Published on Friday, January 15, 2010 by Salon.com
Obama Confidant's Spine-Chilling Proposal
by Glenn Greenwald
Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs."  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here . 
Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups."  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).   This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role."  Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger , and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer .
There's no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein's position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked.  Regardless, Sunstein's closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote.  This isn't an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees.  Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.  All of that makes Sunstein's paper worth examining in greater detail.
* * * * *
Initially, note how similar Sunstein's proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates.  The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as "independent analysts" in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon .  Bush officials secretly paid supposedly "independent" voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher , to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts.  In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens .  In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda -- and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda.  Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government "propaganda" within the U.S., aimed at American citizens:
As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda."  By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves.  His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise.  Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer's closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifiesthem as arguably necessary to combat "false conspiracy theories" in Iraq -- the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.
Sunstein's response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself.  He acknowledges that some "conspiracy theories" previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples:  the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in "mind control" experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters).  Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government "conspiracy theories," discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements?  Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good -- i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama:
Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so.
But it's precisely because the Government is so often not "well-motivated" that such powers are so dangerous.  Advocating them on the ground that "we will use them well" is every authoritarian's claim.  More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture:  when our side does X, X is Good, because we're Good and are working for Good outcomes.  That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
* * * * *
Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President's health care plan .  With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama's health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House -- falsely -- as an "independent" or "objective" authority.  Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber's analysis to support their defenses of the President's plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed.  This created an infinite "feedback loop" in favor of Obama's health care plan which -- unbeknownst to the public -- was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked).
In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned.  Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack "intellectual integrity"; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case.  Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being "just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals."  What is one key difference?  Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views -- he favors health care -- and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he's defending are dismissed as a "fake scandal."
Sunstein himself -- as part of his 2008 paper -- explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls "credible independent experts" to advocate on the Government's behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don't trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are "independent."  In so arguing, Sunstein cites the Armstrong Williams scandal not as something that is wrong in itself, but as a potential risk of this tactic (i.e., that it might leak out), and thus suggests that "government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes," but warns that "too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed."  In other words, Sunstein wants the Government to replicate the Armstrong Williams arrangement as a means of more credibly disseminating propaganda -- i.e., pretending that someone is an "independent" expert when they're actually being "prodded" and even paid "behind the scenes" by the Government -- but he wants to be more careful about how the arrangement is described (don't make the control explicit) so that embarrassment can be avoided if it ends up being exposed.  
In this 2008 paper, then, Sunstein advocated, in essence, exactly what the Obama administration has been doing all year with Gruber:  covertly paying people who can be falsely held up as "independent" analysts in order to more credibly promote the Government line.  Most Democrats agreed this was a deceitful and dangerous act when Bush did it, but with Obama and some of his supporters, undisclosed arrangements of this sort seem to be different.  Why?  Because, as Sunstein puts it:  we have "a well-motivated government" doing this so that "social welfare is improved."  Thus, just like state secrets, indefinite detention, military commissions and covert, unauthorized wars , what was once deemed so pernicious during the Bush years -- coordinated government/media propaganda -- is instantaneously transformed into something Good.
* * * * *
What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.  That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories -- both domestically and in Muslim countries -- as his prime example.
It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power:  namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption. 
Who is it who relentlessly spread "false conspiracy theories" of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba'athist/Al-Qaeda alliance -- the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation?  And who is it who demonized as "conspiracy-mongers" people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government?  The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of "conspiracy theory" games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources:  namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.
It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant.  The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned -- rationally -- to distrust government actions and statements.  Sunstein's proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is.  In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive is precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
UPDATE:  I don't want to make this primarily about the Gruber scandal -- I cited that only as an example of the type of mischief that this mindset produces -- but just to respond quickly to the typical Gruber defenses already appearing in comments:  (1) Gruber's work was only for HHS and had nothing to do with the White House (false ); (2) he should have disclosed his payments, but the White House did nothing wrong (false : it repeatedly described him as "independent" and "objective" and constantly cited allied media stories based in Gruber's work);(3) Gruber advocated views he would have advocated anyway in the absence of payment (probably true, but wasn't that also true for life-long conservative Armstrong Williams, life-long social conservative Maggie Gallagher, and the pro-war Pentagon Generals, all of whom mounted the same defense?); and (4) Williams/Gallagher were explicitly paid to advocate particular views while Gruber wasn't (true:  that's exactly the arrangement Sunstein advocates to avoid "embarrassment" in the event of disclosure, and it's absurd to suggest that someone being paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars is unaware of what their paymasters want said; that's why disclosure is so imperative).
The point is that there are severe dangers to the Government covertly using its resources to "infiltrate" discussions and to shape political debates using undisclosed and manipulative means.  It's called "covert propaganda" and it should be opposed regardless of who is in control of it or what its policy aims are.
UPDATE II:  Ironically, this is the same administration that recently announced a new regulation dictating that "bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently."  Without such disclosure, the administration reasoned, the public may not be aware of important hidden incentives (h/t pasquin ).  Yet the same administration pays an MIT analyst hundreds of thousands of dollars to advocate their most controversial proposed program while they hold him out as "objective," and selects as their Chief Regulator someone who wants government agents to covertly mold political discussions "anonymously or even with false identities."
UPDATE III:  Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups," as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:

So Sunstein isn't calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) -- having Government "ban conspiracy theorizing" or "impose some kind of tax on those who" do it -- but he says "each will have a place under imaginable conditions."  I'd love to know the "conditions" under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will "have a place."  Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.
© 2010 Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act? ," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy ", examines the Bush legacy.

