Why They Chose Sarah Palin

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"Mark Crispin Miller"
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MCM


Strategists say that Mr. McCain can now count on a more motivated
social conservative base to help him in areas like southern Ohio, where
the 2004 race was settled.
--The New York Times, Sept. 7, 2008, A1


In investigating the 2004 election in Ohio--examining pollbooks, talking to
pollworkers and election officials, as well as reading local newspaper accounts
--we could find no data of a late surge to the polls by born-again Christians.
What we did find is certified voting totals in areas favoring Bush that didn't
match the number of voters who officially signed-in on the poll sign-in sheets.
--Email from Bob Fitrakis, Sept. 7, 1008


To understand how Team McCain intends to get away with stealing this election, we must
recall how Team Bush got away with it four years ago. (Those aren't two different teams.)

The plan for stealing this contest has everything to do with the ostensibly surprising choice
of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP.

Here's why:

1. Election Day, 2004: The Myth of Bush's Christian "Surge"


First, let's recall that, after the 2004 election, everybody said that Bush had won because the
true believers of the Christian right had come out--or, rather, poured forth--in unprecedented
numbers, often at the last minute, to support him. Of course, by "everybody," I'm referring to the entire commentariate, both mainstream and left/liberal. On TV and in print, in news analyses and op-ed articles, they all said that Bush/Cheney had been re-elected by America's "values voters."

And they said it with a certain awe--as well they should, since Bush's victory was a sort of miracle. He had disapproval ratings in the upper 40's: higher than LBJ's in 1968, higher than
Jimmy Carter's in 1980. Nor was he very popular in his own party, as many top Republicans
came out against him--including moderates like John Eisenhower, rightists like Bob Barr,
and many others such as William Crowe (chair of the Joint Chiefs under Ronald Reagan),
General Tony McPeak (former Air Force chief of staff and erstwhile Veteran for Bush),
libertarian Doug Bandow, neocon Francis Fukuyama, Lee Iacocca and Jack Matlock, Jr.
(Reagan's ambassador to the USSR); and many other, lesser figures in his party also publicly
rejected him.

And so did sixty (60) newspapers--all in "red" states--that had endorsed Bush four
years earlier: two thirds of them now going for Kerry, the others none of the above. American
Conservative, Pat Buchanan's own magazine, ran endorsements of five different candidates,
only one of them for Bush. And 169 tenured and emeritus professors from the world's top
business schools all signed a full-page ad decrying his economic policies, adducing them
as reasons not to vote for him. (The ad was written by top faculty at his own alma mater,
Harvard Business School.) The ad ran in the Financial Times, which, like The Economist,
endorsed John Kerry.

And still Bush won, despite such big defections, thanks to that enormous turnout by the
Christian right, as everybody kept on saying--even though there were good reasons to
be very skeptical about that notion.



2. Election Day, 2004: There Was No Christian "Surge"



First of all, that talking point came from the Christian right itself, whose members certainly
had every reason to exaggerate their clout. That they thus credited themselves, and that the
claim was duly amplified by their own party and its propaganda organs (Rush Limbaugh,
Fox News, et al.), should have been enough to make all non-believers doubtful.

And non-believers should have been especially suspicious of that claim because there's
not a shred of evidence to back it up. On the other hand, there's solid evidence that that
immense, last-minute vote for Bush was nothing but a propaganda fiction, cooked up by
Karl Rove to mask his party's theft of that election.

To begin with, that fiction is preposterous on its face, since there were nowhere near enough
of such right-wing believers to account for the incumbent's staggering advance, as Bush reportedly
received 11.5 million more votes than he had won four years before. And how many evangelicals
did that surge include? According to Karl Rove himself (among others), there were 4 million evangelicals who had not voted for Bush/Cheney in 2000. So, even if Rove managed to get
every single one of them to vote for Bush this time around (and it's unlikely that he did), they
could not possibly have made so big a difference--unless, of course, their numbers somehow
magically increased inside the polls, like Jesus's loaves and fishes.

In any case, Bush seems to have done worse with evangelicals than he had four years before. Consider how his "base" performed, in fact, on that Election Day, as measured by the National
Exit Poll (and scrupulously analyzed by Michael Collins, whose essay, "The Urban Legend,"
is included in Loser Take All). Close study of the numbers in 2004 reveals that there was no
big national surge of "values voters": on the contrary.

First of all, the nation's rural vote declined, dropping from 23% to just 16% of the overall national vote; and Bush's total rural vote went down from 14 million to just under 12 million. And while
the nation's small town vote increased substantially--by 88%--those voters did not favor
Bush as they had done four years before, but opted in near equal numbers for John Kerry. Of
those 9.5 million votes, Bush got 4.9 million, while Kerry got 4.7 million. (In 2000, Bush had
won 3.1 million small town votes, to Gore's 2 million.) And then there were the voters in the
suburbs, who did come out for Bush in greater numbers than four years before--but hardly
by enough to make for a decisive jump of any kind, as Bush won 28.3 million of those votes,
to Kerry's 25.6 million.

Thus was there no elevated turnout in those regions where most "values voters" live--nor
did the post-election polls suggest that "moral values" drove Bush/Cheney's startling re-election.
On Nov. 11, Pew published the results of their most precise survey of the electorate. Having
asked Americans to name the issue that most concerned them as they cast their ballots, Pew
found that Iraq was Number One, noted by 25 percent, followed by "jobs and the economy,"
noted by 12 percent, with 9 percent invoking "terrorism." Only 9 percent named "moral values"
as their main concern--with only 3 percent of them referring specifically to "gay marriage"
(and another 2 percent referring to the candidates' own private lives).

Those numbers tell a very different story from the one hyped proudly by the men atop the
Christianist machine. In particular, they said that they helped Bush prevail through their
well-managed opposition to gay marriage--which Tony Perkins, head of the Family
Research Council, called "the hood ornament on the family values wagon that carried the
president to a second term." That there was evidently no such wagon did not blunt the
impact of such theocratic propaganda, which quickly resonated all throughout "the liberal
media," so that it now stands as the truth.

Indeed, it was accepted as the truth so quickly that it went unquestioned even after the
dramatic mass reaction to the Terri Schiavo case a few months later, when Bush and the
Republicans in Congress intervened in that domestic tragedy, trying to force the very
outcome that the Christianists were calling for: "Americans broadly and strongly disapprove
of federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case," ABC News reported. The public supported
the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube by 63% to 28%, according to the network's polls.

And so it was throughout the media. According to USA Today, 76% disapproved of
Congress's handling of the case, while only 20% approved. CBS News found that 82%
believed that Bush and Congress should have stayed out of it. And so it went, with poll
after poll confirming that the Bush Republicans' attempt to force their "moral values" on
the situation was appealing only to a small minority, a/k/a the fringe. "When nearly 70
percent of the American public disagrees with you," wrote Eric Boehlert at the time,
"you're out of step with the mainstream."

That strong reaction by (at least) two-thirds of us was far more telling than the press,
and most top Democrats, were willing to perceive, and so they couldn't, wouldn't see
the awful truth: Either We the People had abruptly given up our "moral values" since
Election Day, or our apparent vote for Bush was a deception, based on vote suppression
and election fraud committed in Ohio and elsewhere throughout the nation.

* * * *

Thus the myth of that immense, last-minute Christian turn-out was a rationale concocted
to "explain" Bush/Cheney's re-election--and the US press immediately bought it, out
of a clear eagerness to close the book on that election right away, and thereby black out
all the glaring signs of fraud throughout Ohio (and Florida, and elsewhere). Indeed, the
press at once laughed off the "theory" of widespread election fraud, dismissing all the facts
as fantasy; and in their place it offered fantasy as fact (as they had done before, and have
done since).

And so, because the media never did revisit the 2004 election, that groundless "explanation"
quickly hardened into gospel (so to speak)--which brings us to the present, and the strategy
for stealing this election, too.


3. Election Day, 2008: Another Christian "Surge"?


The choice of Sarah Palin has been widely and repeatedly assailed as evidence of John
McCain's "bad judgement." Certainly that choice was very bad. Indeed, it may prove to
be catastrophic. But to take it as a sign of John McCain's mere recklessness is probably
a big mistake. First of all, there is no reason to believe that the decision really was
McCain's, since Karl Rove's minions are in charge of his campaign, which means that
Rove himself is running it (as he evidently has been from the start). And while it surely
was a rotten choice in moral and/or civic terms, it certainly was not an instance of "bad
judgement" in Rove's moral universe, where winning is the only thing that counts; and
Sarah Palin was selected so that (she and) John McCain could "win"--and, even more
important, get away with it.

