They Hate us for our Freedoms

The last ten years has certainly helped our standing in the Arab World.

found here: GGDrafts: Arab world opinion

tnb

Weekend Crap

The Natural Chaos of Markets here: [The Naturak Chaos of Markets] and here
The natural chaos of markets - macrobusiness.com.au | macrobusiness.com.au

The documentaries here: [All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace]

Television dominates this country. [A Nation of Vidiots - Jeffrey D. Sachs - Project Syndicate]

"Still, statistics indicate that the growing disparity is genuinely overwhelming. In fact, the 400 wealthiest Americans now own more than the "lower" 150 million Americans put together." from [The Second Gilded Age: Has America Become an Oligarchy? - SPIEGEL ONLINE]

[Apple and the Centrally Planned Economy « Modeled Behavior]

tnb

Who Rules America #2

A very good post on the state of the US found here: [Budgetary Deceit and America's Decline - Jeffery Sachs]

The short version. America and both of its political Parties are owned by the rich and powerful. We need a third party.

The tnb version. America and both of its political Parties are owned by the rich and powerful, the "Corporats". We need a third party that puts people above business interests. The Tea-Party Ain't it.

The Full, original version by Jeffery Sachs

As I shuttle between East Africa, where a severe drought threatens the lives of more than 10 million people, and Athens, where a financial crisis threatens Greece and all of Europe, I am shocked by the U.S. budget negotiations between Congress and President Obama.

Every part of the budget debate in the U.S. is built on a tissue of willful deceit. Consider the Republican Party's double-mantra that the deficit results from "runaway spending" and that more tax cuts are the key to economic growth. Republicans claim that the budget deficit, around 10 percent of GDP, has been caused only by a rise in outlays. This is blatantly untrue. The deficit results roughly equally from a fall of tax revenues as a share of GDP and a rise of spending as a share of GDP.

On both sides of the ledger -- spending and taxes -- part of the shift results from the weak economy ("cyclical factors") and part from long-term trends. Spending, for example, is higher in part because of unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other federal spending to help the downtrodden in a weak economy. That's the "cyclical" component. Part of the higher spending reflects long-term patterns, such as rising health care costs and an aging population, as well as America's chronic addiction to wrongheaded wars and military occupations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Taxation is lower also because of short-term factors and long-term factors. The short-term factors involve reduced federal revenues in an economy with high unemployment. The long-term factors involve repeated tax cuts for companies and high-income individuals that have systematically eroded the tax base, giving unjust and unaffordable benefits for America's millionaires, billionaires, and multinational corporations.

The Republicans also misrepresent the costs and benefits of closing the deficit through higher taxes on the rich. Americans wants the rich to pay more, and for good reason. Super-rich Americans have walked away with the prize in America. Our country is run by millionaires and billionaires, and for millionaires and billionaires, the rest of the country be damned. Yet the Republicans and their propaganda mouthpieces like Rupert Murdoch's media empire, claim with sheer audacity that taxing the rich would kill economic growth. This trickle-down, voodoo, supply-side economics is the fig leaf of uncontrolled greed among the right-wing rich.

The truth is that we need more federal spending to create good jobs and remain globally competitive, not as some kind of short-term "stimulus" but as a long-term investment in education, job skills, science, technology, energy security, and modern infrastructure. I travel around the world as part of my job, and I can say without doubt that America has failed to modernize the economy and is steadily losing its international competitiveness. No wonder the good jobs are disappearing and the pay is stagnant, unless of course you are a CEO who can keep grabbing stock options and profits from the shareholders (who are anyway enjoying record incomes because of stagnant wages and high profits earned overseas).

The Democrats of the White House and much of Congress have been less crude, but no less insidious, in their duplicity. Obama's campaign promise to "change Washington" looks like pure bait and switch. There has been no change, but rather more of the same: the Wall-Street-owned Democratic Party as we have come to know it. The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It's more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.

Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class. He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits; he refused to limit in a serious way the bankers' mega-bonuses even when the bonuses were financed by taxpayer bailouts; and he even refused to stand up against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December, though 60 percent of the electorate repeatedly and consistently demanded that the Bush tax cuts at the top should be ended. It's not hard to understand why. Obama and Democratic Party politicians rely on Wall Street and the super-rich for campaign contributions the same way that the Republicans rely on oil and coal. In America today, only the rich have political power.