Published on Sunday, January 17, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
'Even Charles Manson Could Beat Him Now'

One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?

by Gary Younge
Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this part of America has become a routine part of life.
More than a quarter of the families in Prestonsburg live in poverty; half of the children in Floyd County, where it is situated, are on food stamps. This Appalachian coal mining area has never been rich. But no one can remember when it has ever been this poor either. It sits on the old Route 23 - the country music highway of which Dwight Yoakam (a Floyd Country native) sang in Readin', Rightin', Route 23. It was the road that took people north to factory jobs in places such as Detroit and Cleveland and "the good life they had never seen". Now those cities are broke and there's nowhere left to go.
"We're getting more and more people coming here as time goes by," says Tom Price, who helps administer the church's Feed My Sheep pantry. "The bottom's just fallen out of it all." He blames it on Barack Obama. "Is there a direct correlation [between Obama's victory and the region's bad times]? I don't know. But I do know a lot of people are hurting."
Part 1, Meet the 9-12ers - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio
A week may be a long time in politics. But a year has not been enough for the Democratic president to meet the expectations of his candidacy, deal with the situation he inherited or defuse the barbed charges of his detractors. For many the change that Obama promised when he was inaugurated a year on Wednesday has ended up being a change for the worse. Unemployment is rising, houses prices are falling, unpopular wars are still raging. After 100 days only Ronald Reagan had higher approval ratings for his first few months in office than Obama. But as his first year draws to a close nobody has had lower ratings at this stage since Dwight Eisenhower.
Part 2, Miner issue - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio
Keith Bartley, Floyd County's Democratic chairman, says one key reason why Obama's such a tough sell here is because of the effect of his cap and trade policy on the coal industry. Lt Governor Daniel Mongiardo, the Democratic frontrunner in Kentucky's senatorial race later this year, says he would not want Obama to come and stump for him on the campaign trail, particularly because of his environmental policies. "With some of the positions he has taken, especially on coal, no. He certainly can't come into eastern or western Kentucky and help. Nor would I want him to."
But the disenchantment goes beyond one region or one industry. The official narrative of Obama's inauguration - the fairytale most of the US media told itself and that the international community wanted to believe - was that after a rancourous campaign a divided country came together to celebrate the historic election of its first African-American president. The reality was always quite different. The editor of the Grayson County News Gazette in Leitchfield, a small town 230 miles west of Prestonsburg, recalls that the day after the election much of the area wore sombre faces. The week he was elected gun sales across the country leapt about 50% compared with the same period the year before.
For all of his aspirations for bipartisanship, after the first three months Obama had the most polarised early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The gap between how Democrats and Republicans rated him at this stage was greater than George Bush Jr's in 2001 and twice as high as Richard Nixon's during the height of the Vietnam war in 1969. This was partly because Democrats loved him so much - but it was also because so few Republicans were willing to give him a hearing. Obama didn't create that partisan divide, he inherited it. Not only has he not been able to cure it, but his presence seems to have exacerbated it.
Truth be told they never really liked Obama much in Floyd County. He won only 5% of the vote against Hillary Clinton's 94% in the primaries. But until recently they did love Democrats. In the 2004 election John Kerry won the county with a 25-point margin. In 2008, John McCain took it by 2 points - the first time a Republican had won Floyd in living memory. That's to say following hurricane Katrina, the failure in Iraq, the collapse of the economy and the unravelling in Afghanistan, a sizeable portion of Floyd's voters took a look at Obama and decided that this time, for the first time, they would turn their back on the Democrats.
Back at the Feed My Sheep food pantry Cindy Hernandez has just picked up her groceries and is rifling through the secondhand clothes. She has no doubts about why Obama struggled in a county that is 98% white.
"That's because Obama was black. Let's get real," she says with a laugh.
"You mean people are prejudiced in eastern Kentucky?" asks Tom Nelson, the church's pastor who seems genuinely upset by what she said.
"You do not believe that?" replies Hernandez.
"I know some are, but not altogether," says Nelson. Fearing I should get the wrong impression Nelson suggested I talk to Price.
"I voted for McCain," says Price. "Because, well I voted for the old white guy. At least he's American." A few days earlier, the chairman of the Republican party in Jackson County, Arkansas, insisted electing Obama is destroying America in the same way electing Nelson Mandela destroyed South Africa. "Handing it over to the wrong people."
To ask where racism ends and politics begins in all of this is to set up a false dichotomy - America's politics has always been steeped in race and racism is a political force. The psychic scars of centuries are not removed in one election or as a result of one person. Indeed they may be deepened and made even more raw as a result of them.
The movement that has emerged to oppose him is almost exclusively white. In Little Rock, Arkansas, a city that is 40% black in a state that is 80% white, an anti-tax Tea party rally of several hundred had not one black attendee - apart from an anti-abortion speaker. The doubts they have cast about his Christianity and his birthplace (some claim Obama wasn't born in America) are really proxies for race - a bid to cast him as the ultimate "other". At an anti-healthcare reform rally in Washington in September several racist placards were spotted. One bore a picture a lion and the words, "The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin' African"; another said "'Cap' Congress and 'trade' Obama back to Kenya".
But while racism might inform the intensity and shape the nature of the attacks on Obama they do not drive them. Obama's administration has raised taxes on the rich, expanded public spending, pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq and argued - if only halfheartedly - for universal healthcare. Conservatives have good reasons to be against him that have nothing to do with race.
"It's hard to specify a single source for the opposition," says Rev Wendell Griffin, a Baptist pastor and judge in Arkansas. "Part of the opposition to Obama is philosophical. There is in every society a strand of thought that glories in the myth of rugged individualism [and] he challenges that notion. He believes that the idea of a government is to have a concern not just for the individual but for the society as a whole. Some people don't like that." Griffin went on to list racism, economic desperation and the fact that he is no longer an underdog as other reasons.
His rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective. They have a populist message that excoriates Bush and the bank bailouts as well as Obama and a TV channel - Fox News - to which they are devoted and which is happy to promote their work. A recent poll showed that if the Tea party - a protest movement set up earlier this year to rally opposition to the stimulus bill and "big government" - were a party it would beat the Republican party.
Every week a "9/12" group meet at the non-alcoholic All Bar None in Lexington, Kentucky. This was an initiative started by Fox presenter Glenn Beck, in order to return America to the values of patriotism and godliness that he says America embraced the day after 11 September. Fourteen showed up the night I was there. A straw poll revealed that none of them blamed Obama exclusively for America heading in the wrong direction, with all preferring to blame the entire political establishment. Half believed Obama is a Muslim, just one thought he's a Christian and the overwhelming majority thought he was a communist, socialist and Marxist. None believe that he was born in America; most said they did not know.
"A lot of information about Obama's background is missing," says Abigail Billings. "The media in America is not doing any research. They're not asking any questions. They're not reporting any longer. They're now opinionated talk shows. They're no longer offering factual news coverage." They all watch Fox News.
Many on America's left are also disgruntled with Obama. They believe the healthcare reform, without a public option, will be inadequate, that the war in Afghanistan will unravel, the stimulus bill was insufficient to kick-start the economy and that his economic team is being run by Wall Street. But unlike the right they have so far failed to turn their disillusionment into a potent political force.
"I'd have thought in the past that if Charles Manson ran against a Republican in Floyd County he would win," says Bartley. "But Charles Manson could beat Barack Obama here right now. Thousands of miners out of work, the entire local economy in the tank. But he's got a couple of years where he could turn this round. If he does that he could win. If he doesn't, Charles Manson could come in and win."

