Thursday, September 24, 2009
Caught between an Acorn and a Hard Place
Humor and Hypocrisy from the World of Politics
Congress was falling all over themselves to pass a bill punishing ACORN. In fact, they refer to the bill (in the bill itself) as the "Defund ACORN Act". The bill passed both the House and Senate.
There is only one problem with that — bills that punish a single person or organization without a trial are unconstitutional. Such a law is called a "bill of attainder" and is specifically barred by the constitution. So even though the law doesn't hide the fact that it is punishing ACORN, the language of the bill itself had to be written more broadly. So instead of defunding ACORN, it defunds "any organization" that has been indicted on charges of breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws, or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency.
So, are there any other organizations that have been indicted for those things and receive federal funding? Lucky for us, the Project On Government Oversight has a handy list of federal contractors who have been guilty of fraud. The top ten on the list starts with Lockheed Martin, followed by Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General dynamics, Raytheon, BAE, L-3 Communications, United Technologies Corp., SAIC, KBR. In fact, pretty much every major defense contractor is on the list. So if this bill is signed into law by Obama, it would explicitly defund the entire military-industrial complex.
Great start for Sotomayor
Corporations are artificial life forms, created and chartered by states. But some believe these life forms have all the rights, and more, of actual citizens. Yes, we live in Frankenstein's country.
And it gets worse. Some argue that corporations are, in effect, people, protected by the Constitution but also blessed with all the special rights of corporations, such as limited liability, perpetual existence, no need to act as responsible citizens but legally mandated to act only in their own self-interest. If we were smart, we individuals should probably all incorporate.
The sad state of affairs regarding corporate power in this country has long been troubling, and is currently being tested at the U.S. Supreme Court, which is deciding whether or not corporations have First Amendment the free speech rights of individuals. The right-wing of the court (Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy) tends to think they do. Granting such a right could hamper, perhaps eliminate, the public's ability to limit corporate campaign and political spending or speech, or even tobacco advertising. Campaign laws like McCain-Feingold could be thrown out the window.
One of the key precedents was the decision of the Gilded Age court in the 1880s to grant "personhood" to corporations. Determining the reach of that personhood is one of the issues at play in a case before the court now. During oral arguments last week, new Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor surprised some observers by raising questions about whether this 19th century case should be revisited. According to the Wall Street Journal:
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."
Even a mild, non-committal expression of a possible willingness to go back and revisit corporate personhood is surprising, provocative, and welcome. Sotomayor is unlikely to prevail in such a review with the current court make up, in fact, things are more likely to get worse for people and better for corporations in the short term. But it does suggest that Obama's pick won't be shy about tackling some of the big issues facing the court.
Corporate Corruption Killing America
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
Anyone smart and strong enough to fight delusional thinking and who pays attention to current events should clearly see that corporate corruption of the US political system is so pervasive and powerful that there will be no genuine reform of both the health care and financial sectors.
I always believed that president Obama was just a different color corrupt politician who was subservient to the two-party plutocracy. His so-called reform efforts and ludicrous federal deficit spending should disappoint all his non-delusional supporters.
For health reform the only genuine and sensible reform legislation should have been not much more than a single sentence mandating that every American has a right to full Medicare coverage. Period. End of story. True reform. True universal health insurance.
Let the health insurance industry sell their garbage to those choosing it over Medicare and as supplemental insurance, as is done today, to cover what Medicare does not. The one major reason why the US spends more of its wealth on health care than any other nation, but with lousy results for the population as a whole is that so many Americans and their employers buy costly private health insurance. Some things essential for human survival require government programs, like police and fire protection. The overwhelming opinion of those in Medicare is very positive. In fact it is far more positive than those using private health insurance.
Tears of Fire: Mourning in the Macabre Killing Fields of Afghanistan
by Chris Floyd
"I took some flesh home and called it my son."
The NATO airstrike that killed more than 70 civilians near Kunduz earlier this month was a deadly confluence of two primary elements that characterize the living hell of Afghanistan: relentless violence and crushing poverty.
