I was listening to an interview Caroline Casey (The Visionary Activist on KPfA) was doing with this “trickster” named Mike Bonnano. He and his group, The Yes Men, had created what I had been thinking for a while was so needed in our time: a new Jonathan Swift. I don’t mean the Swift of Gulliver, but rather the Swift of “A Modest Proposal,” generally considered the finest piece of satire in the English language. Bonnano and the Yes Men did something that doesn’t duplicate Swift, but reverberates with the same brilliant outrage.
They call their piece, Vivoleum, and it was actually presented at a conference of 300 oilmen at GO-EXPO, Canada’s largest oil conference, held this year at Stampede Park in Calgary, Alberta from June 7 through June 9. Posing as the “NPC rep” delivering the conclusions of a study commissioned by US Energy Secretary Bodman, ‘Shepard Wolff’ (allegedly an ex-Exxon exec, actually Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men) announced from the stage that despite the fact that current energy policies were increasing the chances of extensive global calamities, there was a perfect way to keep energy flowing: transform the billions of people who die into oil.
“We need something like whales,” he said, “but infinitely more abundant.”
That infinite abundance would be tapped by rendering newly-dead human flesh into a new Exxon oil product called Vivoleum. ‘Wolff’ then showed a 3-D animation of the process. (see it and the whole hilarious story on http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/vivoleum).
“Vivoleum works in perfect synergy with the continual expansion of fossil fuel production,” noted “Exxon rep” ‘Florian Osenberg’ (Yes Man Mike Bonnano). “With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that means more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left.”
The “oilmen” then lit “commemorative candles” they said was made of Vivoleum obtained from the flesh of an “Exxon janitor” whose death resulted from his job cleaning up a toxic spill. The “reps” then showed a video tribute to the janitor selflessly announcing his desire to be transformed into candles after his death.
It was only at that point that Simon Mellor, Director for the company putting on the event, caught on to the hoax and forced the Yes Men from the stage. As he left, pursued by journalists, Bichlbaum, still in character as the NPC rep, said: “We’re not talking about killing anyone. We’re talking about using them after nature has done the hard work. After all, 150,000 people already die from climate-change related effects every year. That’s only going to go up—maybe way way up. Will it all go to waste? That would be cruel.”
I urge everyone to go to the Yes Men’s website. It carries descriptions of other brilliant satires, including one that actually pre-empted Chevron’s absolutely infuriating commercials, seen on PBS’s News Hour each night, in which sincere “teachers” and “engineers” urge us to “get serious” about finding renewable energy sources. Called their “We Agree” campaign, the commercials are supposed to “greenwash” the public into thinking that Chevron, one of the world’s great polluters, really cares about the environment and global warming when in fact they have been a major source of resistance to anything that would interfere with their obscene profits. What the Yes Men did was leak, just before Chevron’s campaign was launched, a press release from a spoof Chevron campaign. The Yes Men also created numerous posters mimicking the We Agree campaign, but carrying actual critiques of the company such as “Oil Companies Should End the Wars They Helped Start;” and “Oil Companies Should Kill Fewer People.” At the end of each is the mocking “WE AGREE” in red ink over the signatures of oil companyy CEOs. See the posters at http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/chevron. The posters and many others are downloadable.
Thank god for the Yes Men. We need many more tricksters like them in several other arenas, including politics. Satire and ridicule may be our last, best hope of laughing the evil profiteers and charlatans who now control our world out of existence.
Lawrence DiStasi
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Jefes of the Empire
I was listening to Amy Goodman’s interview of illegally-ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya yesterday, when Zelaya offered this stunner:
Whoa! I said, urging Goodman in my mind to ask the obvious follow-up question: ‘So who is the chief (capo di tutti capi) of the Empire?’ But she didn’t. She had asked the question that led to this answer, i.e. didn’t the coup take place under President Obama? which itself had been in response to Zelaya’s contention that it was the Bush-era ambassador, Charles Ford, who had set up the coup just before he left Honduras to join the Southern Command (one of ten U.S. commands, responsible for planning and operations in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Cuba, and for ensuring the militarization of the Panama Canal, located in Miami, FL). Ford’s parting gesture, that is, had been a profile of Zelaya that he left for Obama’s incoming ambassador, Hugo Lawrence. That profile, published by Wikileaks, had urged Amb. Lawrence to make plans to “detain” then-Pres. Zelaya because he was tied to “narco-trafficking, terrorism,” and many other nefarious things. This was consistent with Ford’s posture towards Zelaya from as soon as eight days after he, Zelaya, took office: forbidding him to join ALBA (Alianza Bolivaraiana para los Pubeblos de Nuestra America—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America—first proposed by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, to integrate the social, political and economic aspects of several countries of Latin America such as Antigua, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent, and Venezuela, many of them now run by socialist leaders); saying he couldn’t have a friendship with Hugo Chavez; and urging Zelaya to give political asylum in Honduras to the convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. So Charles Ford, employed by the Southern Command at the time of the coup against Zelaya, was the one who had set in motion.
Earlier in the interview, Zelaya had implicated several others, many of them well-known right-wing zealots and Reagan/Bush I/Bush II appointees:
Whether all this means that the “Jefe” of the American Empire is some combination of the Southern Command, Otto Reich, Roberto Carmona, Roger Noreiga, and the CIA is never made clear. But it seems that some combination of these notorious figures, most of them quite prominent during the Bush years and before, together with whatever economic interests still dominate what’s left of the U.S. empire in Latin America (United Fruit Co., Chevron & Big Oil, AT&T, and mining interests, not to mention the bankers who dominate—and sometimes bring down—the world’s finances) can be assumed to be involved.
Still, I wish Amy Goodman had asked the question. Because it’s one thing to make assumptions about a conspiracy; it’s another to have its “jefe” (or jefes) named and outed.
We need no conspiracy, however, to see that whoever is or is not the empire’s “jefe,” the agreed-upon strategies and tactics are getting always more ruthless. This is laid out in detail by Conn Hallinan’s piece, “The New Face of War,” posted on CommonDreams.org on May 28. There, Hallinan points out that with the openly-acknowledged assassination of Osama bin Laden, and the appointment of General David Petraeus as head of the CIA, the United States has in essence announced that the firewall that used to exist between intelligence gathering and military action, between suspicion and extra-judicial murder has now evaporated. If the empire decides that someone—based on shadowy evidence or no evidence at all—is considered a threat to “stability” or “order,” then the legitimate response is to simply kill that person. No trial necessary. No evidence necessary. No declaration of war necessary. If you show up on the anti-terrorist or anti-U.S. radar, you can be eliminated with further ado. In a sense, this constitutes the merger of the Rambo-type tactics we see in countless movies and TV dramas with real-world policy (apparently, many Bushies were great fans of rogue agent Jack Bauer, of the TV series, “24.”) Concern for the niceties of the law are routinely characterized as silly and counter-productive. The criminal can get away; he can “lawyer up;” he can get off on technicalities. Or simply disappear. “Justice” cannot be done. So the Rambo types dispense their own ‘rough’ justice. And though there is always a curtsy to the legal procedures that should have been followed, the satisfaction on the faces of all concerned and the relief on the faces of those who have lost their “loved ones” to the predatory criminals, provide justification enough to the viewer. Kill first and worry about the law later. That’s the mantra being chanted daily and nightly on countless shows. And it has now become the mantra of the government that increasingly infiltrates our lives and monitors our communications via the internet. All snooping is legal. And once that is legal, so are all the eliminative tactics that weapons manufacturers can dream up.