Published on Friday, January 15, 2010 by The Nation
System Failure
by Christopher Hayes
There is a widespread consensus that the decade we've just brought to a close was singularly disastrous for the country: the list of scandals, crises and crimes is so long that events that in another context would stand out as genuine lowlights--Enron and Arthur Andersen's collapse, the 2003 Northeast blackout, the unsolved(!) anthrax attacks--are mere afterthoughts. We still don't have a definitive name for this era, though Paul Krugman's 2003 book The Great Unraveling captures well the sense of slow, inexorable dissolution; and the final crisis of the era, what we call the Great Recession, similarly expresses the sense that even our disasters aren't quite epic enough to be cataclysmic. But as a character in Tracy Letts's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County, says, "Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm."
American progressives were the first to identify that something was deeply wrong with the direction the country was heading in and the first to provide a working hypothesis for the cause: George W. Bush. During the initial wave of antiwar mobilization, in 2002, much of the ire focused on Bush himself. But as the decade stretched on, the causal account of the country's problems grew outward in concentric circles: from Bush to his administration (most significantly, Cheney) to the Republican Party to--finally (and not inaccurately)--the entire project of conservative governance.
As much of the country came to share some version of this view (tenuously, but share it they did), the result was a series of Democratic electoral sweeps and a generation of Americans, the Millennials, with more liberal views than any of their elder cohorts. But it always seemed possible that the sheer reactionary insanity of the Bush administration would have a conservatizing effect on the American polity. Because things had gone so wrong, it was a more than natural reaction to long for the good old days; the Clinton years, characterized by deregulation and bubbles, seemed tantalizingly placid and prosperous in retrospect. The atavistic imperialism of the Bush administration had a way of making the pre-Bush foreign policy of soft imperialism and subtle bullying look positively saintly.
Toward the end of the decade, as the establishment definitively rebuked Bush and sought to distance itself from his failures, the big-tent center-left coalition took on an influential constituency--the Colin Powells and Warren Buffetts--who didn't want reform so much as they wanted restoration. This was reflected in a strange internal tension in the Obama campaign rhetoric that simultaneously promised both: change you can believe in and, as Obama said at a March 2008 appearance in Pennsylvania, a foreign policy that is "actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father."
If the working hypothesis that bound this unwieldy coalition together--independents, most liberals and the Washington establishment--was that the nation's troubles were chiefly caused by the occupants of the White House, then this past year has served as a kind of natural experiment. We changed the independent variable (the party and people in power) and can observe the results. It is hard, I think, to come to any conclusion but that the former hypothesis was insufficient.
So what, exactly, is it that ails us?
In pondering the answer, it's useful to distinguish between two separate categories of problems we face. The first are the human, economic and ecological disasters that demand immediate action: a grossly inefficient healthcare sector, millions un- or underinsured, 10 percent unemployment, a planet that's warming, soaring personal bankruptcies, 12 million immigrants working in legal limbo, the list goes on. But the deeper problem, the ultimate cause of many of the first-order problems, is the perverse maldistribution of power in the country: too much in too few hands. It didn't happen overnight, of course, and the devolution has been analyzed and decried by a host of writers and thinkers in these very pages.
It's also not the first time. Indeed, the story of the American Republic is the never-ending task of redistributing power that always seems to collect and pool and re-form, a cycle in which we break up the power trusts, only to find them reassembling, Terminator 2-like, and requiring yet another dose of the founders' revolutionary fervor to be broken up again.
The central and unique paradox of our politics at this moment, however, is that our institutions are so broken, the government so sclerotic and dysfunctional, that in almost all cases, from financial bailouts to health insurance mandates, the easiest means of addressing the first set of problems is to take steps that exacerbate the second.
As an illustration, consider the following hypothetical.
You're a social worker or a parish priest in a poor urban neighborhood that lives under the malignant, if stable, stewardship of an organized-crime protection racket. The small business owners all have to pay a protection fee, which most of them can afford, but a significant portion of bodegas and nail salons operating on razor-thin profit margins struggle to come up with the money. When they fall short (which is often) they are subjected to beatings, harassment, vandalism and other petty cruelties.
Now, it turns out that you can raise enough money through your organization so that you can reliably cover the protection fees for the struggling shop owners operating on the margins. Whenever they can't come up with enough money, you can make up the difference. The improvement to residents' lives would be massive: no longer forced to live in fear, they would be allowed to transact their business and go about their lives free from the constant, degrading fear of physical violence. But by taking this action you would also be channeling revenue into the pockets of the protection racket and, perhaps more insidious, further entrenching its power by conceding its central premise: that all local businesses must pay up in order to survive.
This is, in rough allegorical fashion, the dilemma at the heart of the recent intra-left battle over the Senate version of the healthcare bill. Those arguing that the bill will be a massive step forward in reducing the misery of the uninsured are for the most part right. And those arguing that the Senate version of the bill is a grotesque sellout to Big Pharma and, to a lesser extent, Big Insurance, are more or less correct as well. When the White House used its muscle to kill a bipartisan amendment that would have allowed reimportation of drugs, it was as if our fictional social worker or priest took to shaking down shopkeepers to stay in the good graces of the local thugs. For what it's worth, I'm generally in the pay-off-the-thugs camp, because of the concrete benefits it would provide (Medicaid expansion for 15 million) but also because by enshrining the notion that the government is responsible for managing the healthcare system, the crimes of the insurance racket can now be laid at the feet of our politicians. In the short run, that accountability may spell political trouble; in the long run, I'm hopeful that it will force the government to crack down.
That said, the whole system that produced this legislative approach sucks, and recalls nothing so much as the Bush/GOP passage of Medicare Part D.
In the abstract, the putative goal of Medicare Part D was laudable (even if it was driven by Karl Rove's crass desire to curry favor with an important electoral demographic): reduce the cost of prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. The method of achieving this laudable social end, however, was repugnant. Medicare was statutorily barred from using its market share to negotiate lower drug prices, thereby ensuring hefty (and largely unearned) profits for Big Pharma in perpetuity. Drug reimportation was off the table as well. And since Republicans don't believe in taxes, and our political institutions are increasingly incapable of raising revenue, none of it was paid for. One Democratic Senate aide told me that right before his boss voted for final passage of the bill, the senator turned to him and said, "So, I guess I have to go vote for this piece of shit."
