old new lefty's Open Salon Blog

Confessions of a Political Hit Man

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:05:13 -0400

This blog is not about Rahm Emanuel. It's about his spirit that I channeled almost immediately when I got back from Mexico. I'd been in town only a few hours, when a neighbor gave me an invite to a local art center where one of my favorite photographers was holding an exhibit.

It turned out that the photos were of a mountain top removal project in rural Ecotopia County, in an area that I knew quite well. Christian Butte is being systematically strip mined for gravel and rocks, with much of it to be used to improve a rail bed for trains that will export Wyoming coal to China. I call the big hill Christian Butte, as the valley below it is almost exclusively populated by fundamentalists and evangelicals. And in looking at the photographs and the people who were at the show, I began to see the makings of a major wedge issue that could be created in this very Republican area.

First, let me make some self-disclosure. I despise the majority of the Ecotopia County Commissioners. In my forty years of living here, I've seen good and bad county governments, but the current crop takes the cake for their meanspirited, scheming, heartless ways. And they compound this with a belief in the magical thinking of libertarians. Environmental regulations only get in the way of a businessman trying to make a profit -- and profit (rather than the public welfare or citizen sentiment) is the only thing to consider for them.

It occurred to me that the people living under the shadow of Christian Butte had been played for suckers. Commissioner Weasel had courted and depended on these people's votes. And then he cavalierly ignored their feelings when a buddy said that he wanted to do a major land raping project.

I didn't consciously start out to formulate a strategy that could be applied nationally by the Democratic Party, but it came to me after I got carried away in talking with a church lady at the art exhibit. This is the conversation I had with her:

"Did you vote for ~~Commissioner Weasel~~?" (insert candidate name here)

"Yes, I did."

Don't you feel betrayed by him?"

"Yes, I do."

"What we're looking at is a government filled with moral and spiritual corruption in thrall to the almighty dollar at the expense of community and the environment."

I went on to urge her to get as many friends and associates as she could get from her area to meet with Commissioner Liberal to discuss political strategy, and I later contacted Commissioner L on a follow up to urge him to encourage the citizens to make as much of an outreach as possible to other Christian churches and individuals in the county about this situation.

One of the things I discovered inadvertently was that I employed a huge number of buzzwords that appeal to Christian voters. The significance of this does have national implications, as for too long I believe that progressives and Democrats have ignored the Christian community to their own detriment. Since the late 1970s, the right wing has taken the majority of Christian voters as their exclusive property. Many liberals hearing one or the other Bushes talk about "a thousand points of light" or a "crusade" have certainly misunderstood what GOP national leaders may have been saying or doing when they utter words like this. But their strategy was very carefully tested, marketed, and deployed.

And now is the time for President Obama and the Democrats to deploy their own strategies to call out to the Christian community. Let's be realistic. I don't expect many Christians to do a 180 and start voting for candidates like Barney Frank or Bernie Sanders. But I know that Tea Party factions are already disenchanted with the Christian wing of the GOP for not paying enough attention to cutting taxes and the deficit. A push from our side will only exacerbate these internal Republican tensions.

The only thing the Democrats need to do is to exploit the wedge that already exists within the GOP. If this can be done, I don't care whether Christians start voting for the Democrats or whether they find themselves at cross purposes and retreat from the sordid world of politics.

But then I got backlash from a personal friend who questioned the morality of this, and I responded. But that's another story.

Odds & Ends

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:05:04 -0400

Nothing much big happening this week. Just piddly little stuff. So, I'm going to draw some numbers out of the hat and give you their run down.

BAD ECONOMY

Surprise, surprise, surprise. The current period is entering a little late, but more or less exactly where I thought it would be. Remember, I originally predicted an up move until March, followed by a downward trend lasting roughly to the election. I've now revised my estimates, thinking that a less intense downturn will bottom out by the beginning of August or the middle of July.

This is due to Europe and China more than anything. US numbers have been fairly good. But we depend on the fuel of Europe and China to run our engine, and we'll all be running on a thin mixture until then.

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Wake me when it's over. Actually until the conventions, don't waste my time.

EUROPE

There is much yelling, screaming, and flapping of hands currently going on around Europe now, and some of it is even deserved. However, expect the European Central Bank and the EFSB to pull another rabbit out of the hat. Somehow. Some time in July.

CHINA

I told you so about this one, too. Don't think for a moment that this kerfuffle about some blind lawyer also isn't a shadow play being duked out by competing factions of the Chinese Politburo.