Obama could have cut hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that has been wasted on America's disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, but here too it's been all bait and switch. Obama is either afraid to stand up to the Pentagon or is part of the same neoconservative outlook as his predecessor. The real cause hardly matters since the outcome is the same: America is more militarily engaged under Obama than even under Bush. Amazing but true.

The stimulus legislation, pushed by Obama at the start of his term on the basis of antiquated economic theories, wasted the public's money and also did something much worse. It discredited the vital role of public spending in solving real and long-term problems. Rather than thinking ahead and planning for long-term solutions, he simply spent money on short-term schemes.

Obama's embrace of "shovel-ready" infrastructure, for example, left America with an economy based on shovels while China's long-term strategy has given that country an economy based on 21st-century Maglev trains. Now that the resort to mega-deficits has run its course, Obama is on the verge of abandoning the poor and middle class, by agreeing with the plutocrats in Congress to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and discretionary civilian spending, while protecting the military and the low tax rates on the rich (if not lowering those top tax rates further according to the secret machinations of the Gang of Six, now endorsed by the president!)

Who runs America today? The rich and the multinational corporations. Who runs the White House? David Plouffe, whose job it is to make sure that ever word, every action of the president is calculated for electoral gain rather than the country's needs. Who runs the Congress, on both sides of the aisle? The lobbyists, who win in every negotiation. And who loses? The American people, who have said repeatedly that they want a budget that sharply cuts the military, ends the wars, raises taxes on the rich, protects the poor and the middle class, and invests in America's future not just in Obama's speeches but in fact.

America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites. Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline.

Who Rules America

A decent post on the wealthy in the US. [G. William Domhoff]. I found it a bit hard to read due to the font but worth the effort. The last paragraph sums it up nicely.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.

And a related post from the Rude Pundit.
[Rude Pundit - Unshared Sacrifices]

tnb

Once Were Good

[More stuff to piss'em all off] - Al Jazeera

Arrest of ex-CIA lawyer sought over drone use - Human rights lawyers seek warrant against John Rizzo for approving drone strikes in Pakistan that killed hundreds.

I wonder how many bridges or schools we could have fixed or built for the cost of those missiles.

tnb

Piss'em All Off.

Naked Capitalism - The debt ceiling debate as viewed from Europe

I guess we won't stop until we have the whole world mad at us. Most of the people in the middle east already hate us for our support of Israel, our support of their corrupt dictators and our bombing the hell out of them on a weekly basis for the last ten years. I'd guess we're not exactly popular in the rest of the world for letting our banks trash the world economy a couple of years ago and now one of our political parties threatening to blow up the world economy again. What the hell happened to the America I grew up in, you know, the good guy? Anyway, remember, they hate us for our freedoms.

tnb

Welfare Drug Tests

From [GinAndTacos]

- Yes, Rick Scott is quite proud of his measure requiring drug testing for all welfare recipients as well as random drug testing for state employees.

He transferred his $62 million stake in Solantic, a walk-in clinic chain that contracts with employers and government agencies to provide drug screening, to his wife – in a revocable trust, so the moment he leaves office he can regain control of the company. So you see, Rick Scott does not own a drug testing facility. He merely founded a chain of fast food-style walk-in clinics and transferred his ownership share to his wife. (This kind of "share shuffle" is prohibited by federal law and in most states wherein at least the pretense of preventing cronyism and conflicts of interest is maintained. But in Florida it's A-OK. Way to go, Shitshine State.)

This move by Florida Gov. Rick Scott looks like political corruption at its finest. Own a chain of drug screening clinics, get elected governer, then pass legislation requiring all welfare recipients to get drug tests, rake in the cash.

I guess our media would be all over it if they didn't have more important stories to cover like [Palin-Revere] and [WeinerGate]

We're doomed.

tnb

Locking up your people

An Interesting chart here: America is not the best at everything

I think the most amazing number here is the prison population. The US locks up 743 people per 100,000. Second on the list is Israel at 385. Most countries are under 100. WTF.