At the time, Medicare Part D looked like the nadir of GOP governance, but two things have happened in the interim. One, the program, despite early chaos, has become quite popular: seniors like getting cheaper drugs. And two, the basic policy approach has been adopted, in somewhat altered form, by the Obama administration. We are all Medicare Part D now.
There's a word for a governing philosophy that fuses the power of government and large corporations as a means of providing services and keeping the wheels of industry greased, and it's a word that has begun to pop up among critics of everything from the TARP bailout to healthcare to cap and trade: corporatism. Since corporatism often merges the worst parts of Big Government and Big Business, it's an ideal target for both the left and right. The ultimate corporatist moment, the bailout, was initially voted down in the House by an odd-bedfellows coalition of Progressive Caucus members and right-wingers.
In the wake of the healthcare sausage-making, writers from Tim Carney on the right (author of the provocative Obamanomics) and Glenn Greenwald on the left have attacked the bill as the latest incarnation of corporatism, a system they see as the true enemy. There is even some talk among activists of a grand left-right populist coalition coming together to depose the entrenched interests that hold sway in Washington. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake touted her work with libertarians to oppose Ben Bernanke, more AIG bailouts and the Senate healthcare bill ("What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging"); David McKalip, the tea-party doctor who got into trouble for forwarding an image of Obama with a bone through his nose, wrote an open letter to the netroots proposing that they join him in fighting the "real enemy," the "unholy corporate/government cabal that will control your healthcare."
I don't think that coalition is going to emerge in any meaningful form. The right's anger is born largely of identity-based alienation, a fear of socialism (whatever that means nowadays) and an age-old Bircher suspicion that "they" are trying to screw "us." Even in its most sophisticated forms, such as in Carney's Obamanomics, the basic right-wing argument against corporatism embraces a kind of fatalism about government that assumes it will always devolve into a rat's nest of rent seekers and cronies and therefore should be kept as small as possible.
But the progressive critics hold that we can and should do better. The Medicare Part D model is a terrible way of running a government for a number of reasons. First, and most practical, it's expensive. When paying off protection rackets is the price of passing legislation, you have to come up with a lot more money. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices would have saved the government as much as $30 billion a year. The strong public option would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, save $85 billion over ten years. Once everyone has laid claim to their vig, you soon find yourself tapped out.
The second problem is that this form of governance degrades the integrity of the state. Historian Tony Judt made this point eloquently in his October 19 lecture "What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy." Delegating fundamental state activities to private actors, he said, "discredits the state." Instead of a straightforward relationship between citizen and state, we have a mediated one that has the potential to perversely feed the anti-statist arguments of the right as the state becomes, in Judt's words, "represented in the popular mind by a grasping private profiteer."
But the corporatism on display in Washington is itself a symptom of a broader social illness that I noted above, a democracy that is pitched precariously on the tipping point of oligarchy. In an oligarchy, the only way to get change is to convince the oligarchs that it is in their interest--and increasingly, that's the only kind of change we can get.
In 1911 the German democratic socialist Robert Michels faced a similar problem, and it was the impetus for his classic book Political Parties. He was motivated by a simple question: why were parties of the left, those most ideologically committed to democracy and participation, as oligarchical in their functioning as the self-consciously elitist and aristocratic parties of the right?
Michels's answer was what he called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy." In order for any kind of party or, indeed, any institution with a democratic base to exist, it must have an organization that delegates tasks. As this bureaucratic structure develops, it invests a small group of people with enough power that they can then subvert the very mechanisms by which they can be held to account: the party press, party conventions and delegate votes. "It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors," he wrote, "of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy."
Michels recognized the challenge his work presented to his comrades on the left and viewed the task of democratic socialists as a kind of noble, endless, Sisyphean endeavor, which he described by invoking a German fable. In it, a dying peasant tells his sons that he has buried a treasure in their fields. "After the old man's death the sons dig everywhere in order to discover the treasure. They do not find it. But their indefatigable labor improves the soil and secures for them a comparative well-being."
"The treasure in the fable may well symbolize democracy," Michels wrote. "Democracy is a treasure which no one will ever discover by deliberate search. But in continuing our search, in laboring indefatigably to discover the undiscoverable, we shall perform a work which will have fertile results in the democratic sense."
After a rather dispiriting few months, the treasure in this case may seem impossibly remote, but one thing the Obama campaign got right was its faith in America's history of continually and fruitfully tilling the soil of democracy, struggling against odds until, at certain moments of profound progressive change, a new treasure is improbably found.
It was the possibility of such a democratic unearthing that gave Obama for America its moral force. The most inspiring thing about the campaign had nothing to do with the candidate and everything to do with average citizens from Dubuque to Atlanta who were taking the time and energy to search for a small piece of that treasure. Likewise, the message of the Obama campaign was as much about empowerment, reinvigorating democracy and changing the ways of Washington as it was about the central planks of his agenda. It's for this reason that the greatest disappointment of his first year is the White House's abandonment of this small-d democratic impulse in favor of a strategy almost wholly focused on insider politics.
What the country needs more than higher growth and lower unemployment, greater income equality, a new energy economy and drastically reduced carbon emissions is a redistribution of power, a society-wide epidemic of re-democratization. The crucial moments of American reform and progress have achieved this: from the direct election of senators to the National Labor Relations Act, from the breakup of the trusts to the end of Jim Crow.
So in this new year, while the White House focuses on playing within the existing rules, it's our job as citizens and activists to press constantly for changes to those rules: public financing, an end to the filibuster, the breakup of the banks, legalization for undocumented workers and the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, to name just a few of the measures that would alter the balance of power and expand the frontiers of the possible.
If I had to bet, I'd say that not of one of these will be won this year. The White House won't be of much help, and on some issues, like breaking up the banks, it will represent the opposition. Always searching and never quite finding is grueling and often dispiriting work. But there is simply no alternative other than to give in and let the field turn hard and barren.