They picked Palin not because she is a woman, and might therefore appeal to diehard Hillary
supporters. They picked Palin because she is a theocratic true believer, who has the Christianists
all swooning at the prospect of her reign (which will commence as soon as Jesus answers
all their prayers for John McCain's quick death). To get some sense of their millennial
excitement, read this excerpt from an email recently sent out by one of them, to others of
her kind:

I believe you are aware that Dutch Sheets [http://www.dutchsheets.org/] was used by the
Lord to call prayer before the 2000 election that was so close. He said this morning that this
election is perhaps even more critical than 2000 because of the Supreme Court. If the right
political posture is not elected, we stand to lose decades of progress and the results could be enormous. Last year Chuck Pierce and Greg Hood prophesied that in 2008 we would not be
electing a president but a vice president. Dutch said he could get no release in his heart to
back Huckab[ee] even though he was pressured by many in the body of Christ. Huckab[ee] is a
good man and a strong believer, but he was not God's choice. Dutch also told us that he knows
a man who gave McCain a prophetic word that McCain had made a vow to God when he was
at the bottom during his POW days and now God was calling in that vow. McCain was visibly
moved by this word.

Dutch was traveling to Texas on Friday and when he landed in the airport his wife called and
told him to get to the TV asap. He watched McCain introduce Governor Palin and he said he
began to weep, even though he knew nothing about her. He asked God, "What is the significance
of this 44-year-old woman?" And he saw the clock said 4:44. He asked the Lord what that was
all about and the Lord said, "Ezekiel 44:4." "He brought me by way of the north gate to the front
of the temple; so I looked, and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD; and
I fell on my face. NKJV ..... North gate representing Alaska [sic].

And so on.

Such fervor, which now unifies the Christianist community, was not stoked merely by the
sight of Palin's glowing kisser on TV. More importantly, the governor became the instant
darling of the Christianist far right once all the top dogs of the theocratic movement looked
at her, and pronounced her good. To some extent, she was their choice--and so it's wrong
to claim, as some indignant pundits have, that Sarah Palin "was not vetted." The governor
was vetted by the Council for National Policy, the secretive and highly influential steering
committee of the Christianist far right, which seeks to junk the Constitution and replace it
with Leviticus and other flights of Holy Writ.

They approved this choice, because Sarah Palin is quite willing to promote the Christianists' apocalyptic program with a brazenness, and comprehensiveness, unprecedented in the history
of American political campaigning. Her disparate crackpot policies are all expressions of the
same extremist creed. There are, of course, all her Levitical sexual proscriptions: no abortions
even for those women who've been raped (or raped by their own fathers); no sex education;
no condoms. There are her incremental steps to Christianize the public schools: her moves
against their secular librarians; her readiness to get Creationism into the curriculum. And then
there is her mad anti-environmentalism: her tacit eagerness for further global warming, and,
therefore, her passion for oil-drilling everywhere; her opposition to clean water legislation;
her willingness to see the polar bears die off; her letting hunters gun down wolves and bears
from low-flying planes, etc. All such reckless policies derive from an apocalyptic wish to see
the planet die, so that Lord Jesus will come back here, and start kicking ass and taking names.
(Palin's pastor holds that He will set up his command post in Alaska.)

None of this insanity appeals to anyone outside the Christianist community, which is no larger
than it was when Bush tried to "save" Teri Schiavo from "judicial murder"--or when he
was anomalously "re-elected" by those legions of fictitious "values voters." The choice of
Sarah Palin, therefore, surely was not based on any rational calculation of some real electoral advantage; for that ferocious bloc is far too small to pull that off, no matter how firm their
conviction that God wants them to.

In fact, the only way that Palin and her doddering partner can prevail in this election is by
stealing it, as Bush and Cheney did (both times). Certainly the ground has been prepared
for yet another stolen race, Bush/Cheney's party having made enormous strides in sabotaging
our election system (while the Democrats just sat there, whistling). Now, from coast to coast,
it's far more difficult (for Democrats) to register to vote, and far more difficult (for Democrats)
to cast their votes, while countless (Democratic) voters have been stricken from the rolls,
through purges carried out by the Department of Justice.

Thus Bush's government has legally diminished the electorate (the Roberts Court approving
every step). Meanwhile, the regime also continues to suppress the (Democratic) vote illegally,
either through voter "caging" prior to Election Day--or, far more effectively, by fiddling
with the numbers electronically at every level, and/or simply dumping countless names (of Democrats) from the electronic voter rolls, and/or putting far too few machines in (Democratic) polling places, and/or disinforming (Democratic) voters as to when and where to cast their
votes, and/or simply scaring (Democratic) voters into staying home.

That is what it takes to steal elections in America--all of that, and also something else:
a quick-'n-easy explanation for the outcome. For if those final numbers are surprising, there
must be some rationale that can (apparently) account for them. And that is why the Bush
machine put Sarah Palin next to John McCain. By arousing the hard core of vocal Christianists,
they prepared the ground for the eventual redeployment of the same canard with which they
justified their last unlikely "win": that millions of believers did the trick.

Indeed, it was not just the choice of Sarah Palin, but the whole convention, that was clearly
calculated not to pull in undecided and/or independent voters, but to get the fringe alone to
stomp and holler for the ticket. The party platform--crafted under the command of
Christianist election-rigger J. Kenneth Blackwell--is a (literally) scorched-earth
"faith-based" document, calling even for a ban on stem cell research in the private sector.
And the convention spectacle itself was basically one long display of cultural resentment,
with lots of loud, self-righteous jeering from the stage and on the floor (with an epic
show of ridicule by that fine Christian, Rudy Giuliani).

It was strongly reminiscent of the GOP's 1992 convention--a show that very clearly turned
the nation off, and helped defeat Bush Sr.'s bid to stay in office. Team McCain decided to
revive that model, not because the nation has turned Christianist since then, but as a way to
motivate the fringe, and thereby make it possible to tell the pundits, on Nov. 5, that it was
those Americans who turned the tide for John McCain.


4. A Word to the Wise


In fact, that claim will be the secondary "explanation" for McCain and Palin's "win." The
first, of course, will be Obama's race, and the sad "fact" that "America's just not ready to
vote for a black man." We will hear endlessly (as we have already) about "the Bradley
effect," and how it struck again, with millions of white folks who had openly approved
Obama suddenly deciding, in the sanctum of the voting booth, to vote like Klansmen,
thereby electing John McCain.

And, if Obama "loses," we will also hear a lot of other "explanations," each of which
will suit the interests--the politics and/or pet theory--of the person(s) offering it.
We'll hear from Clinton people that he lost because he didn't put her on the ticket. We'll
hear from Michael Moore, Ralph Nader and The Nation that he lost because he ran too
corporate-friendly a campaign. We'll also hear from Mark Penn and the Wall Street Journal
that he lost because his campaign was too "populist."

George Lakoff will tell us that Obama lost because he failed to frame the issues properly,
Thomas Frank will note that all those Kansas-types are still too dim to know what's good
for them, and Thomas Friedman (among others) will point out that Obama lost because he
never made that crucial "gut" connection with "Joe Six-Pack" (whom Friedman and those
others know so well). Meanwhile, many others will ascribe Obama's loss to all the lies
and slanders heaped upon him by McCain's campaign and its confederates, who, we'll
hear repeatedly, "Swift-boated" him to death, just as they did to Kerry (as if Kerry really
lost the last election).

Some of those assertions will be partly true--and all of them are sure to be irrelevant.
For if McCain and Palin "win," that victory will either be a miracle (which is, of course,
how some of their supporters will explain it) or just another massive rip-off, perpetrated
right before our eyes. And no such miracle is likely; for there is still no reason to believe
that that old man and his demented running mate have any broad appeal. The polls now
putting them ahead are highly dubious, based on a ten-point over-sampling of Republicans,
and crafted without any calls to cell phone users (who comprise a large part of Obama's
base).

Otherwise there is no evidence of any large-scale movement toward McCain and
Palin--who have to trek to theocratic enclaves, like Colorado Springs, in order
to draw cheering multitudes, while Obama/Biden draw them everywhere they go.
With Democrats all in a panic, let's recall how few Americans turned out to vote in
the Republican primaries, and how few new voters the Republicans have registered
to date. Compare that feeble record with the vastly larger numbers who came out for
Obama (and for Clinton), and all those whom the Democrats have registered to vote.
Since then, the prospects for McCain have not improved, regardless of the spin on
Sarah Palin--for this economy is in the crapper, and he has said repeatedly that
he just doesn't know about such things. That issue, and his wild commitment to a war
that most Americans oppose, make his victory in November quite improbable, to
say the least.

And there you have the reason why the GOP must, once again, deploy its giant
criminal machine: to cut the Democrats' vast popular advantage. And it is happening
right now, as you sit reading this, as each day brings in new reports of voters purged,
machines "malfunctioning," ballots slyly misdesigned, and other measures meant to
benefit McBush's party. (The fraud is not occurring "on both sides.") Such evidence
is far more solid than the nervous speculation that Americans might vote on racial
grounds--or the fantasy that Sarah Palin's co-religionists could really win it for
McCain.