Why do we lock up about 3 to 7 times as many people as the rest of the developed world? Is it just our stupid drug laws or something else? I don't get it

tnb

American Arrogance

A related update from Street Light Blog

------ original tnb post below

One huge problem the US faces today is an inability to admit we're not necessarily "The Best" at everything. A large percentage of Americans think that because the US is "The Greatest Country in the World" we can't learn anything from any other country or adopt any policy of any "lesser" nation.

I hear it every day, statements like "you mean you want health care like CANADA/England/France?", "cars like those European weenies drive", etc. Tea-baggers types are really bad, but the media, seniors, fundamentalists, really most Americans act like we're somehow better than everyone else on the planet.

This is American arrogance, plain and simple.

We're not going to fix our current problems or grow up as a society until we can admit that, 1. we are not "the best" at everything just because we're Americans and 2. we can learn from others in this world.

Take a look at some comparisons.

[America vs Europe 1]

[America vs Europe 2]

[America vs Europe 3]

[America vs The World 1]

tnb

Greedy Bastards

Balkinization

A great quote here.

... a "frustrated moderate Democratic senator" described the battle as emblematic of the broader tone in Washington:

I’m surprised at how much of our time is spent trying to divide up the spoils between various economic interests. I had no idea. I thought we’d be focused on civil liberties, on education policy, energy policy and so on. The fights down here can be put in two or three categories: The big greedy bastards against the big greedy bastards; the big greedy bastards against the little greedy bastards; and some cases even the other little greedy bastards against the other little greedy bastards.

This is what America has become, just a bunch of greedy bastards fighting to get or keep what we think is ours and to hell with everyone else. Screw the country, I want mine and i want it now.

tnb

Detroit in Ruins

A few pictures of the ruins. Detroit in ruins | Art and design | The Observer

Cultural Ignorance

Joe Bageant: AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

Some highlites of a great rant....

... But throw in sixty years of television's mind puddling effects, and you end up with 24 million Americans watching Bristol Palin thrashing around on Dancing with the Stars, then watch her being interviewed with all seriousness on the networks as major news. The inescapable conclusion of half of heartland America is that her mama must certainly be presidential material, even if Bristol cannot dance. It ain't a pretty picture out there in Chattanooga and Keokuk.

The other half, the liberal half, concludes that Bristol's bad dancing is part of her spawn-of-the-Devil mama's plan to take over the country, and make millions in the process, not to mention make Tina Fey and Jon Stewart richer than they already are. That's a tall order for a squirrel brained woman who recently asked a black president to "refutiate" the NAACP (though I kinda like refutiate, myself). Cultural stupidity accounts for virtually every aspect of Sarah Palin, both as a person and a political icon. Which, come to think of it, may be a pretty good reason not to "misunderstimate" her. After all, we're still talking about her in both political camps. And the woman OWNS the Huffington Post, fer Christsake. Not to mention a franchise on cultural ignorance. ...

... "I may die early eating unidentified beef byproducts soaked in waste chemicals, but I'll die owning a 65-inch HDTV and a new five speed automatic Dodge Durango with a 5.7 L Hemi V8 under the hood!" ...

... Our hyper capitalist system, through command of our research, media and political institutions, expands upon and disseminates only that information which generates money and transactions. ...

... Which brings us to back to the question of cultural ignorance. For ten points, why was Julian Assange forced to do what the world press was supposed to be doing in the first place?

... Neither populist, nor authentic movement, the Tea Party may yet prove historic, however, by seriously fucking things up more than they already are. Spun entirely from manufactured spectacle (and thus void of cohesive political philosophy or internal logic), the Tea Party lurches across the political landscape bellowing at the cameras and collecting the victims of cultural ignorance in sort of a medieval idiots crusade. But to the American public, seeing the Tea Party on television is proof enough of relevancy and significance. After all, stuff doesn't get on TV unless it's important. ...

Good Job, Joe.

What America Wants

What America Wants,.... from GinAndTacos

1. Social Security reform that guarantees my current level of benefits, alters someone else's, and cuts everyone's Social Security taxes to boot.

2. A world-class national infrastructure that can be built and maintained without tax dollars.

3. A balanced budget that doesn't sacrifice any of the government programs – especially the sacred military-industrial complex and the various old age benefits – that we like.