Do Obama and Geithner Have the Same Flaw: Accommodation Instead of Moral Action?

By Mark Ames, AlterNet
Posted on January 15, 2010, Printed on January 15, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145181/

A lot of us have been wondering, despondently, why the Hell Barack Obama is keeping Timothy Geithner on the job as Treasury Secretary, given his central role in the plunder of trillions of dollars from American taxpayers, and his record of subverting democracy in the service of Wall Street billionaires. Geithner's the guy that drove the getaway car in the heist -- so why was he hired to run the Treasury? You'd expect to see a guy as corrupt as Geithner serving as the Finance Minister in some Central Asian autocracy -- but not in Barack Obama's government, not after all he promised in the campaign.

Maybe a better question is: Why did Obama choose Geithner in the first place? On the surface, those two are supposed to be on relatively opposite ends of the American spectrum: Geithner is an East Coast Republican blue-blood whose catastrophic tenure at the New York Fed represented everything Obama -- a half-Kenyan liberal Democrat from America's western-most state -- promised to change for the better.

The most recent hope-crushing revelation about Geithner -- emails showing that the New York Fed under Geithner's watch forced AIG to lie to the public in order cover up tens of billions of taxpayer dollars that were being funneled through AIG and out the backdoor to top financial institutions like Goldman Sachs -- proves once and for all that Geithner is the worst choice imaginable for the job. He's the epitome of the sort of incompetence, sleaze and corruption that Bush specialized in -- so why did Obama name him, and why is he sticking by him?

So far the most convincing rational explanation I've read comes from William Black, the former Savings & Loan investigator-hero who understands public-private corruption in this country like few others. Prof. Black, like a true prosecutor, puts Geithner's rise to head the Treasury in simple crime-world terms: he's there to cover up his own heist. All across the board, as Black has pointed out, the same perps who caused the collapse of the financial system and the looting of all those trillions are all in positions of power to cover up their crimes, and keep the details out of the public eye.

But there are also other, deeper, personal reasons too. I came across some rather disturbing biographical similarities between Obama and Geithner that show why Obama might be more comfortable with a guy like Geithner on a deeper, mammalian level. 

Even though Geithner and Obama come from such different backgrounds and from different political parties, both have strikingly similar temperaments -- both earned reputations as conciliators and centrists in campus debates at their respective Ivy League schools, over the very same hot-button issue: affirmative action.