What an irony. After the failure, as Hallinan points out, of the Powell doctrine (total war power), the Rumsfeld Doctrine (lean, technical military), and the Petraeus Doctrine (counterinsurgency by establishing trust with the locals), we have now come to the Obama doctrine: targeted assassination. Nevermind capturing the “jefes” and bringing them to justice. Just kill them. It’s cheaper, more efficient, and the cause of far less complication, and, as a bonus, public approbation.
In a sense, then, perhaps Zelaya and Aristide and Chavez should count themselves among the lucky ones. If today’s policies had prevailed, all might have been simply assassinated. On the other hand, perhaps our “jefes” of Empire should start to watch their backs as well, for while the truism doesn’t always hold, with enough time it often does: what goes around comes around.
Lawrence DiStasi
addendum, June 3:
An interview Amy Goodman did today with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh adds some steam to the “jefe of the Empire” question raised by Manuel Zelaya. Hersh, in a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 10th, described a Bush administration “executive assassination wing” that reported directly to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Hersh said that the wing, over which Congress has no oversight, has been going into countries, “not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.” Hersh referred to a statement confirming the existence of the wing made by John Hannah, deputy chief of staff for Cheney, who admitted to Wolfe Blitzer on CNN, in Hersh’s description of it, that “Yes, we go after people suspected of crimes against America. And I (this is Hersh speaking) have to tell you that there’s an executive order, signed by Jerry Ford, President Ford, in the ’70s, forbidding such action. It’s not only contrary—it’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s counterproductive.” Hersh went on to say that the hit squads have gone into “at least a dozen countries” in the Middle East and Latin America, with, contrary to what John Hannah said, “no legal basis for it whatever.”
The upshot: another candidate for Jefe of Empire is none other than our old friend, Dick Cheney. In addition to his nefarious role as Vice President under George W. Bush, he has also been Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford, and U.S. House of Representatives Minority Whip prior to being chosen as Defense Secretary under Bush I. When one considers that this same George H.W. Bush was also head of the CIA in the late 70s before he became VP under Ronald Reagan, then President himself, then behind-the-scenes President under his son, (i.e. the central power broker from the 70s through the first decade of the 21st century), one can easily envision him and/or his family (his father Prescott Bush was a long-time senator from Connecticut and, along with father-in-law banker George Herbert Walker a powerful financial supporter of the Nazis—see “Nazis and Bush Family History,” online at http://www.rense.com/general17/bushhitler.htm) as, if not the “jefes” of empire, then as the center around which other “jefes” would cluster. If they would support the Nazis and import several to the U.S. after WWII to serve as American "advisers," what would such distinguished patriots NOT do?
“The United States is an empire, and so Obama is the President of the United States, but he is not the chief (jefe) of the Empire.”
Whoa! I said, urging Goodman in my mind to ask the obvious follow-up question: ‘So who is the chief (capo di tutti capi) of the Empire?’ But she didn’t. She had asked the question that led to this answer, i.e. didn’t the coup take place under President Obama? which itself had been in response to Zelaya’s contention that it was the Bush-era ambassador, Charles Ford, who had set up the coup just before he left Honduras to join the Southern Command (one of ten U.S. commands, responsible for planning and operations in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Cuba, and for ensuring the militarization of the Panama Canal, located in Miami, FL). Ford’s parting gesture, that is, had been a profile of Zelaya that he left for Obama’s incoming ambassador, Hugo Lawrence. That profile, published by Wikileaks, had urged Amb. Lawrence to make plans to “detain” then-Pres. Zelaya because he was tied to “narco-trafficking, terrorism,” and many other nefarious things. This was consistent with Ford’s posture towards Zelaya from as soon as eight days after he, Zelaya, took office: forbidding him to join ALBA (Alianza Bolivaraiana para los Pubeblos de Nuestra America—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America—first proposed by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, to integrate the social, political and economic aspects of several countries of Latin America such as Antigua, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent, and Venezuela, many of them now run by socialist leaders); saying he couldn’t have a friendship with Hugo Chavez; and urging Zelaya to give political asylum in Honduras to the convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. So Charles Ford, employed by the Southern Command at the time of the coup against Zelaya, was the one who had set in motion.
Earlier in the interview, Zelaya had implicated several others, many of them well-known right-wing zealots and Reagan/Bush I/Bush II appointees:
The conspiracy began when I started to join ALBA…Otto Reich (of Iran/Contra fame, former ambassador to Venezuela, and a board member of the notorious School of the Americas where most Latin American death squads get their training) started this, Roger Noriega (also involved in the Iran/Contra scandal, the U.S. backed coup in Venezuela in 2002, and the ouster of Pres. Aristide from Haiti in 2004), Roberto Carmona and the Arcadia Foundation created by the CIA (according to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Venezuelan lawyer Roberto-Carmona Borjas helped to draft some of the infamous anti-constitutional "Carmona decrees" after Hugo Chávez was overthrown in the April 2002 military coup. After Chávez was returned to power, Carmona Borjas fled to the United States where he found his calling as a leading anti-Chávez figure and, more recently, as a fierce critic of the Zelaya regime in Honduras. see Nikolas Kozloff, Buzzflash.org, 7/14/09). They associated themselves with the right wing and formed a conspiracy. They said I was a communist, a friend of Fidel, a friend of Chavez.
Whether all this means that the “Jefe” of the American Empire is some combination of the Southern Command, Otto Reich, Roberto Carmona, Roger Noreiga, and the CIA is never made clear. But it seems that some combination of these notorious figures, most of them quite prominent during the Bush years and before, together with whatever economic interests still dominate what’s left of the U.S. empire in Latin America (United Fruit Co., Chevron & Big Oil, AT&T, and mining interests, not to mention the bankers who dominate—and sometimes bring down—the world’s finances) can be assumed to be involved.
Still, I wish Amy Goodman had asked the question. Because it’s one thing to make assumptions about a conspiracy; it’s another to have its “jefe” (or jefes) named and outed.
We need no conspiracy, however, to see that whoever is or is not the empire’s “jefe,” the agreed-upon strategies and tactics are getting always more ruthless. This is laid out in detail by Conn Hallinan’s piece, “The New Face of War,” posted on CommonDreams.org on May 28. There, Hallinan points out that with the openly-acknowledged assassination of Osama bin Laden, and the appointment of General David Petraeus as head of the CIA, the United States has in essence announced that the firewall that used to exist between intelligence gathering and military action, between suspicion and extra-judicial murder has now evaporated. If the empire decides that someone—based on shadowy evidence or no evidence at all—is considered a threat to “stability” or “order,” then the legitimate response is to simply kill that person. No trial necessary. No evidence necessary. No declaration of war necessary. If you show up on the anti-terrorist or anti-U.S. radar, you can be eliminated with further ado. In a sense, this constitutes the merger of the Rambo-type tactics we see in countless movies and TV dramas with real-world policy (apparently, many Bushies were great fans of rogue agent Jack Bauer, of the TV series, “24.”) Concern for the niceties of the law are routinely characterized as silly and counter-productive. The criminal can get away; he can “lawyer up;” he can get off on technicalities. Or simply disappear. “Justice” cannot be done. So the Rambo types dispense their own ‘rough’ justice. And though there is always a curtsy to the legal procedures that should have been followed, the satisfaction on the faces of all concerned and the relief on the faces of those who have lost their “loved ones” to the predatory criminals, provide justification enough to the viewer. Kill first and worry about the law later. That’s the mantra being chanted daily and nightly on countless shows. And it has now become the mantra of the government that increasingly infiltrates our lives and monitors our communications via the internet. All snooping is legal. And once that is legal, so are all the eliminative tactics that weapons manufacturers can dream up.