The theft of this next race is only possible because the Democratic Party and the media,
and principled Republicans, have shut their eyes to this regime's crusade against American democracy. And now the only way to stop it--or, if it does happen yet again, resist it--
is to face it at long last, and talk about it openly. It's therefore not enough to raise more
money for the Democrats, and not enough to get more voters registered, and get them
to the polls; and not enough to spread the word about McCain and Palin, or to try to get
the media to do a decent job; and not enough to fight the smears and lies about Obama,
and to demand that he and/or the Democrats get tougher.

While all of those activities are crucial, they'll amount to nothing if the race is finally
rigged, and most Americans don't know a thing about it. And so, whatever else we're
doing, we must also speak out loud and clear about that possibility. Otherwise, if that
disaster should befall us, we will be as much to blame for it as those Republicans who
pulled it off, and all those Democrats who let them get away with it.

Out of Touch

William Greider on the current economic "crisis"

Our country is at a rare and dangerous juncture. The old order is crumbling, and virtually all the centers of power that govern us have been discredited by events. The president is irrelevant, weak and unbelievable, even to his own party. The Democratic majority controlling Congress is stalled by its own shortcomings. The treasury secretary, given his arrogant approach to the financial crisis, is not to be trusted as a steward of the public interest. Nor are the conservative Federal Reserve and its chairman. The private power of Wall Street is utterly disgraced and desperate.

This condition of vulnerability is sure to prevail for at least the next three months, until a new president and new Congress take office. In the meantime, the governing elites are clinging to the old order, trying to salvage it by delivering massive amounts of relief from taxpayers to the failing financial institutions. The American people correctly see this approach as a historic swindle that rewards the villains at the expense of the victims. A Nevada real estate broker asked the Washington Post, "Instead of having a bailout, why don't we have indictments?"

Indictments can wait, along with fundamental reforms. Right now the country needs to confront the fire raging through the financial system and engulfing people and productive assets in the real economy. Aroused and angry, the public, for a change, can play a decisive role in the political arena, as it did when the House rejected the bailout package. That shock to the system was valuable therapy. People can drive politicians to begin facing reality and to develop a more forceful strategy for national recovery, an approach that serves the country as a whole and has a far better chance of succeeding. The sooner our leaders recognize that the old order is gone, the sooner Americans can begin reconstructing a more viable and equitable economy.

The calamitous unwinding of financial institutions in recent months has an ominous resemblance to events that unfolded after the stock market crash of 1929, when three years of recurring waves of bank failures and economic contraction led to massive suffering. The government, led by the Federal Reserve, was scandalously derelict during that crisis. This time Washington has reacted more aggressively but still hasn't found a strategy to stabilize finance or reverse the gathering recession.

Another total collapse like the one in the 1930s may still be avoided if politics changes direction. We do have some factors in our favor. First, our living standard is abundant by comparison, despite our indebtedness to foreign nations. Second, the New Deal created economic mechanisms that remain in place as automatic stabilizers, like federal deposit insurance to prevent disastrous runs on banks like the ones that wiped out more than 10,000 back then.

Given the political paralysis, people have to find their own way. Corny as it sounds, the necessary first step is honesty--getting a clear understanding of what we are facing and what can be done, then forcing our views and ideas on the governing circles in both parties. The bitter tragedy of our era is that the hard lessons Americans learned during the crisis of the New Deal years have been tossed aside--either repealed or systematically subverted--by the present generation of governing elites. Democratic partisans who claim an aura of innocence are falsifying the past. For the last generation, Democrats have colluded with conservatives in the destruction of New Deal law and principle. And Democrats do not yet have a clear idea of how to restore those lost lessons and update them for our present predicament.

Understanding the situation begins by recognizing the real crisis--the great wound to the nation that Treasury Secretary Paulson and his supporters have obscured with their alarm-bell rhetoric. The United States has collectively suffered a massive loss of wealth--capital in the financial system as well as savings in the real economy of families and producers. With the collapse of Wall Street's phony valuations, financial capital disappeared like air from a deflating balloon. Banks are endangered because they have lost $1 trillion or maybe twice that. Therefore the banking industry will shrink considerably. We are witnessing that bloody spectacle right now--failing firms and forced mergers, either propped up by government or taken over by private investors like Warren Buffett.

When Japan went through a low-grade depression during the 1990s after its financial bubble burst, something like twenty-one major banks were reduced to four. The US system is shrinking in similar fashion, but much faster. This inspires recurring panic among investors, creditors and shareholders, but a smaller financial system will eventually be good for the country--more focused on the real purpose of banking, which is to channel capital investment into the economy. In recent years financiers have instead amassed speculative fortunes by peddling exotic debt instruments.

Paulson's solution was to relieve bankers of their rotten assets--primarily mortgage securities--and then replenish their lost capital. He did not explain this clearly, because he knows even $700 billion is not enough to save them all. So his extraordinary powers would put him or his successor in the role of savior and Grim Reaper, the titan who picks and chooses which banks will survive and which must die. But even if he chose wisely, it would not solve the basic problem. The financial system is going to shrink no matter what; under Paulson's plan, the public would be stuck with all its costly mistakes.

The other half of the nation's great loss of wealth belongs to the people--ordinary working people, mostly, who have borrowed heavily in order to sustain their faltering standard of living under pressure from flat or falling incomes. Given the bubble of inflated housing prices, people borrowed most easily from their own savings--the equity they had accumulated in their homes. When housing prices collapsed, economist Dean Baker estimates, their loss of wealth was $4 trillion to $5 trillion. Three decades ago, American homeowners held 70 percent equity in their homes. Today it has fallen below 50 percent. Many families have spent their retirement savings and are still working.

Just as the financial system is doomed to become smaller, so must millions undergo a painful fall in their standard of living. Many already have. There is no obvious way around this, but if they face the facts, people can begin to focus on what is possible and then pressure government to undertake remedies to mitigate the pain and avoid the worst. Right now, everyone is scared, hunkering down.

Only government has the leverage to "get the money moving again," as New Dealers used to say. No other sector or interest is equipped to raise the financing. Government can borrow money from people afraid to spend and wealth-holding institutions afraid to lend, then pump it into real economic activity. It can issue cheap loans if the banking system won't. It can forgive debts or relax the terms if that puts people back to work and keeps them in their homes. As economist James Galbraith suggests, it can hand off the money to state and local governments and make sure they spend it. All this is elementary Keynesian economics, the doctrine taught by the New Deal era. I restate it in plain English because even the Democratic Party seems to have forgotten the basics, having become obsessively fearful of large budget deficits (except when powerful interests want the money). Average Americans need to start saving again, and business and banking will not begin to reinvest in the economy until they see that government is leading the way.

Washington must assert its full emergency powers and tackle two things at once: manage the gradual downsizing of the financial system in an orderly fashion that sustains lending, and revive production and employment by force-feeding activities of many kinds. This cannot be a voluntary program that simply invites bankers to participate on their terms. The government must impose emergency regulatory controls to keep finance in step with the nation's overall goals. If bankers resist these terms, they should be cut off, isolated from the public's lifesaving assistance.

These are not idle suggestions. The nation is now in the grip of dynamic political change, and this will not stop with the decision on Paulson's grandiose bailout. Presuming the bailout prevails in Congress, Paulson will be handing out public billions to Wall Street players in the next few months. The political counterforce for genuine public-spirited solutions should be pushing back right away. Activists and intellectuals, public citizens and heavyweight financial players, even some members of Congress, are already at work on the details. If Congress reconvenes for a lame-duck session, you will see some of these measures surface for public debate and popular agitation.

The essence of this action will borrow ideas and models from the New Deal and update them to fit our present circumstances. This not simple nostalgia. It is a clearheaded recognition that the public interest has not been served and the crisis will not recede until it is. Here are five concepts for recovery and reconstruction that are in circulation. If we are lucky, these proposals will redefine the next presidency, whoever wins.

1. Stop the easy-money bailout. Instead of buying rotten assets from Wall Street firms with no strings attached, the government should examine their books and decide which banks can be saved with direct infusions of capital in exchange for public ownership--roughly on the terms Warren Buffett got when he aided Goldman Sachs (preferred shares and guaranteed dividends). The failing institutions should get regulatory euthanasia. This approach gives the government direct control over the survivors and ensures that the public is protected from egregious loss. The model is the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s, which recapitalized banks and corporations under stern supervision.