In the early 1980s, when little Tim Geithner was a student at Dartmouth (following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather), he reportedly made his first big mark on campus by inserting himself in the middle of a nasty battle over the university's affirmative action program. The reason it got so nasty was because the anti-affirmative action movement was being led by the notoriously racist, homophobic Dartmouth Review, a new student paper founded while Geithner was a student, funded and patronized by some of the biggest names in the emerging American rightwing: Irving Kristol (Bill Kristol's daddy), William Buckley of the National Review, and the conservative Republican Jack Kemp. TheDartmouth Review's editor at that time was Dinesh D'Souza, an Indian immigrant eager to play the suck-up waterboy to the university's white rightwing elite -- even if that meant being their dark-skinned face of elitist white racism.

Under D'Souza's editorship, the Review not only attacked the very same affirmative action that helped D'Souza get into Dartmouth, but it also published the sort of rank racist drivel that would have made George Wallace wince. One such article was described as a "lighthearted interview with a former Klan leader" -- which D'Souza illustrated with a staged photo of a black man hanging from a tree on Dartmouth's campus. Another Reviewarticle on affirmative action was even more racist: It was headlined "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive, Bro," and it included lines such as, "Now we be comin' to Dartmut and be up over our 'fros in studies, but we still be not graduatin' Phi Beta Kappa." It was so offensive that even Jack Kemp, a hero in the National Review rightwing crowd, resigned from the Dartmouth Review's advisory board in disgust.

Young Tim Geithner was a student at Dartmouth at the same time D'Souza was -- meaning he saw the whole thing develop. When the racist articles were published, the student body was practically in revolt, and according to a Bloomberg article published last year, some students were so pissed off they were gearing up to mob-attack D'Souza. That would have been the sane, decent thing to do -- hunt D'Souza down brand "Suck-Up" across his forehead. But little Timothy Geithner, the "natural mediator," was more concerned with keeping things as they were, playing the role of human lubricant. Some today might think that this shows something decent and solid in Geithner's character -- but in fact, it reveals a total absence of ethical engagement, and instead, a natural willingness to preserve the status quo, no matter how warped and loathsome that status quo is. D'Souza should have been chased out of America and out of the Western Hemisphere for good; but Geithner saved him, according to a Bloomberg article:

From his years as a Dartmouth College student and mid-level Treasury official through his stint at the New York Fed, Geithner, 47, has thrived as a backroom negotiator and conciliator.

Geithner's knack for diplomacy surfaced in the midst of student demonstrations over affirmative action. The Dartmouth Review, a student biweekly, was edited by Dinesh D'Souza, a social conservative who later rose to prominence with books attacking multiculturalism and feminism.

The Review lambasted what it called Dartmouth's liberal bias and its minority admission policies, riling many students. During gatherings in which some students said D'Souza should be attacked, Geithner calmed them down, proposing that they start an alternative publication, says Rudelson, the former roommate. Geithner kept his distance from the new publication, called the Harbinger, occasionally taking photos for it.

"He was always the natural mediator," Rudelson says. "He had this amazing ability to listen to people, no matter how extreme their views might be."
So we can see early on in his life that Timothy Geither, even when confronted with the most obvious ethical choice -- fighting racism -- our Treasury Secretary chose instead to protect and preserve both the racists and the anti-racists. And that is another way of saying, Geithner protected the bad guys. After all, they're the ones who needed to be preserved -- they needed a "mediator" who legitimized their presence, a mediator who appeared to be "in the middle" and "without an agenda" to preserve and protect them. Geithner was that man.

The result: D'Souza went on to become a highly-influential rightwing author and an inspiration to scores of waffentwerps, earning millions for himself by promoting racism and bashing the disadvantaged. One of D'Souza's first proteges was that human lamprey and radio host Laura Ingraham, whose first big article for D'Souza was to publish the names of students who belonged to Dartmouth's Gay & Lesbian Union. Many students were devastated by the outing: One gay student reportedly dropped out, and another reportedly attempted suicide. (Ingraham's brother, ironically enough, was gay.)

Ingraham later dated Larry Summers, who was Geithner's boss in the 1990s, and whom Obama picked to run the economy from the White House. Summers, as we know, created controversy while he was president at Harvard by picking fights with prominent African-American academics, and his claims that women were genetically inferior at mathematics and science. You can see how this depressing picture is starting to come together -- because Obama picked these guys to run our economy.

Anyway getting back to Obama-Geithner -- in the early 1990s, a decade after Geithner protected D'Souza from a mob of angry students, Barack Obama found himself in a similar situation at Harvard law school. Obama had been named the first black editor of theHarvard Law Review, meaning he had to take a stand on one of the biggest issues dividing the law school's students: affirmative action. Keep in mind that, without affirmative action, it's unlikely that Barack Obama would have been where he was, at Harvard Law, the first African-American editor of the esteemed school's legal magazine. Not because Obama wasn't qualified, but because affirmative action made it harder for the entrenched white elite to keep all the slots to themselves.

So how did Obama handle the battle between rightwing anti-affirmative action students and liberals? Just like Geithner would have. According to a profile a couple of years ago in the Boston Globe:

Classmates recall an especially emotional debate in the spring of 1990 over affirmative action, which conservative students wanted to abolish.