The villagers were slaughtered while trying to siphon gasoline from two fuel tankers that the Taliban had hijacked from the occupation forces. The trucks were stranded in the ford of a shallow river. Unable to get the trucks out, the insurgents invited local villagers to come gather the fuel for themselves. The prospect of salvaging a can or two of free fuel to help them get through the coming winter drove many of the villagers out into the dead of night. At about 1 a.m, an airstrike ordered by a German commander struck the fuel tankers and the surrounding area.
The result was a firestorm that ripped the villagers to pieces and roasted their bodies beyond all recognition. But that was not the end of it, nor, perhaps, the worst of it. For then the survivors of the slain had to come to the smoking field and try to find their loved ones amidst the gruesome, ungodly residue.
The Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who has contributed some of the most remarkable reporting from the Terror War's fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, spoke to some of the survivors. Their stories speak with bleak and harrowing eloquence of the reality of the war, beyond all the pious rhetoric and strategic reviews and "serious" analysis in the imperial courts.
Below are some excerpts, but you should read the entire piece, which was the top story, blazoned across the top of the front page, in the print edition of Saturday's Guardian. Saturday editions of UK papers are generally the equivalent of Sunday editions of US paper, the big showcase edition of the week. Try to imagine a major American paper giving up such prime real estate to let the victims of the "good war" in Afghanistan tell their story in their own words.
From the Guardian:
At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead.
What followed is one of the more macabre scenes of this or any war. The grief-stricken relatives began to argue and fight over the remains of the men and boys who a few hours earlier had greedily sought the tanker's fuel. Poor people in one of the world's poorest countries, they had been trying to hoard as much as they could for the coming winter.
"We didn't recognise any of the dead when we arrived," said Omar Khan, the turbaned village chief of Eissa Khail. "It was like a chemical bomb had gone off, everything was burned. The bodies were like this," he brought his two hands together, his fingers curling like claws. "There were like burned tree logs, like charcoal.
More Teen Births in Religious States
I posted a blog on a similar story a while back about religious teens having more abortions.
Live Science reports that this little piece of paradox is likely due to the fact that communities with high religiosity frown upon contraception as well as sex education. The combination is as good as a euphemism for pregnancy.
The top 10 states for conservative religious beliefs:
- Mississippi
- Alabama
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Louisiana
- Utah
- Arkansas
- North Carolina
- Kentucky
- Oklahoma
The top 10 states for teen births:
- Mississippi
- New Mexico
- Texas
- Arkansas
- Arizona
- Oklahoma
- Nevada
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
- Georgia
Researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh speculates: "We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/09/more-teen-births-religious-states
TIME TO CHANGE BERNANKE'S MEDICATION?
Secret White House letter to G-20
by Greg Palast
I still get a thrill whenever I get my hands on a confidential memo with "The White House, Washington" appearing on the letterhead. Even when—like the one I'm looking at now—it's about a snoozy topic: This week's G-20 summit.
The 6-page letter from the White House, dated September 3, was sent to the 20 heads of state that will meet this Thursday in Pittsburgh. After some initial diplo-blather, our President's "sherpa" for the summit, Michael Froman, does a little victory dance, announcing that the recession has been defeated. "Global equity markets have risen 35 percent since the end of March," writes Froman. In other words, the stock market is up and all's well.
While acknowledging that this year's economy has gone to hell in a handbag, Obama's aide and ambassador to the G-20 seems to be parroting the irrational exuberance of Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke who declared last week that, "The recession is very likely over." All that was missing from Bernanke's statement was a banner, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."
And the French are furious. The White House letter to the G-20 leaders was a response to a confidential diplomatic missive from the chief of the European Union Fredrik Reinfeldt written a day earlier to "Monsieur le Président" Obama.
We have Reinfeldt's confidential note as well. In it, the EU president says, despite Bernanke's happy-talk, "la crise n'est pas terminée (the crisis is not over) and (continuing in translation) the labor market will continue to suffer the consequences of weak use of capacity and production in the coming months." This is diplomatic speak for, What the hell is Bernanke smoking?