2. Help the folks who are hurting--directly. A homeownership corporation patterned after the New Deal original would have the money and the flexible authority to supervise "workouts" for millions of failing families. This is what bankers do for corporations when they get in over their head. Government can do the same for indebted households: stop the liquidation, stretch out default dates and arrange manageable terms. This is not a bleeding-heart gesture--keeping families in their homes is economic stimulus, and it halts the decay of neighborhoods.

3. Get serious about economic stimulus. We need a recovery program five or six times larger than the pitiful $60 billion proposed by Democratic leaders. These billions should go for the familiar list of neglected priorities--fixing bridges and schools--but should also jump-start the green agenda for alternative fuels and restoration of ruined ecosystems. The government should subsidize the new industries of our age, just as New Deal spending financed the modern development of aircraft, petrochemicals, steelmaking and other key industries in the 1930s.

4. Re-regulate the bad actors and indict the criminals. Start by restoring the law against usury--the predatory lending practices that ruin weak and defenseless borrowers. Government cannot wait for a relaxed debate about restoring regulations. We need newly designed controls over the financiers and well-defined public obligations imposed not only on banking but also on hedge funds and private equity firms. These cannot be discretionary rules. If the money guys don't like them, they should get out of the business. Paulson's Wall Street colleagues are already mobilizing lobbyists for this fight, but they may discover that Washington has been changed by events. The easygoing deference to Big Money seems suddenly out of fashion.

5. Create a new brain for government management of the economy. The crisis and the halting decision-making by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve--not to mention the secrecy and special deal-making on behalf of financial interests--make it clear that deep reform is required. I would start with a special reconstruction and recovery agency, empowered to lead policy and oversee banking regulators and the economic stimulus. The Federal Reserve's so-called independence is an antique concession to the big banks and doesn't make any sense. Monetary policy and fiscal policy must be balanced and decided in the same process. That rational approach might have stopped the Fed from the biases and dereliction that led to this crisis.

These ideas and many others are in gestation. They will reach fruition when politicians and other leaders swallow their bruised egos and rethink their supine posture, arm in arm with Wall Street. That looks improbable at the moment. But voters can help them change their minds.

c 2008 THE NATION www.thenation.com

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin SNL 092808

Words of Wisdom from another redhead

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds�[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers� And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]� till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery� And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
-Thomas Jefferson

Read these re current financial "crisis"

I'm putting up links to good articles analyzing the current financial "crisis":

David Sirota at "In These Times"

Michael Hudson at "Counterpunch"

Paul Krugman at "The New York Times"

Dennis Kucinich at his website-1

Dennis Kucinich at his website-2

John Hussman at Weekly Market Comment (his site)

William Greider at The Nation

Fred Thompson's sanctimonious hot air hits the airwaves

Did you see Fred Thompson sanctimonious braying that Palin is the most viciously attacked human in history because she is fighting th power of the status quo, (which is the corporate plutocracy that Thompson IS and McCain IS and Palin IS). Of all the hypocritical thieving of themes, and b.s., this is the living end! I want to find a youtube of it to put next to bleating hypocrisy in the dictionary. It reminds me of a corrupt villain in an old Hollywood movie about poltics in the 19th century.

The Five McCain Videos Everyone Should See

What Republicans Say About John McCain

Exploding the myth of "War Hero" McCain

I like what "BryklynLibrul" has to say at the yglesias page linked in the above post -

"Since the Wesley Clark episode I’ve wondered why the MSM has played along with the outrageous lies and smears, the stupid myths about McCain, the legitimization of Corsi, etc. And the only answer I can come up with is that they believe that a McCain victory is better for their careers, as it would preserve the status quo and show the uppity blogosphere Who’s Really Boss. Obama’s defeat defeats the blogosphere. And the Jake Tappers and the Charlie Gibsons and the Cokie Robertses love love love their careers above all else."

And this from dougR:

"When McCain reminds us all of his prisoner-of-war status, what he’s really saying is, YOU OWE ME, BUSTER–in effect, looking each and every American in the eye and saying no matter what, remember, YOU OWE ME. And the MSM is looking at each others’ flabby candy-asses and thinking, well, yeah, maybe we do. Maybe we should ennoble this guy, since he went somewhere we don’t know for sure we could hack.

I think that’s the sum total of it. And I think it’s about time Obama started sending out surrogates calling out McCain for deflecting tough questions he can’t answer by hiding behind his POW status. That, “my friends,” is actually a cowardly and ignoble tactic, and it’s become a tic of his. There’s nothing remotely heroic in the way he’s waging this campaign; just the opposite, in fact."

Why isn't anyone, any surrogate for the Obama campaign bringing up McCain's deep involvement in the Keating 5 Savings & Loan scandal of the 80s that cost the country billions?

and - MOST IMPORTANTLY -

Everyone - Please read this excellent exploding of the hero myth by Douglas Valentine - in the June 13-15 '08 edition of "Counterpunch" -

here

The War Lover

Consortiumblog: Why McCain May Well Win

Consortiumblog: Why McCain May Well Win

Conservatives and Liberals

I posted this at alternet in regard to a post about the shooter at the Universalist Unitarian church who was out to get liberals and gays for ruining the country:

I Know that Ken Wilber has stated that conservatives blame problems on individual responsibility (the inside) of people and culture and liberals blame the problems on the outside - unfair social structures and social/economic oppression (although liberals also blame problems on conservatives' GREED, very much an "inside" trait/problem), and that both responsibility and equal rights, fair distribution of opportunities/resources are to blame/are the answers, but I can't help but believe that progressives are more evolved than conservatives.

Quote
---------
They [right-wing propagandists and corporate plutocrats] are at a lower level of consciousness and development than that of liberals, progressives, and greens. We progressives have to stop believing that ranking and holarchy (holistic hierarchy) is politically incorrect. This is a postmodern idea that has outlived its usefulness in deconstructing social darwinism and imperialism. The next move up the spiral is integral pluralism, beyond relativistic pluralism.

The right-wingers are hyper-individualists who have not arrived at a higher, bigger, deeper view of reality as interdependent (us with the environment, and each of us with each other.)

Unquote
---------

New Book: "The Wrecking Crew"

From the Publisher, Metropolitan Books:

From the author of the landmark bestseller What’s the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate—and lucrative—conservative misrule

In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us.

Casting back to the early days of the conservative revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters—the wages of government-by-entrepreneurship practiced so outrageously by figures such as Jack Abramoff.

It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.

Stamped with Thomas Frank’s audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet—and his most important.

About the Author:

Thomas Frank is the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God. The founding editor of The Baffler and a contributing editor at Harper’s, Frank has received a Lannan award and been a guest columnist for The New York Times. He lives, of course, in Washington, D.C.

From Lightbulbs to Leadership

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff

The "free market" idol

The absurd idolatry (blind faith, basically) in the "free" market is (probably) an amber myth embedded in orange culture/society. It's not rational, although, its believers believe with Ayn Rand certainty that it is preeminently so. The "free" market doesn't exist. There are structures of power and privilege and oppression that are quite real. Get real, fools. Another thing: if we leave all decisions to the "market" we conveniently opt out of our moral responsibilities such as rational use of resources, social justice, on and on.

With Apologies to the late Norman Mailer

WHY ARE WE IN IRAQ?



lNew Contracts Reflect Continued Presence in Iraq

Monday 02 June 2008

»

by: Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

photo
A Blackwater security contractor in Mosul, Iraq. The depth of US involvement in Iraq is illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May.
(Photo: Jacob Silberberg / AP)

The depth of US involvement in Iraq and the difficulty the next president will face in pulling personnel out of the country are illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May. The contracts call for new spending, from supplying mentors to officials with Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries to establishing a U.S.-marshal-type system to protect Iraqi courts. Contractors would provide more than 100 linguists with secret clearances and deliver food to Iraqi detainees at a new, U.S.-run prison.

The proposals reflect multiyear commitments. The mentor contract notes that the U.S. military "desires for both Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense to become mostly self-sufficient within two years," a time outside some proposals for U.S. combat troop withdrawal. The mentors sought would "advise, train [and] assist ... particular Iraqi officials" who work in the Ministry of Defense, which runs the Iraqi army, or the Ministry of Interior, which runs the police and other security units.

The mentors will assist an U.S. military group that previously began to implement what are described as "core processes and systems," such as procurement, contracting, force development, management and budgeting, and public affairs.

Mentors would have to make a one-year commitment, with options for two one-year contracts after that. As a reminder of what they are getting into, the mentors must supply their helmets, protective body armor and gas masks, according to the announcement.

The marshals service would be organized by the State Department's bureau responsible for developing rule of law programs in Iraq. It "has plans to create an Iraqi service to be known as the Judicial Protection Service (JPS), modeled to some degree after the U.S. Marshals Service, that will ensure the safe conduct of judicial proceedings and protect judges, witnesses, court staff, and court facilities," a notice published last month said.