HISTORICAL CYCLES

If I were an Oxbridge don, I'd write a few volumes on the time period between the late 1500s (I'm thinking late Renaissance), and the Age of Reason (circa 1703). The 1600s were marked by climate change, revolutions, and a conservative reaction.

I think technology compresses time enormously, and so I see a parallel situation between the 1960s, where we are now, and some future Age of Reason somewhere down the road. Probably after I'm dead.

OCCUPY WALL STREET: What Now?

Sun, 6 May 2012 14:05:14 -0400

May Day has come and gone, and in many respects, the Occupy protests this month were just pale imitations of what occurred in November. And supporters of the movement appear to have put a happy face on a diminished presence. There are a number of factors that account for this. One is that the novelty of OWS encampments all over the United States (and world for that matter) has worn off. Winter is not a good time to be camping out, and the climate took a natural toll on the various occupations.

A second factor in diminishing the presence of Occupy was of course, various cities' police repression. Being teargassed in the face or clubbed by the authorities or hogtied by plastic ties for hours is no doubt an intimidating factor for many people, and a certain percentage of pain avoidance will lead to dropouts. Coupled with this is the timeline that universities operate under. While November is well enough into a quarter or semester, May is always finals month. To the 20-something university students willing to commit their bodies to the cause, there is the realization that it's now the time to study for the grades.

One of the other contributing factors to the diminished presence of Occupy is perhaps due to the fact that some labor unions have gone back to being truly independent entities working on their own agendas, rather than operating in lockstep with the on the street protesters. This was certainly evident in New York. It was reported that one or more labor unions, rather than getting with the OWS program of a general strike, decided to take busloads of union workers to Albany to lobby the state legislature. It goes without saying that a truly united left (in terms of strategy and tactics) is a much more potent political weapon than the herd of cats mentality that usually exists on my side of the political spectrum.

Leftist sectarianism is a chronic disease, and ideological disputes and identity politics always cripples our political actions when compared to the authoritarian, lockstep mentality that infects the right wing. To some extent, the events of November were newsworthy because of the extraordinary unanimity of various factions for the demonstrations. And the nonparticipation of the unions as they seek their own independent course of action is much more business as usual. And as always, the very anarchistic nature of Occupy Wall Street is a weakness as well as a strength.

A fourth factor is the world situation. Last November the Arab Spring was in a substantially different place than it is now. The political situations of Egypt, Syria, and Libya now are much more murky than before, and there is a synergy between various worldwide movements that may not be in play as much now as then. However, most importantly, is the role of the news media.

Coverage of the May Day events on TV and in print was substantially much lower now than it was last fall. Secret Service hookers got more eyeballs than Occupy, and one can speculate why air time was relegated to a corner. Is it because encampments and occupations are "old news?" Or is it because the media masters realize that too much publicity for the movement would be detrimental to the status quo? Debating the reasons for diminished media attention are moot. The fact is, Occupy's media footprint this month was much smaller than before.

Given all of these limiting factors, it is incorrect to assume that the movement will be subject to the perpetual law of diminishing expectations. For one thing, what is happening beneath the surface of the movement are significant for their long term implications for American politics. The thing that is not visible in the press are the thousands of people who are engaged in their study and participation at the lowest levels of American politics. Young people are interning at magazines like The Nation, The Progressive, and In These Times to name just a few examples. Other people have gotten onto the committees of local governments to make public policy through the advisory process. And the freewheeling nature of the Occupy movement have put people into a learning, educational, and advocacy role for issues as diverse as animal rights, global warming, and SEC regulations for bank stock.

To be sure, the denizens of the Tea Party are also undergoing their process of self education and involvement in the electoral process, but the fact that both left and right are involving and activating outside of the mainstream channel of what usually is allowable for the political process has important long term implications for social change in this country.

2012 is another red letter year, comparable to the events of 1848 and 1968. Such times are considerably rarer than eclipses of the sun. To some extent, even though the historic revolutions appeared to flare out after a short period of time, both substantially changed world history. The revolution of 1848 of course, led to the growth of nationalism in 19th Century Europe, setting the stage for World Wars I & II, as well as colonialism and the independence of Third World Countries after 1945.

The revolution of 1968 led to the womens and gay rights movements, as well as facilitating the election of America's first black president. Unfortunately, the hippie movement that accompanied the leftist politics also led to the me generation, with its self-centered yuppies. And the quest for personal liberation ultimately led to the birth of conservativism that spanned from Barry Goldwater through George W. Bush and where we are today.