May I remind you Monsieur le Président, that last month 216,000 Americans lost their jobs, bringing the total lost since your inauguration to about seven million. And rising.
The Wall Street Journal also has a copy of the White House letter, though they haven't released it. (I have: read it here , with the EU message and our translation.) The Journal spins the leak as the White House would want it: "Big Changes to Global Economic Policy" to produce "lasting growth." Obama takes charge! What's missing in the Journal report is that Obama's plan subtly but significantly throttles back European demands to tighten finance industry regulation and, most important, deflects the EU's concern about fighting unemployment.
Europe's leaders are scared witless that the Obama Administration will prematurely turn off the fiscal and monetary stimulus. Europe demands that the US continue pumping the economy under an internationally coordinated worldwide save-our-butts program. As the EU's Reinfeldt puts it in his plea to the White House, "It is essential that the Heads of State and Government, at this summit, continue to implement the economic policy measures they have adopted," and not act unilaterally. "Exit strategies [must] be implemented in a coordinated manner." Translating from the diplomatique: If you in the USA turn off fiscal and monetary stimulus now, on your own, Europe and the planet sinks, America with it.
http://www.gregpalast.com/time-to-change-bernankes-medication-secret-white-house-letter-to-g-20/
Think Again: Why Can’t the Media Explain Our Woes (and Why Other Countries Don’t Have Them)?
The most moving part of President Barack Obama's powerful speech Wednesday night was undoubtedly the letter from which he read, sent to him from "our beloved friend and colleague" Ted Kennedy. Kennedy had asked, back in May when he wrote it, that the letter should not be opened until after his death. As Obama reported, Kennedy "expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform—'that great unfinished business of our society,' he called it—would finally pass," and in doing so, define "the character of our country." Indeed, it is amazing that while Kennedy served for more than four decades in the Senate and dedicated much of his energy and superb legislative skills to the passage of just such a program, the problem has only gotten worse over time.
Given the degree of the problem, it can difficult to understand, writes Serge Halimi, editor of France's prestigious Le Monde Diplomatique, why Barack Obama, who has established himself as one of America's most effective diagnosticians of what ails our health care system, is proposing so modest a reform to address its failures. As the president told a Montana town hall meeting this past August, "We are held hostage by health insurance companies that deny coverage, or drop coverage, or charge fees that people can't afford for care they desperately need … We have a health care system that too often works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people."
Halimi answers his own question: "American politics is so poisoned by money flowing from industrial and financial lobbies that the only proposals ensured a smooth ride through Congress are those that cut taxes." Indeed, according to BusinessWeek, in 15 states more than half of the "market" is held by one private health care company, and this kind of monopoly profit is not going to go off quietly into the night. And yet this essential fact is often missing from a media debate that focuses on nonexistent, often crazy issues like imaginary "death panels" and whether or not Sarah Palin would be forced to murder her own child.
Late in the dog days of August, The Washington Post published a piece by T.R. Reid, a reporter who has left the paper and written a book called The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, delineating what he called "five myths about health care around the world." It's worth reading the piece, not only for the information it offers, but for the picture of just how far our debate has drifted from reality. Barack Obama is right. We do have a health care system that is not only unsustainable in the long term, but a great shame on the heads of those of us who can afford to buy the health care we need whenever we need it. Not only are the alleged horror stories about "socialized medicine" untrue, but its superiority to our own system is largely absent from our debate.
In addition to the issues Reid raises—I have not yet read his book—I did some research on this question while writing Why We're Liberals, and I found the following:
- The United States and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all of their citizens.
- Nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations.
- The United States ranks 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio. These figures are particularly shocking given that Americans spend almost two and a half times the industrialized world's median on health care, nearly a third of which is wasted on bureaucracy and administration.
- Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the 19th percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than $1000 per capita per year—or close to $400 billion—on health care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about $300 per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave 45 million people without any insurance.