What an irony. After the failure, as Hallinan points out, of the Powell doctrine (total war power), the Rumsfeld Doctrine (lean, technical military), and the Petraeus Doctrine (counterinsurgency by establishing trust with the locals), we have now come to the Obama doctrine: targeted assassination. Nevermind capturing the “jefes” and bringing them to justice. Just kill them. It’s cheaper, more efficient, and the cause of far less complication, and, as a bonus, public approbation.
In a sense, then, perhaps Zelaya and Aristide and Chavez should count themselves among the lucky ones. If today’s policies had prevailed, all might have been simply assassinated. On the other hand, perhaps our “jefes” of Empire should start to watch their backs as well, for while the truism doesn’t always hold, with enough time it often does: what goes around comes around.
Lawrence DiStasi
addendum, June 3:
An interview Amy Goodman did today with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh adds some steam to the “jefe of the Empire” question raised by Manuel Zelaya. Hersh, in a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 10th, described a Bush administration “executive assassination wing” that reported directly to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Hersh said that the wing, over which Congress has no oversight, has been going into countries, “not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.” Hersh referred to a statement confirming the existence of the wing made by John Hannah, deputy chief of staff for Cheney, who admitted to Wolfe Blitzer on CNN, in Hersh’s description of it, that “Yes, we go after people suspected of crimes against America. And I (this is Hersh speaking) have to tell you that there’s an executive order, signed by Jerry Ford, President Ford, in the ’70s, forbidding such action. It’s not only contrary—it’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s counterproductive.” Hersh went on to say that the hit squads have gone into “at least a dozen countries” in the Middle East and Latin America, with, contrary to what John Hannah said, “no legal basis for it whatever.”
The upshot: another candidate for Jefe of Empire is none other than our old friend, Dick Cheney. In addition to his nefarious role as Vice President under George W. Bush, he has also been Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford, and U.S. House of Representatives Minority Whip prior to being chosen as Defense Secretary under Bush I. When one considers that this same George H.W. Bush was also head of the CIA in the late 70s before he became VP under Ronald Reagan, then President himself, then behind-the-scenes President under his son, (i.e. the central power broker from the 70s through the first decade of the 21st century), one can easily envision him and/or his family (his father Prescott Bush was a long-time senator from Connecticut and, along with father-in-law banker George Herbert Walker a powerful financial supporter of the Nazis—see “Nazis and Bush Family History,” online at http://www.rense.com/general17/bushhitler.htm) as, if not the “jefes” of empire, then as the center around which other “jefes” would cluster. If they would support the Nazis and import several to the U.S. after WWII to serve as American "advisers," what would such distinguished patriots NOT do?
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Death Cheers
One of the nauseating aspects of being American is what occurs when the military or a sporting team in some form or other registers a triumph. The killing of Osama bin Laden represents this phenomenon perfectly. Though the president did not gloat when he made his late night announcement on Sunday, he left no doubt that “justice had been done,” and that the “world would be a safer place” without this monster. The clear implication, from him and from his chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, was that there had been a “fierce firefight” in the course of which the evil terrorist had been slain. Brennan also asserted that Osama had used his wives as human shields (see, he’s just a coward; actual words: “I think it really just speaks to how false his narrative has been over the years.”), a claim the administration later backed away from. Only later still did we discover the details, and they are not pretty.
First we learned that far from the evidence being made public—the body in question, or even photos of the dead leader—it was gone: the corpse had been disposed of at sea (what, Osama the sailor?) and there would be no photos either. Osama bin Laden had been shot in the eye and apparently his dead head was not suitable for primetime viewing—the children, you know. Then we were told that fiercely opposing the notoriously-efficient 25-man death squad of Navy Seals were only two (2) men besides Osama—his courier and the courier’s brother, with one or both families—and one or two women or wives, in addition to Osama’s children. So the “courage and bravery of these men who risked their lives” was not so conspicuous after all. They had not assaulted an enemy encampment bristling with murderous guards, but a domestic scene of about 7 or 8 people. Their usual night raids in Afghanistan and Iraq probably posed far more dangers for this assassination squad on a nightly basis than this, their most conspicuous mission.
Now we learn from White House press secretary Jay Carney, in response to questions from reporters, that the great emblem of global evil was NOT ARMED. He had no weapon with which to defend himself, but of course the press secretary was quick to add that a woman had attacked the brave Navy Seals, who shot her in the leg. Then Osama’s wife apparently threatened them, or made threatening gestures, and they then shot Osama bin Laden in the head—through the eye. Others, like Brennan, have said bin Laden resisted, though how is not clear. No matter: Navy Seals armed to the teeth and coated in body armor apparently feared for their lives and quite reasonably had to shoot him. (We will no doubt hear the inside story from one of them, after the narrative has been duly ghost-written to best display their heroism).
None of this makes sense, except in this way. Though the Attorney General (Tuesday News Hour) insisted that the instructions were to take bin Laden into custody, or if necessary, to kill him, the clear implication of all we’ve learned so far indicates that the kill order was primary. These guys were sent to kill Osama bin Laden, and there was little or no chance that he would be brought back to the United States alive to stand trial. And so, what the President crowed was “justice” and what pundits in every forum have continued to proclaim as “justice” was really a targeted assassination. The evil bin Laden received justice by assassination, American justice in this case consisting of a bullet in the head, and a dump in the ocean.
I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t strike me as justice to cheer about. What it reminds us of is the kind of “justice” the Israelis have perfected: targeted assassination. They decide that some Palestinian is a “terrorist” who deserves to die, and then send in a team or a rocket to act as judge, jury, and executioner, collateral damage be damned. We seem to have learned well from them; for justice in the bin Laden case was streamlined to the killing of someone you prefer not to bring to trial for fear that a courtroom is far less efficient and far more uncertain. And when we reflect that even Saddam Hussein, that prior emblem of evil (isn’t is marvelous how the mantle of ultimate evil can be shifted from one postered head to another, and back, without so much as a by your leave?), was captured and brought to trial, we have to wonder why Osama was not shot in the leg or the arm or simply overpowered (he had no weapon!) rather than being shot in the eye (one wonders about the caliber of the weapon that shot that eye, but with the rapid-fire cannons these guys carry, the resulting wound was no doubt ample).