Presiding over an assembly of 60 mostly white editors in a law school classroom, Obama listened to impassioned pleas and pressed conservatives to explain their reasoning and liberals to sharpen their thinking. But he never spoke about his own point of view or mentioned that he believed he had benefited from affirmative action. "If anybody had walked by, they would have assumed he was a professor," said Thomas J. Perrelli, a classmate and former counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. "He was leading the discussion but he wasn't trying to impose his own perspective on it. He was much more mediating."

Obama was so evenhanded and solicitous in his interactions that fellow students would do impressions of his Socratic chin-stroking approach to everything, even seeking a consensus on popcorn preferences at the movies. "Do you want salt on your popcorn?" one classmate, Nancy L. McCullough, recalled, mimicking his sensitive bass voice. "Do you even want popcorn?"
So you can start to see why Obama's press spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters that the President has "full confidence" in Geithner. They're peas in a pod. In more ways than just their temperament.

To most of us, this sort of one-note obsession with conciliation and even-temperedness seems ill-suited to the times and circumstances. This country doesn't need the status quo maintained, it needs a complete change of the way this country is run, and the type of people running it. But if you were one of the plutocrats, you'd have a different view of things. You'd want to preserve what you'd plundered, and hire some human buffers to get between you and the 300 million Americans you'd ripped off. And as the record shows, you couldn't choose two more perfect, reliable buffers than Tim Geithner and Barack Obama. Geithner, we know, was hired and promoted at the NY Fed and then at Treasury to do precisely that -- make sure that the heist went off smoothly and to keep the mobs away from the plutocrats. So now the question is, is that why so much of the establishment, including Wall Street, also got behind Barack Obama? Did they look at his record, and his temperament, and say, "This guy's just like Timmy. Only better."
 __
Further Note: In one of those too-bizarre-to-be-true coincidences, when Barack Obama's mother ran a microcredit program in Indonesia funded by the Ford Foundation, it was Tim Geithner's father, Peter Geithner, who disbursed the money on behalf of the Ford Foundation. Both Barack and Tim spent a part of their childhoods growing up in Southeast Asia, thanks to their parents' work. Of further interest is the fact that the Ford Foundation -- which Geithner's dad ran in Indonesia -- was a well-known CIA front in Indonesia's savage anti-communist civil war in the 1960s.
Read more of Mark Ames at eXiledonline.com. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.

Published on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by Salon.com
The Fundamental Unreliablity of America's Media
by Glenn Greenwald
Consider the record of the American media over the last two weeks alone.  Justin Elliott of TPM documents how an absolute falsehood about the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing -- that Abdulmuttab purchased a "one-way ticket" to the U.S., when it was actually a round-trip ticket -- has been repeated far and wide by U.S. media outlets as fact.  Two weeks ago, Elliott similarly documented how an equally false claim from ABC News -- that two of the Al Qaeda leaders behind that airliner attack had been released from Guantanamo -- became entrenched as fact in media reports (at most, it is one of them, not two).  This week, Dan Froomkin chronicles how completely discredited claims about Guantanamo recidivism rates continue to be uncritically "reported" by The New York Times and then inserted into our debates as fact.  
As I documented two weeks ago , government claims about which "top Al Qeada fighters" were killed by our airstrikes turn out to be untrue far more often then true, yet are always mindlessly featured by our media, ensuring little questioning of those actions; at least two of the three Top Terrorists claimed to have been killed by our airstrikes in Yemen -- and possibly all three -- are quite likely alive .  As Greg Sargent writes , one of the most provocative and inflammatory claims of the trashy Halperin/Heilmann gossip book -- that Bill Clinton told Ted Kennedy that Obama would have been "getting us coffee" just a couple years earlier -- is not only completely unsourced (like virtually every one of their sleazy claims), but also "paraphrased."
Aside from falsity, what do all of these deceitful reports have in common?  They're all the by-product of granting anonymity to people and then repeating what they claim as fact, protected by their journalist-guaranteed anonymity from any and all accountability for their falsehoods.  It's exactly the same process that caused our leading media outlets to tell Americans about Iraq's massive WMD program and Al Qaeda connections ; Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight with inhumane Iraqi devils and her "rescue" by our Marines; Pat Tillman's death at the hands of Al Qaeda monsters ; and government tests that "confirmed" the presence of bentonite in the anthrax used to attack the U.S., which meant it was likely that Saddam was behind the attacks.
Unjustified anonymity -- especially when mindlessly repeating what shielded government sources claim in secret -- is the single greatest enabler of false and deceitful "reporting."  Despite its unbroken record of producing lies, it will never stop, because agreeing to it is how "journalists" end up being selected as favored message-carrying servants for the powerful .  This falsehood-producing method isn't ancillary to American journalism but central to it; the book which is occupying the attention of America's political and media class is based exclusively on unattributed, shielded sources, and that seems to bother one of them. 
None of the falsehoods documented here will ever lead to any accountability, because the identity of the falsehood-producers will be shielded by their loyal journalist-servants, and the journalists themselves will simply claim that they wrote what they did because their hidden sources told them to.  That's not only the effect, but the intent, of the central method of American journalism:  to disseminate outright falsehoods to the American public and ensure that neither the liars nor their loyal message-carriers ever face any consequences or even reputational loss.  Anonymity is so common that "reporters" barely even bother any longer to explain why it's justified, notwithstanding numerous policies of media outlets requiring exactly that explanation .  As the use of anonymity has escalated rapidly, so, too, has the pervasiveness of outright falsehoods and the inherent unreliability of much of what the American media "reports."  Lying is so much easier -- and thus so much more common -- when you get to do it while remaining hidden.
* * * * * 
Two other media points:
(1) I've been writing frequently of late about the perception disparities between Americans and the Muslim world due not to their propaganda-based ignorance but to ours.  Here's a somewhat old but highly illustrative example:   in 1996, then-Secretary-of-State Madeline Albright was asked by 60 Minutesabout the fact that American sanctions on Iraq resulted in the deaths of "half million children," to which Albright dismissively replied:  "We think the price is worth it."  At the time, FAIR documented that while the number of dead Iraqi children -- as well as Albright's quote -- was known far and wide in predominantly Muslim countries, it was almost completely blacked-out in the American press.
(2) Last night, Brian Williams began his NBC News broadcast by expressing extreme and righteous anger over a truly momentous scandal:  Mark McGwire's steriod use, telling his audience:  "Because this is a family broadcast, we probably can't say what we'd like to about the news today."  If Williams has expressed even a small inkling of an objection -- let alone righteous outrage -- over things like torture, lies that led to the Iraq War, chronic surveillance lawbreaking and the like, I'd be quite surprised.  Walter Cronkite famously and unusually abandoned precepts of journalistic "objectivity" in order to stand up to the U.S. Government's lies over the Vietnam War; Brian Williams -- who was embedded in the Iraq War and was a reverent commentator regarding everyone involved -- does so in order to stand up to a detested, powerless baseball player.   In that contrast one finds a nice illustration of what our modern press corps is.