- Meanwhile, the Finns, for instance, devote less than half of what we do to medical care, as a percentage of GDP, and yet their infant mortality rate is half that of the United States—and one-sixth that of African-American babies—while their life expectancy rate is greater. The United States ranked 42 in life expectancy behind not only Japan and most of Europe but also Jordan, Guam, and the Cayman Islands, according to the most recent census figures.
Why doing good sometimes makes you into a bad person
Researchers have found that, after doing something ethically sound, people are more - not less - likely to do something immoral, or even illegal
Green is good. You think before you print; you buy your organic whatever; you sort-of sympathise with the bumper sticker injunction to "live simply so that others may simply live". It might not be as cheap or as easy – but it's the right thing to do. Isn't it?Well, consider this: a person who makes the decent, green choice is much more likely to behave badly afterwards, according to researchers at the University of Toronto. Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong split 156 students between two online shops: one a conventional store, the other mainly selling green alternatives. Within both groups, some could actually buy things while others were allowed only to browse.
All the students were then handed cash to share with an anonymous person however they chose. The students who had looked around the eco-shop but not bought anything gave most generously; mere exposure to the goods prompted them to behave better. However, those who had actually made green purchases were far stingier than even the conventional shoppers.
Next, all the guinea pigs sat a simple computer test to identify repeatedly which side of the screen was showing more dots, with the twist that picking the right-hand side always earned them more money – even if it was incorrect. Finally, the students were told the amount they'd won, and invited to take that exact amount out of an envelope full of money.
What happened? The conventional shoppers played it reasonably straight, whereas the green consumers cheated far more and even stole extra cash, pocketing nearly a third more money than they were entitled to. Having done their good deed, the greens apparently felt they'd proved their moral worth – allowing them to behave immorally and illegally. Psychologists call this "the licensing effect". Another recent study from Stanford University showed that white Americans who supported Obama were much more willing than others to express racist opinions.
Magazines: The Other Media Implosion
By paulgillin
The magazine industry's troubles can be traced to the alarming trends in newsstand sales, which are off 37% since 2001, according to MediaPost. Newsstand sales are important because they're far more profitable than subscription sales and are also a significant source of circulation promotion. However, it appears that not many people are buying magazines on newsstands any more. Check out these numbers covering total annual newsstand sales:
| Title | 2001 | 2009 | Change |
| Woman's Day | 1,610,000 | 410,147 | -74.5% |
| Redbook | 556,355 | 154,609 | -72% |
| Playboy | 522,804 | 203,245 | -71% |
| Country Living | 380,192 | 134,884 | -64.5% |
| National Enquirer | 1,648,554 | 591,269 | -64% |
| Reader's Digest | 749,099 | 270,045 | -64% |
| ESPN The Magazine | 54,346 | 25,154 | -63% |
One title that's gone against the grain over the last eight years is The Economist, which is up 82% in that time. One reason might be innovations like a new service that enables New York City residents who receive text alerts from the magazine to order single copies delivered overnight. As long as the order is placed by 9 p.m. on Thursday, the customer can have a hard copy of that week's new issue in hand in time for the Friday commute. That's before the newsstands are even stocked. The Economist says it can provide the service at no additional charge over the newsstand price because it doesn't have to pay distribution middlemen.
Not that magazines' troubles are any solace to beleaguered newspaper publishers. Fitch Ratings says the decline in newspaper ad revenues will continue for at least another year, due to continued weakness in the print advertising market. The forecast is especially dour because it comes off terrible 2008 numbers and because most media markets are expected to enjoy a modest upturn in 2010 off of dismal results this year. PriceWaterhouseCoopers earlier forecast incremental newspaper advertising declines of 4.5% a year through 2013, noting that circulation revenue is falling in line with readership. Meanwhile, publishers are relying more and more upon circulation revenue to boost the bottom line. MediaPost documents several recent price increases by daily publishers and notes that circulation now makes up 39% of The New York Times revenue, compared to 27% five years ago.
Coupon Clipping
We somehow missed writing about this two months ago, when the survey was released, but the Newspaper Association of America just spent a lot of money on research that demonstrates that consumers rely upon newspaper advertising as an essential shopping tool. The survey of more than 3,000 consumers found that 59% cited newspapers as the "medium they use to help plan shopping or make purchase decisions," while 82% "took action as a result of newspaper advertising." Other media were way behind.