The logical answer is that, like many other American operations designed to rally us round the flag, this was a revenge killing. Americans, as after Pearl Harbor when revenge took the form of nuclear destruction, have been thirsting for revenge, but were diverted to Saddam and Iraq right after 9/11. What remained, though, after flattening both, was that emotional need to “get” the bastard who allegedly masterminded 9/11. When the opportunity presented itself, the current president, like all politicians with an eye to poll numbers, took the cue from his Israeli partners: assassinate the bastard. The rubes will cheer and shout “USA USA,” which indeed they did. And the pundits will pontificate about “justice” being done, and the people will be satisfied with being, once again, NUMBER ONE. As if killing people in cold blood is equivalent to some Olympic sport. All that’s lacking is a tradition that used to prevail among tribal societies, where you not only dance over the killing of your enemy, but eat his significant organs. Perhaps soon, that great atavism will return among us as well. Meantime we can content ourselves with a “courageous” brain explosion via a bullet to the eye (is there symbolism here? i.e., that evil eye can no longer fix us in its sights?), and the feeding of the corpse to our ravenous surrogates, the fishes.
Lawrence DiStasi
First we learned that far from the evidence being made public—the body in question, or even photos of the dead leader—it was gone: the corpse had been disposed of at sea (what, Osama the sailor?) and there would be no photos either. Osama bin Laden had been shot in the eye and apparently his dead head was not suitable for primetime viewing—the children, you know. Then we were told that fiercely opposing the notoriously-efficient 25-man death squad of Navy Seals were only two (2) men besides Osama—his courier and the courier’s brother, with one or both families—and one or two women or wives, in addition to Osama’s children. So the “courage and bravery of these men who risked their lives” was not so conspicuous after all. They had not assaulted an enemy encampment bristling with murderous guards, but a domestic scene of about 7 or 8 people. Their usual night raids in Afghanistan and Iraq probably posed far more dangers for this assassination squad on a nightly basis than this, their most conspicuous mission.
Now we learn from White House press secretary Jay Carney, in response to questions from reporters, that the great emblem of global evil was NOT ARMED. He had no weapon with which to defend himself, but of course the press secretary was quick to add that a woman had attacked the brave Navy Seals, who shot her in the leg. Then Osama’s wife apparently threatened them, or made threatening gestures, and they then shot Osama bin Laden in the head—through the eye. Others, like Brennan, have said bin Laden resisted, though how is not clear. No matter: Navy Seals armed to the teeth and coated in body armor apparently feared for their lives and quite reasonably had to shoot him. (We will no doubt hear the inside story from one of them, after the narrative has been duly ghost-written to best display their heroism).
None of this makes sense, except in this way. Though the Attorney General (Tuesday News Hour) insisted that the instructions were to take bin Laden into custody, or if necessary, to kill him, the clear implication of all we’ve learned so far indicates that the kill order was primary. These guys were sent to kill Osama bin Laden, and there was little or no chance that he would be brought back to the United States alive to stand trial. And so, what the President crowed was “justice” and what pundits in every forum have continued to proclaim as “justice” was really a targeted assassination. The evil bin Laden received justice by assassination, American justice in this case consisting of a bullet in the head, and a dump in the ocean.
I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t strike me as justice to cheer about. What it reminds us of is the kind of “justice” the Israelis have perfected: targeted assassination. They decide that some Palestinian is a “terrorist” who deserves to die, and then send in a team or a rocket to act as judge, jury, and executioner, collateral damage be damned. We seem to have learned well from them; for justice in the bin Laden case was streamlined to the killing of someone you prefer not to bring to trial for fear that a courtroom is far less efficient and far more uncertain. And when we reflect that even Saddam Hussein, that prior emblem of evil (isn’t is marvelous how the mantle of ultimate evil can be shifted from one postered head to another, and back, without so much as a by your leave?), was captured and brought to trial, we have to wonder why Osama was not shot in the leg or the arm or simply overpowered (he had no weapon!) rather than being shot in the eye (one wonders about the caliber of the weapon that shot that eye, but with the rapid-fire cannons these guys carry, the resulting wound was no doubt ample).
The logical answer is that, like many other American operations designed to rally us round the flag, this was a revenge killing. Americans, as after Pearl Harbor when revenge took the form of nuclear destruction, have been thirsting for revenge, but were diverted to Saddam and Iraq right after 9/11. What remained, though, after flattening both, was that emotional need to “get” the bastard who allegedly masterminded 9/11. When the opportunity presented itself, the current president, like all politicians with an eye to poll numbers, took the cue from his Israeli partners: assassinate the bastard. The rubes will cheer and shout “USA USA,” which indeed they did. And the pundits will pontificate about “justice” being done, and the people will be satisfied with being, once again, NUMBER ONE. As if killing people in cold blood is equivalent to some Olympic sport. All that’s lacking is a tradition that used to prevail among tribal societies, where you not only dance over the killing of your enemy, but eat his significant organs. Perhaps soon, that great atavism will return among us as well. Meantime we can content ourselves with a “courageous” brain explosion via a bullet to the eye (is there symbolism here? i.e., that evil eye can no longer fix us in its sights?), and the feeding of the corpse to our ravenous surrogates, the fishes.
Lawrence DiStasi
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The End of Empire
Various observers, including myself, have been speculating for years on the resemblance of America in the 21st century to the Rome described by Gibbon in The Fall of the Roman Empire. Especially after George W. led the country into a useless and illegal war in Iraq, all of it on America’s already overdrawn credit card, and the madness emanating from the fundamentalist revival of recent years, the comparison has become all but inevitable, if always couched in the future tense. Now, however, the IMF has dropped what Brett Arends has called a “bombshell.” Its latest economic forecast of economic activity has predicted that “China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016—just five years from now” (Brett Arends, “IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End,” Yahoo Finance, April 26, 2011, online). That’s five (5) years from now, folks. The figures are based on something called “purchasing power parities,” a figure Arends calls the true figure for comparison because it “compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.” As Arends explains the figures, by 2016, China’s economy is predicted to expand from $11.2 trillion this year to “$19 trillion in 2016.” The U.S economy will also rise, but at a slower rate: from “$15.2 trillion this year to $18.8 trillion” in 2016. America’s share of world output would thus shrink to 17.7% while China’s will rise to 18% and beyond. For a comparison, Arends startles us with this: 10 years ago the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Now there are lots of ramifications to this prediction, but one cited by Arends has great relevance to our current mess. He quotes Ralph Gomory, a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School, comparing China’s “state-guided capitalism,” with our “free” one:
I think that tells us a lot of what we need to know. Apparently, Chinese businessmen are not allowed to sell their own country down the river; quite the opposite, in fact. Chinese policy has emphasized “national expansion and power,” while the U.S. has allowed its corporate giants and speculating Wall Steeters to outsource the world’s premier production enterprise along with the American jobs that once went with it—enriching themselves, of course, via lower costs, but bankrupting the nation.
Again, the ramifications for what Arends calls a “paradigm shift” are massive, not just regarding who becomes the world’s military hegemon (we can hardly afford the wars we’re already stuck in, not to mention the 700 or so military bases we maintain), but especially with respect to the value of the dollar, because when it is replaced as the world’s reserve currency, no one can predict what will happen. It’s a fair bet, though, that it won’t be good—which is probably why gold has been shooting up in value recently.