State's plan is to hire a contractor as a judicial security program manager, who would work out details of how such a service could be put together for the Iraqis. That person or group would develop not only the mission, size and structure of an Iraqi JPS service, but also the personnel, budgeting and training materials necessary, plus "all other aspects of creating the new organization so that the project can be contracted out."

In short, State wants a contractor to put together all the elements so the department can contract the project to another contractor.

State also is looking to hire a contractor to provide "100 plus linguists" who would work for a year each, with as many as four one-year options to follow.

Arabic and Kurdish translators are sought. "Native or near native capability in the foreign language and an excellent command of the English language are required," according to the notice. They will work not only at State's Baghdad embassy, but also at regional offices and with Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

Another contract noticed last week previews the opening, apparently in September, of a U.S.-run prison, now labeled a Theater Internment Facility Reconciliation Center, which is to be located at Camp Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad. The new contract calls for providing food for "up to 5,000 detainees" and will also cover 150 Iraqi nationals, who apparently will work at the facility. The contract is to run for one year, with an option year to follow.

The U.S. holds about 20,000 Iraqis at two facilities today, mostly in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and the rest at Camp Cropper near Baghdad. Along with the facility at Camp Taji, which is expected to hold Iraqis detained in Baghdad, another new reconciliation center, mainly for Sunnis, is being built at Ramadi in Anbar province, where many of these detainees were captured.

In March, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, who runs the detainee program, told reporters that, on average. Iraqi detainees remain in a U.S. facility for 11 months.

But that might not be the case for the roughly 9,000 Iraqis whom he described as having "a very rigorous view of an ideology that we would broadly categorize as al-Qaeda." They are headed to the new reconciliation centers for what could be longer stays.

-------

National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines - but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them to fineprint@washpost.com.


© 2008 truthout


--------------

my notes:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Blackwater and associated defense contractors (and their shareholders, of course)

All the translators and linguists except the gay ones, who(m) the administration have purged years ago.

Links to some of my favorite sites

I just made a list of some of my favorite sites for newstrust.net, which I just joined, so I figured I'd post them here too:

http://www.integralinstitute.org Integral Institute
http://www.alternet.org Alternet
http://www.democracynow.org Democracy Now!
http://www.truthdig.com Truthdig
http://www.truthout.org Truthout
http://www.shambhala.com Shambhala
http://www.huffingtonpost.com The Huffington Post
http://www.amazon.com Amazon
http://www.kenwilber.com Ken Wilber's website
http://www.genpo.org/Big_Mind_Big_Heart/Home.html Big Mind
http://integralpraxis.blogspot.com/ Integral Praxis
http://www.naomiklein.org/main Naomi Klein

Enjoy and explore!

Synergize - I'm trying to.....

The Two Party System is Woefully Inadequate

First two paragraphs from a recent blog post

by "jurassicpork" re Dunkin Donuts caving in

to Michelle Malkin and pulling Rachel Ray's

commericals off the air, because of a

Palestinian style scarf she was wearing:

"But consider that this marginal, hysterical

activism of a handful of jerkoff right wing

bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Chuckie

Johnson actually moves multibillion dollar

corporations such as Dunkin Donuts while

the entire power of Congress cannot even

get Blackwater Worldwide, Halliburton, KBR

or the five largest petroleum cartels to even

admit the truth or to get them to curb their evil

intentions by even an iota.

We've come to expect that right wingers are

dumber than some yeast infections I've seen

but somehow it always shocks me that

corporations the size of Dunkin' Donuts still

jump on their PR stool when these mental

mice roar at them from the yawning chasm of

cyberspace."

Your last two paragraphs are amazing (in the

sense of "shocking"), until you remember the

old adage "Follow the money!"

98% of Congress is being well-paid in one

way or another not to disturb the crimes of

Blackwater, KBR, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, etc.

I think it's time to read (and more than just

read) David Sirota's new book "The

Uprising".


Sidebar - re the corrupt Democratic party -

Two parties aren't enough to reflect the

various political levels (moral and otherwise).

Therea are minority <i>progressive</i>

democrats and majority DLC corporatist

triangulating "centrist" democrats, and they

do not belong in the same party. I propose

that progressives join with the Green Party,

whose platform is nearly identical with

progressives' to begin to build a new

higher-level party in the U.S., as has already

been done in Europe, and anti-big-coporatist,

pro-co-operative, pro-interdependent holistic

ecological-peace, social justice party.

Tiger Woods' Partnership with Chevron Legitimizes the Worst of Corporate America

Tiger Woods' Partnership with Chevron Legitimizes the Worst of Corporate America

By
Dave Zirin, The Nation. Posted May 26, 2008.

Tiger Woods is perhaps the most famous, and most dominant, athlete in the world today. The 32-year-old golfer with the multicultural background he once proudly described as "Cablinasian" has somehow accomplished the impossible: made golf on a Sunday must-see TV.

Woods is a trailblazer and already a legend for his ability to perform when the spotlight is at its hottest. But he has also established a reputation for reticence when confronted with the real world off the greens. For all his cultural capital, Woods has refused to take stands on issues that should hit close to home, such as restricted golf courses, or even when the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman suggested young PGA players "lynch him in a back alley" in a "joke" about how they might overcome his dominance. Tiger has largely maintained the tight-lipped silence of a Benedictine monk.

After the lynching comment, ESPN's Scoop Jackson became so frustrated with this disciplined quietude he wrote, "Because of who he is, Tiger Woods has the power to make people listen. Not just hear his words--but embrace what he has to say.... It's a stand he needs to take because people who change the world eventually have to take stands. Whether strong or silent, good or evil, they take stands not to prove their beliefs, but to rectify a situation or condition."

His defenders have always said that behind the scenes Woods has been an agent for change, and that he shouldn't be criticized just because he does his good deeds without media fanfare. They say he wields that influence through his nonprofit Tiger Woods Foundation. Go to the website, and a virtual Woods walks right onto your screen and welcomes you to a place where "kids can achieve anything." The site boasts: "more than 10 million young people have benefited from the Tiger Woods Foundation since its inception in 1996. What started out with limited access throughout America, now reaches out to young people around the world."

Yet now the Foundation is "reaching around the world" in a way that has human rights activists concerned about a business partnership that smells like sulfur.

The Tiger Woods Foundation has entered into an extensive five-year partnership with Chevron Corporation, with the oil and energy giant becoming the title sponsor of the Tiger Woods Foundation World Challenge Golf Tournament.

"Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate," Woods said in a press release on April 3. And Chevron's executive vice president chimed in, "Chevron, Tiger and the Tiger Woods Foundation share similar values...as well as a deep commitment to make a difference in local communities."

They have certainly "made a difference in local communities," but it's nothing they should be bragging about, and certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached. Chevron is in full partnership with the Burmese military regime on the Yadana gas pipeline project, the single greatest source of revenue for the military, estimated at nearly $1 billion in 2007, nearly half of all the country's revenue. These are the same people who are blocking international aid workers from assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The death toll has been estimated at 78,000, but this number can explode as disease spreads and help isn't allowed through the military lines. Even the US State Department has called the actions of the government "appalling."

Ka Hsaw Wa, co-founder and executive director of EarthRights International, wrote in an open letter to Woods, "I myself have spoken to victims of forced labor, rape, and torture on Chevron's pipeline--if you heard what they said to me, you too would understand how their tragic stories stand in stark contrast to Chevron's rhetoric about helping communities." ERI's request to meet with Woods or someone from the foundation has been met with silence

But while the Burmese junta's crimes are localized in Southeast Asia, Chevron is global. Lawsuits have been issued against Chevron's toxic waste dumping in Alaska, Canada, Angola, California. Then there's the matter of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste the company has been accused of dumping in the Amazon.

In a US District Court in San Francisco, the case of Bowoto v. Chevron, Nigerian plaintiffs have accused Chevron of actually arming and outfitting Nigerian oil security forces to shoot and kill protesters. Judge Susan Illston has refused to dismiss the case because, as Democracy Now! recently reported, "evidence show[s] direct links to Chevron officials."

When pressed for comment, Tiger Woods Foundation President Greg McLaughlin issued this statement to The Nation: "The Foundation's vision is to help young people reach their full potential. All our partners share in this vision, allowing us to make a positive impact in millions of young lives." That response, to very serious and very direct charges, is the golf equivalent of a triple bogey.

President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their "brand" by partnering with Tiger Woods. Tiger's late father Earl, once said of his son, "He will transcend this game...and bring to the world...a humanitarianism...which has never been known before. The world will be a better place to live in...by virtue of his existence...and his presence."

The partnership with Chevron makes a mockery of Earl Woods's hopes.

To use an analogy from a different sport, the ball is now in Tiger's court. Will he allow himself to be tamed by corporate interests, or will he roar?