I think that today's revolutionary movement is substantially different from 1968 in that the rebellion against the Vietnam War was an ultimate dead end, allowing for the politics of personal liberation that led to the "greed is good" mentality that pervades Wall Street today. The Occupy movement (and even the Tea Party) appears to me to be a rebellion against political apathy. As such, involvement in politics appears to be sine qua non, the very reason for being. Once the newbies discover the marvels and fascinating complexities in political involvement, they will find a life long interest and commitment that will be hard to shake off.

And of course, because there is an internet -- this will allow people to interact and communicate with people worldwide in a way that was never possible before.

To me, this is a long term game changer. Regardless of the direction that America takes in the future, it will do so because of the continued political presence and focus of the people of Occupy. Certainly because of its nature (and the times we live in), it is highly likely that ultimately all of this will push America towards a truly more international-cooperative and multicultural point of view.

AMERICA: From Where I See It (Open Call)

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:04:09 -0400

FOREIGN

I live in Mexico, so I don't get to experience the cacaphony and barrage of media extravaganza and spectacle that is the US mass media. It's my observation that for the most part, Americans are insular people, unaware of their greater global surroundings. Many Americans assume that everyone all over the world wants to live just like them. After all, don't we have the greatest, most exceptional country in the world? This is not true; we are not the greatest country in the world. We are just one of many.

When I'm in my part of Mexico, I have perhaps 5% of the consumer goods available to me in the United States, and yet my standard of living and happiness are in many ways superior to what I experience in the United States. From a consumeristic standpoint, no doubt this is heresy. And yet Americans, restless souls that they are, are in fact not as happy as people in Mexico, who have much less.

Call me a dreamer, but in some ways, I'm a searcher for truth. Even though I know what a relativistic concept that is, I think that it's still at least worth the effort to live in as much a fact based universe as possible without depending on magical thinking of one variety or another as an intellectual crutch. Because of that, in my retirement, I've become a gleaner of the internet. I can easily count well more than 30 news sources that I can go to for a well spring of information, depending on geography. And the mainstays that I scour for news come from 13 countries.

And so I admit, my internationalist perspective probably twists and distorts my viewpoint away from the beliefs held by the average American. But on the other hand, I see things that perhaps most Americans miss. And that is why I wrote this essay. But such a subject is such a big job that the only solution is to throw this subject open to the group mind. Perhaps, if we're lucky, we can come up with a collective vision that is 10% as excellent as that of Alexis de Toqueville.

But what do I see? The first thing I see is -- militarism. I can see the Mexican Marines and Navy, equipped with American uniforms, arms, and equipment. They drive Humvees and Dodge trucks. If I were to go almost all over the world, I would guess that local denizens would say the same thing. Oh yes, there are tourists. But tourism creates artificial paradises, little Indian reservations that the locals set aside for the foreigners so that they will leave the rest of the country alone.

Once upon a time, it would have been possible to also spy American bags of wheat and rice. Sometimes it still happens for disaster relief. But America's biggest foreign aid contribution by far to the rest of the world is its military equipment, and increasingly -- its private mercenaries. In Mexico, the military is there because of American drugs. No need for me to detail the deletrious effects of American drug policies on the rest of the world. In that respect, it's little different from any other major aspect of American foreign policy.

But drugs are a part of America, too -- big time. All of that money is spent in Latin America and Afghanistan, among other places to counteract the drug demon. And yet since Richard Nixon announced his War on Drugs, the price of cocaine has fallen 80% in the United States. (One wag once said that we should have declared a War on Gasoline.) We play with countries like someone in a Monopoly game -- foreclosing on one country named Baltic Avenue when the player lands on our country (AKA Park Place with a hotel).

And now all that I have to do is to refer you to that video clip of Jimmy Kimmel's question to the audience at the Washington, DC White House Correspondents Dinner, when he asked the some odd thousands of the ruling class how many people had never tried marijuana. How few people raised their hands! A good question to ask with that show of hands is, " How many thousands of black men are in prison for possession of marijuna?" So another excellent word that can be used to describe America is hypocrisy.

The operational word here is meddling. Consciously or unconsciously, American meddling is the proverbial 800 lb. gorilla in the room. And just like a gorilla, our foreign policy has the same long term personality of the gorilla -- peaceful and benign one day, rampaging and destructive the next. Ask Yemen or Somalia or El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan ... I could go on. Graham Greene's The Quiet American is still an unfortunate primer on the standard operating procedures of American democracy.