When you think about it, these results aren't surprising. Retail purchases are local, and newspapers still do the best job of delivering local advertising. It's also less convenient for a consumer to print and clip a coupon from the Internet than it is to cut it out of the newspaper. Finally, local display advertising has a better chance of catching the attention of passersby than an online banner ad, which many people block anyway. One thing the research makes clear is the importance of coupons: 90% of respondents said the presence of a coupon made it more likely they would read or look at an ad, making it the single most important influencing factor in stimulating an action. The NAA released the research as a series of short reports, all of which can be downloaded here.
http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/magazines-the-other-media-implosion.html
The Media Void Lives
Back when we were a nation, death didn't upset us. It was a fact of life best expressed by Gus in Lonesome Dove, "Life is short; some are shorter than others." Middle class homes all had parlors where the bodies of love ones were displayed before burials.
When we went to war, we honored the dead through photographs and drawings. Mathew Brady brought the Civil War home to America with his horrific photographs of corpse-strewn battlefields. World Wars, Korea and Vietnam featured film footage and photographs of the fallen.
It kept our leaders honest. The public accepted the death of the young only as long as they felt the war was necessary. But if, as in Vietnam, the war appeared to be unnecessary, the public, shocked by scenes of carnage, turned against it.
But, that was when we were a nation. Now that we are a corporate state, things are different. Corporate states thrive on dishonest wars. In dishonest wars, public support is tenuous at best' so wars must be sanitized and reduced to video games.
This means no more dead bodies, no more film clips of grieving parents of children killed in airstrikes. In the public's eye, war now takes place in a sterile void where there is neither blood nor death. It's war that isn't really war, a make-believe Noh drama in which the public quickly loses interest, especially if it's been going on for eight years.
Our corporate masters like it that way. It gives them a great deal of latitude to wreak havoc on the world while its citizens sit comatose and unaware.
But, God help the media that allows reality to dribble into this void!
Recently, the Associated Press released a photograph of a wounded Marine who later died.
The outcry showed that hypocrisy is the cement that hold the corporate state together. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Associated Press lacked "common decency." He spoke of the "pain and suffering inflicted upon the Marine's family."
I hate stating the obvious, but I have no choice here. Since when did bombing civilians cease to display a lack of "common decency?" Which caused the Marine's family more anguish, the photograph or the death of their son in an unnecessary war?
When we went to war, we honored the dead through photographs and drawings. Mathew Brady brought the Civil War home to America with his horrific photographs of corpse-strewn battlefields. World Wars, Korea and Vietnam featured film footage and photographs of the fallen.
It kept our leaders honest. The public accepted the death of the young only as long as they felt the war was necessary. But if, as in Vietnam, the war appeared to be unnecessary, the public, shocked by scenes of carnage, turned against it.
But, that was when we were a nation. Now that we are a corporate state, things are different. Corporate states thrive on dishonest wars. In dishonest wars, public support is tenuous at best' so wars must be sanitized and reduced to video games.
This means no more dead bodies, no more film clips of grieving parents of children killed in airstrikes. In the public's eye, war now takes place in a sterile void where there is neither blood nor death. It's war that isn't really war, a make-believe Noh drama in which the public quickly loses interest, especially if it's been going on for eight years.
Our corporate masters like it that way. It gives them a great deal of latitude to wreak havoc on the world while its citizens sit comatose and unaware.
But, God help the media that allows reality to dribble into this void!
Recently, the Associated Press released a photograph of a wounded Marine who later died.
The outcry showed that hypocrisy is the cement that hold the corporate state together. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Associated Press lacked "common decency." He spoke of the "pain and suffering inflicted upon the Marine's family."
I hate stating the obvious, but I have no choice here. Since when did bombing civilians cease to display a lack of "common decency?" Which caused the Marine's family more anguish, the photograph or the death of their son in an unnecessary war?