Reply to Arianna Huffington's post re McCain and Women's Reproductive Rights

Believe me, being pro-birth control is an absolutely essential part of wanting to find solutions for the most urgent problem of our time, global warming. Becoming conscious stewards of our species' population on this planet is crucial to slowing down the need for and emissions of greenhouse gases, along with alleviating so many other ancillary problems. It's obvious to any thinking, moral person, not stuck (or hypocritically pretending to be stuck in medieval pre-rational thinking).

As for McCain's yelp of "No surrender!" today re the Iraqi War, I don't need to point out how absurd the whole premise of "winning" and "surrender" is re the war; I'd like to point out that this was the same language the war profiteers and others in the Johnson/Nixon admins. used re the Vietnam war. McSame is a dinosaur.

Reply to David Sirota's column

Although I know there is still some bitterness about their putting Nader up for president in 2000 (and I was one of the bitter), The Green Party of America's platform and agenda is almost identical to progressives'.

I know it's a dream, but why not combine the greens with the PROGRESSIVE democrats, NOT the neo-liberal conservative triangulating ones?

I don't know how to facilitate this, but I wanted to put it out there for consideration.

The next level in consciousness and social structure from (and this is a Ken Wilber/Spiral Dynamics Integral concept) is

from
orange/corporate/competitive/independent/man vs nature/nationalistic

to
green/ cooperative (not corporate) business and social institutions/interdependent/man as part of and steward of nature/planetarisitc (planetary) (not a return to a blue dogmatic centralized socialism aka Marxism).

So, in a very profound way - progressive = green.

David, I hope your book tour is very successful; I recommend you to all my friends. Keep up your great work!

Don Harris
racetoinfinity@gmail.com

Political Notes

McCain is trying to frame the war (in Iraq) as "I won't surrender [as Obama will]" (my words between the brackets). This is on the old nationalistic ethnocentric level, not the worldcentric (planetary) level, old-fashioned narrow-visioned, just as in the war in Vietnam.

--------

John (the "old" "straight-talk" "get the lobbyists of out politcs") McCain doesn't want any press (media) at his fund raisers. I'm glad Obama is picking up on this P I'm hearing him now. Apparently, Bush is there - no cameras allowed.

Greg Palast on The War for Oil

y Greg Palast for TomPaine.com/OurFuture.org

[New York, May 22, 2008.]

I can’t make this up:

In a hotel room in Brussels, the chief executives of the world’s top
oil companies unrolled a huge map of the Middle East, drew a fat, red
line around Iraq and signed their names to it.

The map, the red line, the secret signatures. It explains this war.
It explains this week’s rocketing of the price of oil to $134 a barrel.

It happened on July 31, 1928, but the bill came due now.

Barack Obama knows this. Or, just as important, those crafting his
policies seem to know this. Same for Hillary Clinton’s team. There
could be no more vital difference between the Republican and Democratic
candidacies. And you won’t learn a thing about it on the news from the
Fox-holes.

Let me explain.

In 1928, oil company chieftains (from Anglo-Persian Oil, now British
Petroleum, from Standard Oil, now Exxon, and their Continental
counterparts) were faced with a crisis: falling prices due to rising
supplies of oil; the same crisis faced by their successors during the
Clinton years, when oil traded at $22 a barrel.

The solution then, as now: stop the flow of oil, squeeze the market,
raise the price. The method: put a red line around Iraq and declare
that virtually all the oil under its sands
would remain there, untapped. Their plan: choke supply, raise prices
rise, boost profits. That was the program for 1928. For 2003. For 2008.

Again and again, year after year, the world price of oil has been
boosted artificially by keeping a tight limit on Iraq’s oil output.
Methods varied. The 1928 “Redline” agreement held, in various forms,
for over three decades. It was replaced in 1959 by quotas imposed by
President Eisenhower. Then Saudi Arabia and OPEC kept Iraq, capable of
producing over 6 million barrels a day, capped at half that, given an
export quota equal to Iran’s lower output.

In 1991, output was again limited, this time by a new red line: B-52
bombings by Bush Senior’s air force. Then came the Oil Embargo followed
by the “Food for Oil” program. Not much food for them, not much oil for
us.

In 2002, after Bush Junior took power, the top ten oil companies
took in a nice $31 billion in profits. But then, a miracle fell from
the sky. Or, more precisely, the 101st Airborne landed. Bush declared,
“Bring’m on!” and, as the dogs of war chewed up the world’s second
largest source of oil, crude doubled in two years to an astonishing $40
a barrel and those same oil companies saw their profits triple to $87
billion.

In response, Senators Obama and Clinton propose something wrongly
called a “windfall” profits tax on oil. But oil industry profits didn’t
blow in on a breeze. It is war, not wind, that fills their coffers. The
beastly leap in prices is nothing but war profiteering, hiking prices
to take cruel advantage of oil fields shut by bullets and blood.

I wish to hell the Democrats would call their plan what it is: A war
profiteering tax. War is profitable business – if you’re an oil man.
But somehow, the public pays the price, at the pump and at the
funerals, and the oil companies reap the benefits.

Indeed, the recent engorgement in oil prices and profits goes right
back to Bush-McCain “surge.” The Iraq government attack on a Basra
militia was really nothing more than Baghdad’s leaping into a gang war
over control of Iraq’s Southern oil fields and oil-loading docks.
Moqtada al-Sadr’s gangsters and the government-sponsored greedsters of
SCIRI (the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution In Iraq) are battling
over an estimated $5 billion a year in oil shipment kickbacks, theft
and protection fees.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the surge-backed civil warring
has cut Iraq’s exports by up to a million barrels a day. And that
translates to slashing OPEC excess crude capacity by nearly half.

Result: ka-BOOM in oil prices and ka-ZOOM in oil profits. For 2007,
Exxon recorded the highest annual profit, $40.6 billion, of any
enterprise since the building of the pyramids. And that was BEFORE the
war surge and price surge to over $100 a barrel.

It’s been a good war for Exxon and friends. Since George Bush began
to beat the war-drum for an invasion of Iraq, the value of Exxon’s
reserves has risen – are you ready for this? – by $2 trillion.

Obama’s war profiteering tax, or “oil windfall profits” tax, would
equal just 20% of the industry’s charges in excess of $80 a barrel.
It’s embarrassingly small actually, smaller than every windfall tax
charged by every other nation. (Ecuador, for example, captures up to
99% of the higher earnings).

Nevertheless, oilman George W. Bush opposes it as does Bush’s man
McCain. Senator McCain admonishes us that the po’ widdle oil companies
need more than 80% of their windfall so they can explore for more oil.
When pigs fly, Senator. Last year, Exxon spent $36 billion of its $40
billion income on dividends and special payouts to stockholders in
tax-free buy-backs. Even the Journal called Exxon’s capital investment
spending “stingy.”

At today’s prices Obama’s windfall tax, teeny as it is, would bring
in nearly a billion dollars a day for the US Treasury. Clinton’s plan
is similar. Yet the press’ entire discussion of gas prices is shifted
to whether the government should knock some sales tax pennies off the
oil companies’ pillaging at the pump.

More important than even the Democrats’ declaring that oil company
profits are undeserved, is their implicit understanding that the
profits are the spoils of war.

And that’s another reason to tax the oil industry’s ill-gotten gain.
Vietnam showed us that foreign wars don’t end when the invader can no
longer fight, but when the invasion is no longer profitable.

*****************

Greg Palast is the author of, “Trillion Dollar Babies,” on Iraq and oil, published in his New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse.

Palast is currently working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on
investigation the latest attacks on the right to vote in America.
Support this effort and receive a signed copy of Armed Madhouse from the author at Palast Investigative Fund.

View Palast’s commentary on oil and war windfalls on Air America Radio’s Palast Report – on YouTube here.

Things to do....

I suspect that Ken Wilber's AQAL theory and AQAL (Integral-AQAL) critical history provides a lot of the answers to these quandaries to be solved and to be worked on.

- How and why did the nascent green emergence of consciousness and behavior/structures get muddled and not succeed in blossoming from the mid-seventies until now (the late 00s)?

Some reasons: Pre-trans confusion was rampant in the late sixties and early seventies. As Wilber has stated, pre-cognitive feeling was confused with trans-cognitive feeling-attention vision, to cite one prominent example. The European unhealthy dissociation that occured during the 17-18th centuries Enlightenment threw the "baby" of the religious/Spiritual line out with the "bathwater" of dogmatic pre-rational myth. Another dissociation (another aspect of the same pathology) (and this may go back much farther than the European enlightenment period) was the dissociation of mind and body, rather than the healthy DIFFERENTIATION of (also science, art, religion, and government) of mind and body.