4. Clean air without pollution controls, clean water with a neutered and underfunded EPA, and businesses that do socially responsible things without any regulation whatsoever.

5. Consumer goods at Made in China prices that create high-paying jobs in America.

6. Giant trucks and SUVs that drive like Formula One race cars, look cool, fit into small parking spaces, cost under $18,000, and get the fuel economy of a Toyota Prius.

7. Complete freedom and complete security at the same time.

8. An America that acts like a swaggering, sociopathic asshole on the global stage yet is beloved by all the nations of the world.

9. Wars against every enemy, real or imagined, all of the time, with no U.S. casualties and no effect on the budget.

10. Incredibly rich and rewarding professional lives while supporting our employers' right to do whatever they want to us without recourse.

11. A vibrant, consumption-based U.S. economy with good jobs for anyone willing to look for one resulting from free trade policies that encourage money and capital flows to cheap labor markets.

12. A highly educated workforce produced by a school system that requires no tax dollars to achieve excellence, students who have no interest in learning, and a virulently anti-intellectual society.

13. Closed borders and an endless supply of cheap labor to keep prices low.

14. To buy whatever we want irrespective of what we can afford while maintaining the drumbeat of personal responsibility.

15. Health care that is cheap, superior, and readily available to me without the danger of the same being enjoyed by anyone I deem undeserving.

It couldn't be any clearer: we want a government that will resolve every problem we currently face with solutions that require no effort, no sacrifices, and no money. And I have no doubt that we have elected a group of people brave enough to promise exactly that.

Once Were Good.

Once upon time the US was a good-guy in this world, a model of what democracy represented. What it could do. How it could change the world for the better. After the last ten years, I'm not so sure we're projecting that image.

We've now given the world two ten-year wars against muslims, one on pretty much trumped-up charges. Millions of civilian deaths. Torture. Corruption. Our media is alive with constant threats of a third war. We given un-ending support of Israel's UN violations and theft of Palestinian lands. We've thrown in a couple of financial meltdowns costing the world trillions. We're deep in debt with a stagnant economy. Corporations and the wealthy rule the land. They've spent the last few decades exporting our technology and jobs to cheap labor markets around the world effectively gutting our economy. The wealthy own more, and the poor less, than at any time in the last 70 years. A major news network has turned into a propaganda tool unlike anything the country has seen before and has convinced many of the poor that because our president is a marxist, socialist, kenyan, muslim, they should cut taxes on the rich instead of having universal health care. Crazy fundamentalist christian right-wingers are re-writing science and history books to fit their dogma. Our government is broken, corrupt and gridlocked. Right-wing idiots are driving the political debate. Race relations are at a low point and gun sales are at an all time high.

The rest of the world must think we've gone crazy. They might be right.

tnb

Invisible Hand

Spreading the Wealth.

Harold Meyerson - When Tea Party wants to go back, where is it to?

The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they'd see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward -- radically upward. From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans -- effectively, all but the rich -- increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, ....... that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too -- from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 -- a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

Since 1980, it's been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it's been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined -- going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.

In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich -- the super-rich in particular -- have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America's wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007.

I guess the title of this post should be "Taking the Wealth".

oh,... and don't raise taxes on the rich people.....

stupid, stupid teabaggers...

tnb

Corrupt Countries

Our (the US) banking shenanigans probably have a lot to do with our fall

The U.S. fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5. This was the lowest score awarded to the U.S. in the index's 15-year history and also the first time it had fallen out of the top 20.

Israel? Corruption runs deep.

That score positions Israel in the 22nd place out of 33 members of the OECD.

Israel ranks among Western world's most corrupt countries - Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News

tnb

Collapsing Empire Watch

We're certainly doing something wrong,.... and for the tea-baggers out there,... it all didn't happen in the last two years.

Collapsing empire watch - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Collapsing Empire Watch

Great commentary on the state of the US from the always good GinAndTacos.

ginandtacos.com » Blog Archive » A FIRST-RATE THIRD-RATE COUNTRY

Pictures of Detroit

David Byrne's Journal: 09.23.10: Don't Forget the Motor City