For the average American, though, this is going to be strange. Most of us have had the “good” fortune to grow up in an America that essentially ruled the world. Its way of life and opportunities for average people were said to be the standard by which the world measured such things. Indeed, it was only a short time ago that the Bushies were prating on about our responsibilities, military and didactic, as the “only remaining Superpower.” To suddenly be living in a nation which has lost its mojo (the U.S. credit rating has already been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s) and has to ask or petition rather than command is going to feel like a brave new world, indeed. Oh there will still be cheerleaders and politicians who will insist it ain’t so, or who will blame it on the poor. But the odor of change is already blowin’ in the wind and it won’t be the kind Bob Dylan was singing about.
Lawrence DiStasi
Now there are lots of ramifications to this prediction, but one cited by Arends has great relevance to our current mess. He quotes Ralph Gomory, a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School, comparing China’s “state-guided capitalism,” with our “free” one:
What we have seen, he [Gomory] said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That's very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.” (Emphasis mine.)
I think that tells us a lot of what we need to know. Apparently, Chinese businessmen are not allowed to sell their own country down the river; quite the opposite, in fact. Chinese policy has emphasized “national expansion and power,” while the U.S. has allowed its corporate giants and speculating Wall Steeters to outsource the world’s premier production enterprise along with the American jobs that once went with it—enriching themselves, of course, via lower costs, but bankrupting the nation.
Again, the ramifications for what Arends calls a “paradigm shift” are massive, not just regarding who becomes the world’s military hegemon (we can hardly afford the wars we’re already stuck in, not to mention the 700 or so military bases we maintain), but especially with respect to the value of the dollar, because when it is replaced as the world’s reserve currency, no one can predict what will happen. It’s a fair bet, though, that it won’t be good—which is probably why gold has been shooting up in value recently.
For the average American, though, this is going to be strange. Most of us have had the “good” fortune to grow up in an America that essentially ruled the world. Its way of life and opportunities for average people were said to be the standard by which the world measured such things. Indeed, it was only a short time ago that the Bushies were prating on about our responsibilities, military and didactic, as the “only remaining Superpower.” To suddenly be living in a nation which has lost its mojo (the U.S. credit rating has already been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s) and has to ask or petition rather than command is going to feel like a brave new world, indeed. Oh there will still be cheerleaders and politicians who will insist it ain’t so, or who will blame it on the poor. But the odor of change is already blowin’ in the wind and it won’t be the kind Bob Dylan was singing about.
Lawrence DiStasi
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Conservative Morality
We have seen in grim detail recently just what the Republican program for “solving” our deficit problem is going to entail when Representative Paul Ryan (now Chair of the House Budget Committee) presented his plan for cutting nearly $6 trillion from the deficit. It involved big cuts in spending for social programs—especially Medicare and Medicaid—and NO raising of taxes, especially on the rich. The bitter pill prescribed by the Republicans, in brief, puts the onus of sacrifice on the poorest, most helpless of our citizens in order that the wealthiest, most powerful can avoid sacrifice altogether and continue to thrive beyond all imagining. The House passed this plan April 15 on a strictly party-line vote, nearly all Republicans voting for it, and all Democrats opposing it.
What we have come to in this country, then, is a situation where a major party makes little attempt to hide its callousness toward the poor and weak and its devotion to the strong and rich. Oh, Republicans prate on about the “great crisis” of growing deficits, but their emphasis is on the unsustainability of the “social handouts” instituted by Democrats: Social Security, Medicare, and other attempts to mitigate the suffering of the least among us.
What I keep wondering is what kind of people could adopt programs and policies of this kind. Who could be so heartless as to essentially thumb their noses at the vast majority of human beings on this planet (see also Republican-led House vote April 7 to kill EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases and the science they’re based on)? A recent book by Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape) may offer a few answers. It is not that Harris’ book proposes any kind of socially conscious program. It is that in reviewing neuroscientific and psychological research on the possible cognitive bases for morality, Harris cites studies that are quite revealing indeed about such subjects as psychopathology, religion, belief, and the human capacity for empathy.
Begin with a series of studies by the psychologist Paul Slovic, especially concerning our capacity to reason morally about suffering. What Slovic has found is that humans seem to have an innate mechanism that predisposes most of us to show concern when a single, identifiable human life is threatened, but to decrease our concern almost to indifference when more lives are involved. In other words, there is a “psychic numbing” that sets in as the number of victims of any kind of disaster rises. Instead of being MORE concerned the more people are affected by an earthquake, say, our concern grows progressively less as the death toll rises. This is revealed in donations: people give generously when they are shown a single child suffering; but with two children, the donations drop, while, as more children are shown suffering, the donations (and compassion) grow progressively less. There’s even a name for this: the “identifiable victim effect.” What I wonder is if Republicans/conservatives operate in a more exaggerated way than others in this regard. They pride themselves on being very compassionate to their own. But when it’s thousands or millions of inner city kids who are starving, or millions of homeless who have fallen on hard times, or many millions of seniors who depend on the pittance they derive from social security or medicare, Republican compassion disappears. Let them eat cake.
Such focus on the concern (or lack of it) for the suffering of others brings to the fore another area of research, the study of psychopathology. Psychopaths (and we seem to have had some great examples in high office recently) are characterized by able intelligence and even “sanity” (they understand the difference between right and wrong), but a kind of deficit in their ability to feel compassion for the pain or suffering of others. Many violent criminals are categorized as psychopaths: they simply seem unable to feel anything for their victims. Neuroimaging work now suggests that psychopathy is
Researchers speculate that since psychopaths respond excessively to anticipated rewards (I’m gonna get rich!), their ability to learn from the negative emotions of others is correspondingly reduced or blocked. In fact, in tests asking psychopaths to identify the mental states of other people from photographs, psychopaths do as well as others except in one area: they seem “unable to recognize expressions of fear and sadness in others.” This failure in emotional learning (a human trait crucial to socialization that is shared even by our primate relatives) seems to be one key to psychopathy: neuroscientists believe that impairments in the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex are associated with the emotional failure. Thus blind to the suffering he causes, the psychopath keeps reinforcing his callousness and cruelty, and simply never learns to care about others. While no one would say that all Republicans or conservatives are psychopaths, surely we can see that their apparent failure in empathy (or perhaps their reduced “circle of empathy”—i.e. limited to only those with whom they have close relations) resembles in alarming ways the indifference to human suffering exhibited by the psychopathic personality.
Finally, we see that Republicans/conservatives often tend to be those who demand open, public fealty to religious belief, more specifically, belief in the literal Christian dictates of the Bible (“57% of Americans think one must believe in God to have good values and to be moral, and 69% want a president guided by strong religious belief”). Their demands to end abortion (Rick Santorum recently made a speech in which he attributed the allegedly failing Social Security system to a high abortion rate—so many children not born means too few contributing to Social Security income!), and to make religion more prominent in public forums, schools, and social legislation, are but a few examples of this mania. Harris is very hard on the effects this has for American public life and for morality in general. For if, as Harris maintains, morality can be understood as fostering the well-being of the highest number in any population (rather than with how many profess belief in God), the United States falls far short of other developed nations. Though the U.S. scores extremely high on the religiosity scale, it scores far lower than many allegedly atheistic nations on the well-being/equality scale. As Harris writes, “In addition to being the most religious of developed nations, the United States also has the greatest economic inequality.” By contrast, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, among the most atheistic societies on the planet, all do better on measures of well-being like life expectancy, infant mortality, crime, literacy, GDP, child welfare, education, political stability, charity to poorer nations, and so on. As the capper to this critique, Harris cites a 2010 study (Hall, Matz, and Wood, “Why don’t we practice what we preach?” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1) indicating that American religious commitment is “highly correlated with racism” (146). If this isn’t strong enough, Harris also cites a recent Baltimore court case in which a small Christian group (One Mind Ministries) was accused of murdering an 18-month-old infant, Javon Thompson. His sin: he stopped saying “Amen” before breakfast, an act considered rebellious by the group’s leader, Queen Antoinette. His punishment: being deprived of all food and water for days. The mother agreed to help the prosecution indict the others on condition that all charges against them would be dropped if her dead child was resurrected. Though the group carried the corpse with them for some time, the resurrection has yet to take place. (Dan Morse, “Plea deal includes resurrection clause,” Washington Post, March 31, 2009.)