Rock is a good example - green and second tier rock were about re-integrating the body and feelings and transforming "upwards" to a new green and second-tier level of consciousness and manifestation - a lot of the psychedelic bands - The Airplane, The Beatles, The Dead, The Who, many others,

kleptocray, plutocracy, and corporatocracy defined

klep·toc·ra·cy (klp-tkr-s)
n. pl. klep·toc·ra·cies
A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.

------------------

plu·toc·ra·cy (pl-tkr-s)
n. pl. plu·toc·ra·cies
1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A wealthy class that controls a government.
3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
[Greek ploutokrati : ploutos, wealth; see pleu- in Indo-European roots + -krati, -cracy.]

------------------------

Corporatocracy
-----------------

Corporatocracy (sometimes corporocracy) is a neologism coined by proponents of the Global Justice Movement to describe a government bowing to pressure from corporate entities.

Practice
---------
According to the Global Justice Movement, while anyone can become a shareholder in principle, in reality it is frequently only the wealthy who can afford to own enough stock to directly influence the voting (and hence the activities) of a large corporation. As a result, the corporatocracy might be considered somewhat synonymous with plutocracy, government by the rich.

Some argue that a real corporatocracy can only appear when and if a government makes it legal to bribe politicians. According to this argument, that quickly makes politicians very corporate-friendly, and makes it easy for corporations to pass laws as they see fit. Supporters of this view in the United States believe the allowance for campaign contributions has created a situation allowing for pervasive regulatory capture, offering the contributions that prompted Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as evidence. Also, many supporters of this view argue that when the major media outlets are controlled by large corporations, access to information tends to become limited to what serves corporate interests, and corporate interests in turn are able to define the national political agenda. Finally, according to this view, when the majority of wealth of the politicians is invested into corporations, that gives politicians incentive to support the corporations.

According to supporters of this view, the nature of corporations and stock market investment makes some of the desires of corporations unexpected. For example, a national corporation in a purely national industry (non international) would be less worried about a universal regulation which would decrease profits, than a regulation that would target that individual company, since investors would be more likely to divest in the second case.

Some critics of this term argue that the term has no real meaning in terms of political theory, arguing that a corporation is nothing more than a body of individuals, ruled by a governing body (elected by its shareholders) and executives appointed by that body. As such, it is argued to have as much a right as any other body of people to exercise powers. Pursuing the overriding shareholder interest in corporate profitability generally guides the actions of corporate governing bodies, and it is in the pursuit of this interest that corporations exercise their financial and marketplace power in order to influence public policy. However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Marsh v. Alabama (1946) that a corporation that acts like a government should be treated as one.

The U.S. as a corporatocracy
----------------------------------
There are those who suggest and point to alleged evidence of corporatocracy within the U.S. government by looking at U.S. history with the actions of Sanford B. Dole in Hawaii, William Howard Taft and the Nicaragua Canal, Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Operation Ajax allegedly in support of oil interests and Operation PBSUCCESS in support of United Fruit Company. They may believe Richard M. Nixon played a role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende Gossens to attempt to prevent the Chilean nationalization of copper, on the grounds that nationalization crimped U.S. based Anaconda Copper and Kennecott Utah Copper.

Those disagreeing with the above would argue the United States government was "protecting" America from Marxist governments, "freeing" people of those countries, acting against undemocratic governments, protecting United States citizens or acting for a variety of reasons other than supporting corporate corruption.

The term however is more accurately used to describe actions of Corporations interested in maintaining laws they consider positive for their interests and thus makes it a question of resources to spend (it can be cheaper to give money to a few individuals than to bow to strict laws that cost a lot).

Corporatocracy is also used by John Perkins in his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man to describe a system of governance controlled by "big corporations, international banks, and government" (Perkins / Plume paperback edition, 94). Harking back to the "military-industrial complex," Perkins claims the corporatocracy is manifested in the following cycle: the World Bank issues loans to developing nations to pay for large-scale development projects; contracts are then doled out to a handful of U.S. engineering firms; as a result, these countries become ensnared in a net of interest payments and debts they cannot repay. U.S. corporations benefit through increased profits, and the U.S. government benefits through securing its political clout and control over developing countries with vast natural resources. According to Perkins, the majority of people in those countries do not benefit since a large portion of their country's budget goes toward servicing the national debt instead of improving living conditions.

Perkins claims that the convergence between big corporations, international banks, and government - according to him, the three pillars of corporatocracy - allows "economic elite" to move easily between these sectors. He offers several examples, including that of Vice President and former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney (Perkins / Plume paperback edition, 91).

Fiction
--------
The concept has been used several times in literary fiction. Two recent examples include David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Max Barry's Jennifer Government (2003). Both are dystopian novels which portray the complete political and social dominance of corporations. Mitchell uses the term Corpocracy. Both novels can be interpreted as making a satirical comment on the current unchecked power of corporations in our societies.

Main article: Megacorp

Examples
Those who discuss coporatocracy often tender Singapore or Chile under Augusto Pinochet, where the state supports a strong free market, with weak and sometimes nonexistent political freedom as examples of Corporatocracy. Although the corporations do not rule Singapore, the state often supports them.
See also

This entry is related to, but not included in the Political ideologies series or one of its sub-series. Other related articles can be found at the .

* Anarcho-capitalism
* Corporate abuse
* Corporate police state
* Corporatism
* Crony capitalism
* Kleptocracy
* Juristic person
* Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
* Megacorp
* The Corporation
* Captive State

Sources

* Perkis, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Plume Books 2006 ISBN 0452287081
* Current Era
* Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
* Canadian Action Party


form of government is a term that refers to the set of political institutions by which a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a political community.[1] Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government".
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Anarchism (from Greek αναρχία , "without archons," "without rulers")[1] is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which reject compulsory government[2] and support its elimination,[3]
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aristocracy refers to a form of government where power is held by a small number of individuals from a social elite or from noble families. The transmission of power is often hereditary.
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Authoritarianism describes a form of social control characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization, often maintaining and enforcing control through the use of oppressive measures. Authoritarian regimes are strongly hierarchical.
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plutocracy, power and opportunity are centralized within the affluent social class. The degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low. This can apply to a multitude of government systems, as the key elements of plutocracy transcend and often occur
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[Greek kleptein, to steal + -cracy.]

That's Entertainment - regressive city

"Iron Man" starring one of the smart actors of our time is off to an all-time smash hit success as of the end of this weekend. Marvel comics superhero tale has already taken in more than $200 million worldwide. They're planning "The Incredible Hulk" with another brainy actor, Edward Norton, soon.

Sad, that we are regressed to mythic-membership center in our entertainment - superhero mythic power gods - so regressed even from the fifties. God almighty! This is what Downey and Norton are up to? Well, I'm sure it pays well, and I guess they're like most of us nowadays - it's too late - the earth is gonna burn up and be miserable in 50 years, so take the money and run ????

So sad and pathetic! Let's all be 12 year olds again.

the idea is to feeling-attention love energy

living in the electric energy LoveLight, co-creating it because you are choosing it which is eternal and surrendering also...

so the practice becomes new systems of both interiroity and exterirority no matter the level - and yes we need more evolved and permanently transpersonal leaders, no matter who fascist that might appear to the sufrace dwellers - it's far from - it's leaders who have transcended ego and who are in a transpersonal network of care and concern for the planet - in raising the consciousness of masses of people through new instant cyber and other communications.

Start with "The Book" and "Up From Eden"....happy discovering....

The awakening to the knowledge of a path

or "the lovelight inner garden" as 19th century romantic might say....
and others now....

The error of relative pluralism is dooming the planet (among other factors)

The fact that most of the population including the

educated media does not (apparently) understand nor

acknowledge levels of awareness that are at play in all

of our politics and in our population is a huge error

that keeps the discourse chasing its tail in "Flatland"

(Ken Wilber's term) - (no depth). For instance, the evangelical Christians are at a lower, much more simplictic pre-rational level of awareness than rational atheists or pluralistic spiritual people, but the left is afraid to acknowledge that there are levels - each one more intelligent, comprehensive, and true that the ones below, because they are caught in relativistic pluralism, not integral pluralism. Ken Wilber is right that this (part of what he calls "Boomeritis") is a main contributor to our being "stuck" chasing our tails and not evolving (progressing) (in fact for the last seven years, reacting and going "backwards".)

Pigs at the Iraq war oil and defense related elite class blues

2:14 AM 4/23/2008

The Republicans have recruited a young Bob Redford clean-cut very good looking model like male Paris Hilton himbo to tout free market and no tax no regulation ideology. He must be a son of the rich or bought by them. This empty shell shills name is Reed - after his appearance on CNN was a snotty commercial for "Russell Investments" oh so daintily muted and tastefully quiet touting by Campbell Scott. Can the corporatoplutocratic big operators/outfits like TW/CNN live off of them - can our economy - ?? doubtful - they have wrung their own neck with their greed these last 7 years - Why didn't they rein in the neocons? Don't get it - except they must've been in on the big under examined profits from the war and have a great cache hidden away in foreign accounts now. But the people are angry and much more on to them now, thanks to the net and roots bloggers like myself.