Perhaps we're no different in our behavior than that of any other declining empire faced with a stranger and more puzzling multipolar world of international diplomacy. Unfortunately, what makes this situation unique for all of us is not our bumping up against the ceiling of ecological limits. That's been a factor in the fall of many other empires. Unfortunately, the fact is that we're doing so and living in an era of soon to be increasingly dangerous manmade climate change that will affect the whole planet.

DOMESTIC

I know that many other places in the world now have a superior form of government, economy, and standard of living compared to America. Americans can no longer claim supremacy in any of these areas. Instead, we live in a psychically flattened and hollowed out world. That is why Americans now desperately take refuge in so much magical thinking. Our society has been dumbed down. Americans are still decent people, but they live in a diminished world when compared to that of their parents.

The America that I knew has been debased. In the gospel of free trade, our factories have been shuttered and relocated to China or India or wherever there is the lowest wage rate, as determined by the accountants of the multinationals. And the cutthroat, market-oriented world of the mass media has produced a low fiber content, junk food brand of infotainment disguised as the mass media.

What once passed for high quality arts and music has been obliterated. There are no more Frank Sinatras or Elvis Presleys in the computerized world of narrowcasting on the internet. While the computer has been heralded as a godsend of modern technology, it has taken the oxygen out of our culture. And it has destroyed our real community, the kind of community that de Toqueville once defined as a basic thread of American national culture.

The ruling elite in the Washington Hilton ballroom has settled on more circuses and less bread as a strategy to manage the empire -- and to control the potentially restless natives. We live in towns filled with abandoned factories and empty storefronts. It's axiomatic that capitalism is by its very nature a process of creative destruction. And we can see that destruction everywhere we look. Global marketing has destroyed our old Main Streets and malt shops for the sake of the four lane highway lined with gas stations, motels, 7-11s, and Burger Kings. And we can drive by our old, shuttered former workplaces on the way to our part time job on the graveyard shift of McDonalds.

Instead of having a network of fraternal organizations and garden clubs as a thriving, real community, Americans have become scattered and isolated, clustered in our dark rooms as we hunch over to watch the flat screen TV or computer. Once upon a time, people had secure, long term jobs that paid a decent wage. Now Americans jump from one ice floe to another in search of what little economic and social security they can grub. Is it any wonder that so many people join megachurches, who are ultimately ruled by powerful right wing elites?

Evangelical America now offers a Christian version of the Chamber of Commerce, and this goes a long way as a factor in explaining why the social fabric has become so worn, and why our politics has now shifted so far into the red spectrum. And now Occupy Wall Street is coming on the scene. OWS changed the political paradigm almost immediately, and it will continue to grow in strength, reach, and influence as the middle class becomes more and more hollowed out for the sake of the multinational CEOs and managers.

Meanwhile, American political democracy has devolved into Dancing With The Stars democracy. I use DWTS as a perfect description of the current system of many levels of government. Like the TV show, our democracy depends on our voting and participation. But our participation is virtual, and not actual. We are only spectators, given a microscrap of democracy in shaping the process.

The three judges on Dancing With The Stars are represented by the ruling elite. Perhaps in real life, we can visualize our judges as the tuxedoed and ball gowned ruling elite in the Washington Hilton ballroom. By far, DWTS is far more open and transparent than our government. On TV, we realize that Len and Bruno have a lot to say about who gets promoted and demoted. There is no such simple road guide in Washington, DC.

And even when there are obvious manipulations on the TV show, they are transparent in comparison to our system of governance. When Bristol Palin was allowed to proceed as far as she did in one season, it was obvious that she was promoted solely because of the additional eyeballs she would bring to the show. Government policy is not a reality show. The political brokers are much more hidden and clever in their manipulations of policy issues. They know that reality is often an unpleasant and complex thing that can make peoples' head hurt from overthinking. The press and politicians allow inconsequential scandals like Secret Service hookers in Columbia or Anthony Weiner to dominate our thinking, instead of focusing the spotlight on detailed analyses of the issues surrounding American labor policy.

The elites are getting nervous. That is why it was necessary to establish an international intelligence net that traps every electronic piece of communication for the benefit of the National Security Agency. That is why we must take off our shoes and be subjected to full body searches every time we travel on an airplane. That is why the United States government stampeded in a hellbent hot flash to authorize the National Defense Authorization Act. The Crash of 2008 was the Toto that began to pull back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz.