Harris does not contend that religious training and/or belief trains people in murder or racism. He does suggest that ignorance and such beliefs go hand in hand, as indicated by these statistics: “42% of Americans believe that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of the world” (149). This is tantamount to saying that evolution, as confirmed by virtually all scientists, simply does not exist. Another 78% believe that the Bible is actually the word of God, while 79% of Christians believe that Jesus will “physically return to the earth.” The point is clear: If so many Americans believe in such “truths,” how can anyone expect them to be able to discern truth from falsehood, or right from wrong in any arena whatever? How can they be expected to understand or exhibit compassion towards all the “unbelievers” out there—including the billions who will be most affected by global warming? How can anyone expect them to care in the least for those homeless “sinners” on our streets who have “failed” to provide for themselves?
When I contemplate the fact that much of this nation has fallen into the hands of such fanatics and incipient psychopaths, I have to tell you, it is very hard not to despair.
Lawrence DiStasi
What we have come to in this country, then, is a situation where a major party makes little attempt to hide its callousness toward the poor and weak and its devotion to the strong and rich. Oh, Republicans prate on about the “great crisis” of growing deficits, but their emphasis is on the unsustainability of the “social handouts” instituted by Democrats: Social Security, Medicare, and other attempts to mitigate the suffering of the least among us.
What I keep wondering is what kind of people could adopt programs and policies of this kind. Who could be so heartless as to essentially thumb their noses at the vast majority of human beings on this planet (see also Republican-led House vote April 7 to kill EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases and the science they’re based on)? A recent book by Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape) may offer a few answers. It is not that Harris’ book proposes any kind of socially conscious program. It is that in reviewing neuroscientific and psychological research on the possible cognitive bases for morality, Harris cites studies that are quite revealing indeed about such subjects as psychopathology, religion, belief, and the human capacity for empathy.
Begin with a series of studies by the psychologist Paul Slovic, especially concerning our capacity to reason morally about suffering. What Slovic has found is that humans seem to have an innate mechanism that predisposes most of us to show concern when a single, identifiable human life is threatened, but to decrease our concern almost to indifference when more lives are involved. In other words, there is a “psychic numbing” that sets in as the number of victims of any kind of disaster rises. Instead of being MORE concerned the more people are affected by an earthquake, say, our concern grows progressively less as the death toll rises. This is revealed in donations: people give generously when they are shown a single child suffering; but with two children, the donations drop, while, as more children are shown suffering, the donations (and compassion) grow progressively less. There’s even a name for this: the “identifiable victim effect.” What I wonder is if Republicans/conservatives operate in a more exaggerated way than others in this regard. They pride themselves on being very compassionate to their own. But when it’s thousands or millions of inner city kids who are starving, or millions of homeless who have fallen on hard times, or many millions of seniors who depend on the pittance they derive from social security or medicare, Republican compassion disappears. Let them eat cake.
Such focus on the concern (or lack of it) for the suffering of others brings to the fore another area of research, the study of psychopathology. Psychopaths (and we seem to have had some great examples in high office recently) are characterized by able intelligence and even “sanity” (they understand the difference between right and wrong), but a kind of deficit in their ability to feel compassion for the pain or suffering of others. Many violent criminals are categorized as psychopaths: they simply seem unable to feel anything for their victims. Neuroimaging work now suggests that psychopathy is
…a product of pathological arousal and reward. People scoring high on the psychopathic personality inventory show abnormally high activity in the reward regions of their brain (in particular, the nucleus accumbens) in response to amphetamine and while anticipating monetary gains. (p. 98)
Researchers speculate that since psychopaths respond excessively to anticipated rewards (I’m gonna get rich!), their ability to learn from the negative emotions of others is correspondingly reduced or blocked. In fact, in tests asking psychopaths to identify the mental states of other people from photographs, psychopaths do as well as others except in one area: they seem “unable to recognize expressions of fear and sadness in others.” This failure in emotional learning (a human trait crucial to socialization that is shared even by our primate relatives) seems to be one key to psychopathy: neuroscientists believe that impairments in the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex are associated with the emotional failure. Thus blind to the suffering he causes, the psychopath keeps reinforcing his callousness and cruelty, and simply never learns to care about others. While no one would say that all Republicans or conservatives are psychopaths, surely we can see that their apparent failure in empathy (or perhaps their reduced “circle of empathy”—i.e. limited to only those with whom they have close relations) resembles in alarming ways the indifference to human suffering exhibited by the psychopathic personality.
Finally, we see that Republicans/conservatives often tend to be those who demand open, public fealty to religious belief, more specifically, belief in the literal Christian dictates of the Bible (“57% of Americans think one must believe in God to have good values and to be moral, and 69% want a president guided by strong religious belief”). Their demands to end abortion (Rick Santorum recently made a speech in which he attributed the allegedly failing Social Security system to a high abortion rate—so many children not born means too few contributing to Social Security income!), and to make religion more prominent in public forums, schools, and social legislation, are but a few examples of this mania. Harris is very hard on the effects this has for American public life and for morality in general. For if, as Harris maintains, morality can be understood as fostering the well-being of the highest number in any population (rather than with how many profess belief in God), the United States falls far short of other developed nations. Though the U.S. scores extremely high on the religiosity scale, it scores far lower than many allegedly atheistic nations on the well-being/equality scale. As Harris writes, “In addition to being the most religious of developed nations, the United States also has the greatest economic inequality.” By contrast, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, among the most atheistic societies on the planet, all do better on measures of well-being like life expectancy, infant mortality, crime, literacy, GDP, child welfare, education, political stability, charity to poorer nations, and so on. As the capper to this critique, Harris cites a 2010 study (Hall, Matz, and Wood, “Why don’t we practice what we preach?” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1) indicating that American religious commitment is “highly correlated with racism” (146). If this isn’t strong enough, Harris also cites a recent Baltimore court case in which a small Christian group (One Mind Ministries) was accused of murdering an 18-month-old infant, Javon Thompson. His sin: he stopped saying “Amen” before breakfast, an act considered rebellious by the group’s leader, Queen Antoinette. His punishment: being deprived of all food and water for days. The mother agreed to help the prosecution indict the others on condition that all charges against them would be dropped if her dead child was resurrected. Though the group carried the corpse with them for some time, the resurrection has yet to take place. (Dan Morse, “Plea deal includes resurrection clause,” Washington Post, March 31, 2009.)