Great Photo

"Reach for the Sky" by Perabl -

<a href="http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1173197584032751213WowQZg"><img src="http://thumb13.webshots.net/s/thumb4/9/75/84/173197584WowQZg_th.jpg" alt="Reach for the sky"></a>

Watching "Verdict with Dan Abrams" now

Don Siegelman (ex-gov. of Alabama) alleges that Karl Rove was substantially behind his false conviction. Who can be surprised? Who can not believe it?

-------------

I'm sure Phil Donahue's new film is good, but he is so off-point with his answers to Dan Abrahms's questions about the deception that led up to the war, and Cheney's dismissal of the American Public's massive disapproval of the war. See the transcript - I'll post his answers, and ones I think could have been better tomorrow, after the transcript is posted at msnbc.com

Integral Institute - does it have a slight 1st tier political right tilt bias?

I remain and ardent supporter of Ken's work and of the I.I.

I've long had a few qualms about a somewhat right-leaning bias, despite its wanting to be and succeeding to a great degree in being second-tier (transcending both political right and left).

Three points:

1) Ken's support for the Iraq War in 2002, when he failed to see the "Plan for a New American Century"'s plotters backward oil based imperialism at work.

2) The legitimization of Michael Chrichton's absurd (in my opinion) opinions about global warming, characterizing it as "a climate of fear"

3) Having john Mackee (as well as Chrichton) on the board. Mackee is a libertarian, not an integralist, and as the article below elucidates has gotten in some corrupt hot water of his own within the last few years.

I understand that the Integral Institute needs wealthy patrons, but let's have some balance - where are the progressive political voices?

-- insert ref. source here -

As today's New York Times reports Mackey was caught posting on Yahoo Finance's bulleting board under a pseudonym pumping up Whole Foods' stock and blasting its rival Wild Oats Markets. (Not content just to trick potential investors, he even praised his own coiffure: "I like Mackey's haircut. I think he looks cute!" he wrote under the pseudonym Rahobed, a corruption of Deborah, his wife's name.) The posts were discovered during a Federal Trade Commission case stemming from Whole Foods' attempt to acquire Wild Oats.

The libertarian philosophy that Mackey champions argues that government should butt out and let markets do their thing. But without government regulation, à la this FTC hearing, consumers and investors don't have the information they need to make informed choices. All too often, people who appear to be impartial tout products they have financial ties to. At the Department of Education, officials pushed a private student loan company they held shares in. Henry Blodgett of Merrill Lynch infamously pumped stocks on CNBC not because he thought they were good buys (he famously described one in an in-house e-mail as "a piece of shit") but in order to get those companies to do more business with Merrill Lynch.

Companies are supposed to compete by providing the best product at the best price for consumers and a legally-earned profit for investors, but greed has a tendency to get in the way. The business world attracts people who love money, so we need to count the proverbial silverware when they leave the dinner party. Temptation is everywhere in corporate America and businesspeople often cut corners or pull the wool over the eyes of consumers and investors. This temptation only grows stronger when conservatives are in power, gutting government watchdog agencies. Without government regulations governing conflicts of interest we get bloggers like Rahobed and touts like Henry Blodgett. Without the kind of strict anti-trust regulation libertarians abhor, companies tend towards monopoly and consumers get screwed. As John Mackey told his board members, according to FTC filings, buying Wild Oats would help the company "avoid nasty price wars in Portland (both Oregon and Maine), Boulder, Nashville and several other cities which will harm our gross margins and profitability."

The irony of Mackey's outing is delicious indeed. But shouldn't be surprised when libertarians, who after all preach that greed is good, are shown to be so greedy. And we shouldn't buy their self-serving rhetoric about deregulation.

Radical revamp-redit of my blog coming

I've been going over some old posts of mine, and have concluded that many need a major re-edit- some need expunging. Many entries are too "off the cuff" and not thought out. I will be doing this over the next few months (if anyone else out there is reading this - I wonder sometimes lol).

The blocks to publicly financed elections

Money does not equal free speech. Has it ever? Even in the misty-probably-misinterpreted or shallowly interpreted Founding Fathers' era, I don't believe Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton et al conisdered it so. Then we had the resurgent right put in the right-wing dolts we have now in the SCOTUS.

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I was hopin' it would work....

Beliefnet Daily Hindu Wisdom - 021908 -

"The body will be turned by the power of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit."

-Sri Aurobindo

I used to believe that too, but found out one can't heal bodymind traumas and "wounds", etc. holes., from above, not just by something in the vein of "bathing it in The Spiritual Love-Light" irradiating it, so to speak. Only that is not enough, unfortunately.

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I'm repeating myself for emphasis, because both of these are so important

If you want to know why religion has stalled at a pre-rational, pre-modern level, pls. read the genius Ken Wilber's book Integral Spirituality

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These articles by (perhaps another genius, or at least a very smart person) Steve Kirsch on global warming are must reading (although very depressing), even if you think you know what's going on - (His other articles are good, too, like his "Who would make the best President?") -

Steve Kirsch's website

It's much worse than we think, folks

These articles by Steve Kirsch on global warming are must reading, even if you think you know what's going on - (His other articles are good, too, like his "Who would make the best President?") -

Steve Kirsch's website

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"I see a fourfold vision" - Blake

Click on above graphic/table/chart to enlarge.

------------------------------------------------------

From "visionspace"'s fractals albums at webshots.com





According to Ken Wilber, evolution tetra-evolves in four quadrants. All space-time occasions have four quadrants . Evolution spirals up this holonic "ladder" from the Big Bang to perfect manifestation as Spirit (Godhead), while, paradoxically, at all points, during the whole process transcends space and time in already perfect FULL REALIZATION.

See 1st graphic (blogger will not let me put it here, for some reason - )there are still improvements to be made in free personal blogging) - it's page 35 of his book "Integral Spirituality" (2006).

Recommndations

The post below must be credited largely to the ideas of Ken Wilber, whom I've followed and admired for 27 years.

I want to recommend two other sources for personal growth and inspiration today.

1) The Hoffman-Quadrinity process - read this essay about freeing oneself from the past and one's "false" conditioned self.

2) The book "Big Mind, Big Heart" by Dennis Genpo Merzel, a simply written and profoundly transformative book and CD.

Fear and Loathing since 9/11

Since 9/11, people in America have used money or have regressed to mythic-membership dogmatic religion to comfort themselves.

The true response is a growth in SPIRITUALITY. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of Western paths. There are some, like gnostic Christianity, "A Course in Miracles", contemplative Christianity (although that's hard to find).
Christianity got "stuck" at the mythic-membership level in the 17th century, because the European enlightenment (The Age of Reason) threw the baby of spirituality out with the bathwater of dogmatic pre-rational (and corrupt, then) religion.

There are lot of Eastern paths through and beyond ego, yoga, Buddhism, meditation. One must work on one's shadow first - the great contribution of Western psychology. (You have to be a whole SOMEBODY before you become a trans-personal NOBODY).

If you find people who use The Bible as a manual, they're medieval, and there are a lot of them in the U.S., unfortunately.

commens about this

The oil economy and the oil level of consciousness and the red meat smoking ignorant about diet and health orange fifties paranoid about Islamosacists a fake - a straw man they put up - have gotten very rich thru the OIL lately - D. is one of them. Oil is warming up the planet - it causes cancer - its distillates like benzene hanging over cancer alley in Louisiana under the trapped poor below.

Big shots mentality - 50s. The karma of OIL is bad. The face that Green can't wake up and tame big orane in China and India, and other growing fiants (Russia, but that's a more contentious story) - is because green has not been allowed to bud in these reactionary necon ORANGE fat greedy stupid mfers out of CIA power oil imperialism - white men's burden - skull and bones - WASP superiority - elitism 50s - yech!

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OIL - The outdated toxic but encouraged by retro-greedheads here fuel choking our culture/planet

The oil economy and the oil level of consciousness and the red meat smoking ignorant about diet and health orange fifties paranoid about Islamofascists a fake - a straw man they put up - have gotten very rich thru the OIL lately - D. is one of them. Oil is warming up the planet - it causes cancer - its distillates like benzene hanging over cancer alley in Louisiana under the trapped poor below.

Big shots mentality - 50s. The karma of OIL is bad. The face that Green can't wake up and tame big orange in China and India, and other growing giants (Russia, but that's a more contentious story) - is because green has not been allowed to bud in these reactionary necon ORANGE fat greedy stupid mfers out of CIA power oil imperialism - white men's burden - skull and bones - WASP superiority - elitism 50s - yech!

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