Given the ocean of information that we are now drowning in, it's no wonder that no one pays any attention to the news any more. The search for answers is too complex, and there are too many bald-faced liars both in the press and on the internet. Our computerized environment has all given us all the attention spans of gnats. No one reads extended essays or even novels any more that connect us all together as a people.

And the planet continues on its merry course. God help us all.

THE EURO: 52 Card Pick-Up?

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:04:27 -0400

Bullish sentiments in the worldwide stock market were taken for a rude awakening by a double clap of thunder emanating from France and the Netherlands over the weekend. First, the defeat of French President Nicholas Sarkozy seems almost certain. He's the first French president in history to fall behind in the first round of voting. While the French electoral system has its own set of complications, the constellation of political parties in France almost guarantees that Francoise Hollande, the Socialist candidate, will be Sarkozy's replacement in two weeks.

The second clap of thunder occurred in the Netherlands, which was totally unanticipated. Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, announced on Monday that his governing coalition had been handed a vote of no confidence in parliament. Geert Wilders, head of the Freedom Party, broke publicly with his coalition, saying that the Dutch government's policies of imposing forced austerity to comply with European Union demands was totally unaceptable.

What makes the Dutch situation so significant is that up until now, the Netherlands was regarded as one of Germany's closest and strongest allies in its drive for imposing austerity on Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland (AKA the PIIGS). To world financial markets, the incredibly weak showing of Sarkozy to Hollande was expected. France, is of course, Germany's major partner in dictating PIIGS' debt reduction, and Monsiuer Hollande will most likely take a more skeptical approach towards imposing austerity on the European Union's weaker cousins .

What both the Netherlands and France have in common besides a newfound opposition to the German approaches toward stressing repayment of individual country national debt and an austere internal budget, is the fact that in both countries there appears to be a direct rebellion by both left and right wingers against the center. For example, Marie Le Pen, of the fascistic National Front Party in France received a record high of almost 17% of the national vote. And at the same time Jean Luc Melachon, of the hard left Left Front party, also did quite well, receiving about 11% of the vote.

In Holland, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party last achieved worldwide fame by inciting Islamophobia in that country. And now the Freedom Party has broken the coalition it's in, by complaining about the overly restrictive measures imposed by the EU from Brussels.

Dmitri Papadmitriou, an seasoned observer of the European debt crisis observed yesterday that these and other events clearly show the long term instability of the euro as a viable world currency under the present circumstances. He's labeled the tyranny dictated by Berlin and Brussels on the PIIGS as being similar in its structure to the gold standard that ruled the world economy all through the 1800s up until the Great Depression.

One of the things driving the current Euro crisis is the fact that if individual countries like Italy or Greece had their own liras and drachmas, they could merely devalue their national currencies. Then their internal economic problems would correct themselves automatically. However, as in the world gold standard of yore, since there is an external standard of money outside their countries (i.e. the euro), then imposing harsher standards on the PIIGS inevitably results in a vicious circle of greater and greater poverty.

While the bankers of Brussels and Berlin fixate on inflation indexes and the repayment of such things as Spanish or Greek debt, the southern tier of European countries wallows in greater and greater economic despair, with less and less chance of making good on the required debt payments. The European Union coalition has up to this point succeeded at increasing debt payments for Greek and other debt through ever increasing rounds of creative accounting. The problem now is that the looming potential crisis of funding Italian, Spanish, and Portugese debt is now well beyond the capacity of the European Union to do any more magic tricks as far as the world financial market is concerned. And major outside players, like the US and China, have informed the Europeans that they're pretty much on their own.

Alan Greenspan himself was reported to have said at a J.P. Morgan Stanley party that he felt that the euro as a viable currency has a limited shelf life. He joins an increasingly large gathering of economic thinkers who say the same thing. Interestingly enough, Papadmitriou has suggested that the new political realities in Europe will not force the southern tier of European countries out of the EU. With an emerging majority of European citizens and governments rebelling against the forced austerity programs, he thinks that Germany may ultimately take steps to abandon the euro on its own, leaving the PIIGS, France, and whoever else to populate a reconfigured euro without German participation.

Papadmitriou agrees with George Soros that this is a dangerous situation politically, as it could lead to even more extreme and powerful right wing movements on the continent. Whether Germany stays in the euro, or whether Greece, Spain, etc. continue on their present course in the face of growing domestic opposition -- it's obvious that the European debt crisis may now be entering its third act.

Whether the climax of this play works itself out later in the year or in 2013 and beyond is impossible to say at this time. However, for the short run, the crisis shows all indications of dramatically pushing the entire world economy significantly lower in the next six months.