Harris does not contend that religious training and/or belief trains people in murder or racism. He does suggest that ignorance and such beliefs go hand in hand, as indicated by these statistics: “42% of Americans believe that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of the world” (149). This is tantamount to saying that evolution, as confirmed by virtually all scientists, simply does not exist. Another 78% believe that the Bible is actually the word of God, while 79% of Christians believe that Jesus will “physically return to the earth.” The point is clear: If so many Americans believe in such “truths,” how can anyone expect them to be able to discern truth from falsehood, or right from wrong in any arena whatever? How can they be expected to understand or exhibit compassion towards all the “unbelievers” out there—including the billions who will be most affected by global warming? How can anyone expect them to care in the least for those homeless “sinners” on our streets who have “failed” to provide for themselves?
When I contemplate the fact that much of this nation has fallen into the hands of such fanatics and incipient psychopaths, I have to tell you, it is very hard not to despair.
Lawrence DiStasi
Friday, March 25, 2011
G.E.: No Tax Special
If I hadn’t just read it, I’d never believe it. G.E.—you remember, the company Ronald Reagan used to shill for; the company that built many of the nuclear reactors now under suspicion; the company whose CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, was recently appointed by President Obama to be his liaison to the business community, as well as to head up the President’s “Committee on Jobs and Competitiveness” (slated to discuss corporate tax policy, the Pres. says, so as to LOWER the corporate tax rate)—last year “reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion,” $5.1 billion of which came from its U.S. operations. And its American tax bill? ZERO. No tax paid. “In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion,” writes David Kocieniewski in the 3/25/11 New York Times.
How can this be? you might ask. The government is crying about its indebtedness. Republicans and even Democrats are calling for austerity—i.e. cutting spending, i.e. cutting the benefits to the neediest members of our society, with plans to cut even more. And one of the richest corporations in America is paying NO TAX? Could it be that America doesn’t have a spending problem, that it has an INCOME problem because the richest individuals and corporations are paying less and less each year??? Do you think? Listen to what Kocieniewski writes, after recounting how G.E. spends a fortune in lobbying ($200 million over the last decade), and on a G.E. tax department headed by former IRS employees and lawyers numbering no less than 975 individuals! who do nothing but work on how to take advantage of tax breaks so that G.E. pays NO taxes:
Did you get that? Corporations—the alleged lifeblood of our economy, the ones who were just given permission, as PERSONS, to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns—not long ago paid nearly a third of the U.S. tax burden, but now pay less than a tenth and may soon pay less than a twentieth.
Ah but, they keep saying, we need to be competitive. What’s good for us is good for America and American workers. Oh really? Here’s the truth:
And what does earning all that money overseas do for G.E.? Well several things. This is because the other big change in G.E.’s business has been a shift from producing goods (like lightbulbs and all the “good things G.E. brings to life”) to providing financing for its products. “GE Capital” is the name of this finance division and more than half of G.E.’s profit recently has come from financing. Then the company managed to muscle changes in the tax laws that allow multinationals “to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income.” This is known as “active financing.” It means that “if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.” G.E. has been diligent in doing this, that is, booking a huge percentage of its profits in low-tax countries like Ireland and Singapore and keeping them there, a practice that, according to one tax economist, has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” In the past year, in fact, to ZERO. No, less than zero, because it got a tax benefit of $3.2 billion!
So, in effect, G.E. has said to the United States and its people: “fuck you.” It manufactures more and more of its goods abroad, thus destroying American jobs, makes and keeps its profits abroad, and then gets tax benefits for all this that are applied to the little tax obligation (from goods still manufactured in the U.S.) it hasn’t found a loophole to worm its way out of. G.E. explains this by saying it has an obligation to its shareholders to “legally minimize its costs.” Some would call it more like “corporate welfare” (I would call it corporate thievery.) And what I’m wondering is, How is it that Americans who can barely buy food are pilloried as “welfare queens,” and made to work for their benefits, while these big time welfare queens get lionized, deferred to in every way, and even appointed to the President’s inner circle of advisers?
It’s called corruption, folks, and because of it the United States is looking more and more like one of those banana republics we used to laugh at in the old days. No more. If there’s a question left, it can only be: how long can such wanton pillaging of a nation go on? The answer is simple: as long as we the people let it.
Lawrence DiStasi
How can this be? you might ask. The government is crying about its indebtedness. Republicans and even Democrats are calling for austerity—i.e. cutting spending, i.e. cutting the benefits to the neediest members of our society, with plans to cut even more. And one of the richest corporations in America is paying NO TAX? Could it be that America doesn’t have a spending problem, that it has an INCOME problem because the richest individuals and corporations are paying less and less each year??? Do you think? Listen to what Kocieniewski writes, after recounting how G.E. spends a fortune in lobbying ($200 million over the last decade), and on a G.E. tax department headed by former IRS employees and lawyers numbering no less than 975 individuals! who do nothing but work on how to take advantage of tax breaks so that G.E. pays NO taxes:
Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.
Did you get that? Corporations—the alleged lifeblood of our economy, the ones who were just given permission, as PERSONS, to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns—not long ago paid nearly a third of the U.S. tax burden, but now pay less than a tenth and may soon pay less than a twentieth.
Ah but, they keep saying, we need to be competitive. What’s good for us is good for America and American workers. Oh really? Here’s the truth:
Since 2003, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States, while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.
And what does earning all that money overseas do for G.E.? Well several things. This is because the other big change in G.E.’s business has been a shift from producing goods (like lightbulbs and all the “good things G.E. brings to life”) to providing financing for its products. “GE Capital” is the name of this finance division and more than half of G.E.’s profit recently has come from financing. Then the company managed to muscle changes in the tax laws that allow multinationals “to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income.” This is known as “active financing.” It means that “if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.” G.E. has been diligent in doing this, that is, booking a huge percentage of its profits in low-tax countries like Ireland and Singapore and keeping them there, a practice that, according to one tax economist, has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” In the past year, in fact, to ZERO. No, less than zero, because it got a tax benefit of $3.2 billion!
So, in effect, G.E. has said to the United States and its people: “fuck you.” It manufactures more and more of its goods abroad, thus destroying American jobs, makes and keeps its profits abroad, and then gets tax benefits for all this that are applied to the little tax obligation (from goods still manufactured in the U.S.) it hasn’t found a loophole to worm its way out of. G.E. explains this by saying it has an obligation to its shareholders to “legally minimize its costs.” Some would call it more like “corporate welfare” (I would call it corporate thievery.) And what I’m wondering is, How is it that Americans who can barely buy food are pilloried as “welfare queens,” and made to work for their benefits, while these big time welfare queens get lionized, deferred to in every way, and even appointed to the President’s inner circle of advisers?
It’s called corruption, folks, and because of it the United States is looking more and more like one of those banana republics we used to laugh at in the old days. No more. If there’s a question left, it can only be: how long can such wanton pillaging of a nation go on? The answer is simple: as long as we the people let it.
