’s governments should be actively punishing use of hydrocarbons and actively promoting green energy. And, some are. In contrast, Romney wants to get rid of wind power tax breaks, e.g.
Japan is doing a trial run of offshore floating wind farms. The country is facing an energy crisis after its nuclear complex at Fukushima was hit by a tsunami.
China has just approved its largest solar power farm yet, in Datong, with a capacity of 300 megawatts.
Pakistan has a severe electricity shortage, to the point where there are street protests against blackouts. The Sindh provincial government is now turning to wind power, partnering with a Czech firm, in hopes of generating a new half-gigawatt from that source for the megopolis of Karachi. The electricity crisis is driving the country’s major political parties to begin looking at renewables to meet its needs. I am wondering if the close relationship of Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif with Saudi Arabia has kept the PML from pursuing green initiatives. The Sindh wind farm is being promoted by the Pakistan People’s Party.
A fourth wind farm project is being planned for Oaxaca in Mexico, as that country seeks to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2020, only 8 years from now.
IBM says it has made a breakthrough in making an efficient thin solar panel from inexpensive, widely-available materials such as copper and tin rather than rare-earth metals. Such a development would allow a significant expansion of solar energy.
In enormous countries like India, individual states often dwarf most countries. Karnataka in India now has over a gigawatt worth of planned solar capacity in the pipeline, promoted by state government. Karnataka is already a leader in wind energy, with 2 gigawatts of installed capacity. The state’s ambitious plans already on the books could generate 60% of its electricity needs in coming years.
And, Gujarat state in the northwest is pioneering public-private partnerships to put solar panels on building rooftops.
Even in red-state Texas, solar power is now thought essential to meeting the state’s peak-power demands as its population and industry grow.
Green energy is already being generated a grid parity with hydrocarbons in many places, but it needs better storage (the sun doesn’t shine at night, and wind doesn’t always blow, so you need to store the energy for later use, but right now there aren’t good ways to do that on a massive scale). Companies are experimenting with hydropumps (pumping water uphill and allowing it to run back down), but also with ski-lifts and compressed air and water.
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Top Ten Repeated Paul Ryan Lies
Posted on 08/30/2012 by Juan
This year’s Republican campaign may be the most dishonest in history. A couple of weeks ago I listed 10 major falsehoods and gaffes of Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan. He repeated several of them in his Tampa speech, and added a few more. In honest political debate, when a candidate says something that is not true, he is confronted by journalists and the public, and either gives evidence that it is true, or backs off. Ryan continues to insist on repeating known falsehoods, to the extent that even Fox Cable News lamented his dishonesty.
Voters need to ask who Ryan represents. It is people who make a million dollars a year or more. Everything he says is intended to produce policy that benefits them, and which hurts working people. Millionaires don’t like having to pay for government-provided infrastructure, or health care for workers, and don’t like having to put up with unions. The rest of us like driving on roads without potholes, over bridges that don’t fall down, and not being bankrupted when we need an operation. Since most Americans would be crazy to vote for policies that only benefit our three million wealthiest, out of 310 million, Ryan tries to appeal to workers with religion (banning abortion). He needs to put together a coalition of millionaires and some religious workers in order to win. But even that wouldn’t be enough. He has to get people on his side who would be hurt by his policies. And that requires that he simply lie to them.
So here are some new lies he just retailed, along with a reiteration of my earlier refutation of points drawn from his stock speeches, which he put right back in his Convention speech.
1. Ryan blamed the US credit rating downgrade on President Obama. But it was caused by the Republican Congress’s threat not to raise the debt ceiling. That is, the fault for the credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA belongs with… Paul Ryan.
2. Ryan continues to claim that President Obama said business owners did not build their own businesses. Obama said that business owners benefit from government infrastructure and programs, which they did not build. No small business owner has built an inter-state highway or bridge, but those are the means whereby their goods get to market. Ryan’s (and the GOP’s) talking point in this regard is a typical Karl Rove Big Lie, and among an informed electorate it ought to discredit them.
3. Ryan depicted Obamacare as virtually a turn to Soviet-style totalitarianism, as incompatible with liberal freedoms for the individual. But the logical conclusion is that Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, turned Massachusetts into a Gulag.
4. Ryan slammed President Obama for not implementing the deficit-cutting measures recommended by the Simpson-Bowles commission. But he himself voted against Simpson-Bowles.
5. Ryan keeps attacking Prsident Obama’s stimulus program now. But in 2002 when then President George W. Bush proposed stimulus spending, Ryan supported it. “What we’re trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed,” Ryan told MSNBC in 2002. Ryan says that the stimulus had not positive effects, while economists say it saved or created millions of jobs and pulled the US out of a near-Depression.
6. Even more embarrassing, in 2010, Ryan asked for $20 million in stimulus money from Obama for companies in his district, then repeatedly denied requesting stimulus funds. He finally admitted he had done so, but continues to slam the stimulus program as a failure (even though the economy pulled out of a Depression as a result of it).
7. Ryan slammed President Obama for the closure of an auto plant that closed in late 2008 under George W. Bush. Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, opposed Obama’s actual auto bailout, which was a great success and returned Detroit to profitability.
8. Paul Ryan charges that Barack Obama has ‘stolen’ $700 billion from medicare for his Obamacare. In fact, these expense reductions do not cut Medicare benefits, and, moreover, Romney and Ryan supported these reductions! The difference is that they would give the savings to the affluent, whereas Obama uses them to cover the presently uninsured.
9. Ryan continues to push his longstanding plans for a steal-from-the-elderly-and-give-to-the-rich medicare plan, which President Obama warned would cost ordinary recipients over $6000 a year extra. Politifact checked and rated Obama’s charge as correct, though they noted that the figures referred to CBO analyses of Ryan’s last plan, not his ‘new’ one, which hasn’t been subjected to similar analysis. Ryan certainly recently put forward a plan that would cost ordinary people that much extra.
10. Ryan neglected to note that under the tax plan he favors, Gov. Mitt Romney would pay less than 1% in annual federal taxes, highlighting Romney’s already low rate compared to ordinary Americans (slightly lower than Ryan’s own!) and putting the spotlight back where Ryan’s appointment was supposed to misdirect it.
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Juan Cole
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