Lawrence DiStasi
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Billionaires Behind the Hate
That would be the brothers Koch (pron. Kock?), Charles and David. The bros have come into prominence since the rise of the Tea Party, which they direct and supply most of the money for. Staunch Libertarians, which party they also pretty much underwrite, their aim has long been to tear the government “out at the root.” As Jane Mayer in her brilliant article about these dogs in a recent New Yorker article (“Covert Operations,” Aug. 30, 2010) notes, the Libertarian Party platform in 1980, with David Koch on the ticket, advocated abolishing the SEC and the Department of Energy, as well as Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control and all income taxes (especially corporate income taxes). What’s alarming is not only the scope of this “anarcho-totalitarianism” (William Buckley’s term), but the fact that so much of it is beginning to come true. And Koch brothers’ money is part of the reason. That’s because they have oodles of it (ca $35 billion), originally coming from the oil-refining business started by their father, Fred Koch (he joined the John Birch Society in the 50s as one of the loonies who called Pres. Eisenhower a communist). It’s laughable, really. These guys give off the aura of that quintessential American culture hero, the self-made man. But what Mayer points out is that they didn’t exactly start on the level playing field they’re so fond of advocating. No. David Koch was left, upon his father’s death, the neat little sum of $300 million dollars! His other brothers no doubt inherited similar sums. Then David and his brother Charles (the CEO of Koch Industries) bought out their younger brother, and now own the family business lock, stock and barrel. That means no nosy stockholders. They are now nearly as rich as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and a whole lot of that money goes to their political foundations. Between 1998 and 2008, according to Mayer, these are the donation figures—Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation: $48 million; Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation (controlled by Charlie): $28 million; David H. Koch Charitable Foundation: $120 million; plus $50 million in lobbying, and $8 million to political campaigns through KochPAC (more than 80% to Republicans). In 2010, Koch Industries led all other energy companies (including Exxon) in contributions to political campaigns. And just in case that weren’t enough clout, it was Koch money that in 1977 launched the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank (they have been prominent in attacking Global warming), and a bit later gave millions to another think tank, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University—“ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”
The activities of these “think” tanks would be laughable if they weren’t so perversely effective. Mayer cites a court case in 1997 when the EPA tried to reduce surface ozone pollution, much of it coming from oil refineries (the original Koch business, which has been sued constantly for polluting everything from air to ground water). One Susan Dudley, of the Mercatus Center, argued that the EPA had neglected to consider that “smog-free skies would result in more cases of skin cancer.” The Circuit Court actually believed this crap about smog being good, and ruled that, indeed, the EPA had “explicitly disregarded” the “possible health benefits of ozone.” The fact that the judges in the majority had attended “legal junkets” arranged by another group of Koch foundations, allegedly did not affect the ruling.
You get the picture. Big money buys big results, and the Koch brothers have big money they are quite willing and eager to spend. Another of their spin-off groups (this one designed to inspire and direct the grass roots activism the Tea Party is famous for) is named Americans for Prosperity (all of these names are a lesson in Orwellian language.) Minutely managed by the Kochs, Americans for Prosperity has been a key player in attacking the Obama presidency. That great conservative strategist, Grover Norquist, admitted to Mayer that the rowdy rallies by activists in the summer of 2010 were key to “undermining Obama’s agenda.” The people in the streets gave Republican lawmakers the cover they needed to refuse any cooperation with Obama, and changed the thinking of corporate donors. Prior to the demonstrations, even the Chamber of Commerce had been willing to work with the president; after the loonies took to the streets and “terrorized” Congress, this attitude changed.
There is much more to find out about these latter-day bagmen (their bought-out brother recently called their operation an “organized crime” operation because of their history of stealing oil from under Native American reservations—see Reader Supported News, March 20, 2011: “Koch and Native-American Reservation Oil Theft”), and I would recommend Mayer’s article as indispensable. It’s not just that David Koch is the guy who financed Governor Scott Walker’s election, and no doubt had a say in his recent anti-union legislation in Wisconsin; the Kochs also have bought numerous companies to supplement and diversify their oil-refining business, so the stink of their corruption is everywhere. Here’s a partial list of mostly paper products that they now control, sent to me by Eleanor Walden:
Paper products from Georgia-Pacific, including: Angel Soft toilet paper; Brawny paper towels; Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups; Mardi Gras napkins and towels; Quilted Northern toilet paper; Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper; Sparkle napkins; Vanity fair napkins; and Zee napkins. There’s a national campaign to boycott all of these products. I would urge everyone to do so, because if there’s one place these guys can be hurt, it’s in their deep, dirty pockets.
(Related addendum: a March 14 article in Yahoo news noted that U.S. millionaires in a survey complained that even $7 million was not quite enough to feel rich. The poor guys compare themselves to their fellow princelings, and also worry a lot about outliving their meager assets. Doesn’t your heart just bleed for them?)
Lawrence DiStasi
The activities of these “think” tanks would be laughable if they weren’t so perversely effective. Mayer cites a court case in 1997 when the EPA tried to reduce surface ozone pollution, much of it coming from oil refineries (the original Koch business, which has been sued constantly for polluting everything from air to ground water). One Susan Dudley, of the Mercatus Center, argued that the EPA had neglected to consider that “smog-free skies would result in more cases of skin cancer.” The Circuit Court actually believed this crap about smog being good, and ruled that, indeed, the EPA had “explicitly disregarded” the “possible health benefits of ozone.” The fact that the judges in the majority had attended “legal junkets” arranged by another group of Koch foundations, allegedly did not affect the ruling.
You get the picture. Big money buys big results, and the Koch brothers have big money they are quite willing and eager to spend. Another of their spin-off groups (this one designed to inspire and direct the grass roots activism the Tea Party is famous for) is named Americans for Prosperity (all of these names are a lesson in Orwellian language.) Minutely managed by the Kochs, Americans for Prosperity has been a key player in attacking the Obama presidency. That great conservative strategist, Grover Norquist, admitted to Mayer that the rowdy rallies by activists in the summer of 2010 were key to “undermining Obama’s agenda.” The people in the streets gave Republican lawmakers the cover they needed to refuse any cooperation with Obama, and changed the thinking of corporate donors. Prior to the demonstrations, even the Chamber of Commerce had been willing to work with the president; after the loonies took to the streets and “terrorized” Congress, this attitude changed.
There is much more to find out about these latter-day bagmen (their bought-out brother recently called their operation an “organized crime” operation because of their history of stealing oil from under Native American reservations—see Reader Supported News, March 20, 2011: “Koch and Native-American Reservation Oil Theft”), and I would recommend Mayer’s article as indispensable. It’s not just that David Koch is the guy who financed Governor Scott Walker’s election, and no doubt had a say in his recent anti-union legislation in Wisconsin; the Kochs also have bought numerous companies to supplement and diversify their oil-refining business, so the stink of their corruption is everywhere. Here’s a partial list of mostly paper products that they now control, sent to me by Eleanor Walden:
Paper products from Georgia-Pacific, including: Angel Soft toilet paper; Brawny paper towels; Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups; Mardi Gras napkins and towels; Quilted Northern toilet paper; Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper; Sparkle napkins; Vanity fair napkins; and Zee napkins. There’s a national campaign to boycott all of these products. I would urge everyone to do so, because if there’s one place these guys can be hurt, it’s in their deep, dirty pockets.
(Related addendum: a March 14 article in Yahoo news noted that U.S. millionaires in a survey complained that even $7 million was not quite enough to feel rich. The poor guys compare themselves to their fellow princelings, and also worry a lot about outliving their meager assets. Doesn’t your heart just bleed for them?)
Lawrence DiStasi
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