© 2010 Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act? ," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy ", examines the Bush legacy.

Don’t Blame China

Posted on Jan 12, 2010

By Robert Scheer
The Chinamen did it. In the great American tradition of finding foreign scapegoats for our problems, the hunt is on to somehow hold China responsible for the misery that Wall Street financiers inflicted upon the world. Even the normally restrained New York Times editorial pageargued Tuesdaythat China’s tying its currency to the dollar was a devious trick that “is exacerbating economic weakness around the globe.” 
Tell that to the shoppers at Wal-Mart and Costco who are managing to stay decently clothed while still affording some of the diversionary electronic trinkets that keep them from going crazy-mad at the bankers who cost them their jobs and homes. How absurd to blame China for a crisis brought on by Wall Street hustlers operating within a mile of the Times’ home office. The bankers’ greed was unleashed by a radical deregulation of the financial industry that the newspaper had once encouraged.
Back on April 8, 1998, a Times editorial applauded the “Monster Merger” of Citicorp bank and the Travelers insurance company to form the too-big-to-fail financial conglomerate that a decade later had to be bailed out by U.S. taxpayers. The merger represented a clear violation of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which Congress at that point had refused to repeal despite decades of lobbying by the banking industry. The Clinton administration issued a temporary waiver to allow the merger, and the Times couldn’t have been more pleased:
“Congress dithers, so John Reed of Citicorp and Sanford Weill of Travelers Group grandly propose to modernize financial markets on their own. They have announced a $70 billion merger—the biggest in history—that would create the largest financial services company in the world, worth more than $140 billion. … In one stroke, Mr. Reed and Mr. Weill will have temporarily demolished the increasingly unnecessary walls built during the Depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies.”
Citigroup led the way into the massive marketing of toxic collateralized debt obligations that has brought the world’s economy to its knees, and China, which did nothing to create that problem, suffered mightily as a result. Yet instead of attacking the U.S. and its dubious dollar, the Chinese continued to buy our questionable paper. For that reason alone we should be happy that China recently managed to turn the corner on the adversity we created for it, thanks to a stimulus program that makes ours pale in comparison. As a result, not only did China’s exports rise 18 percent last month, as compared to the previous December, but imports rose an astounding 56 percent. China is now not only the world’s biggest exporter, having surpassed Germany, but it topped the United States as the world’s leader in auto sales last year.
All of this is good news, given the fact that hundreds of millions of people in China have witnessed a dramatic improvement in their lives. Instead of being a source of misery at home and undesired migration abroad, the once-feared Chinese population bomb is now a source of increasingly skilled labor and the most promising emerging market for the rest of the world’s products. Of course, with its vast population of more than 1.3 billion, China remains a very poor country, and if it doesn’t manage to spread the wealth to rural areas and solve major environmental problems the future may be dreary for the Chinese as well as for us.
That is precisely the reason we should welcome China’s success rather than bemoan it. If China has figured out how to cope with a U.S.-engineered financial meltdown so as to feed its people instead of starving them, isn’t that a victory for human rights that we all should applaud? But if that weepy sentiment doesn’t cut it for you, do we really want a trade war with China that might compel it to shun the dollar and stop carrying our debt load?
The Times’ editorial warns correctly that a “trade war with China would be disastrous” but then shifts the blame to China, stating “we fear no one is going to feel restrained if China doesn’t change its strategy.”
Suddenly, after a century of preaching the virtues of the free market to the world when we held the upper hand, we will now play the protectionist game? I think not. Too many jobs in this country, and too much profit for our big multinational corporations, would be lost to other industrialized nations. Anyway, it’s just absurd to blame a Made-in-the-U.S.A. crisis on a foreign import.

Afghans Losing Hope After 8 Years Of War

TODD PITMAN | 01/10/10 06:13 AM | 
KABUL — The man on the motorcycle was going the wrong way down a one-way street, gesturing indignantly for the phalanx of traffic-clogged cars in front of him to move.
"Brother, why are you angry with us?" said a passenger leaning out of one of the vehicles blocking his path. "It's you who are going the wrong way!"
"I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at Afghanistan," the man cried back, waving his arm dismissively as he negotiated his bike onto a crowded sidewalk and drove off in a trail of exhaust fumes. "These are sad days."
In Kabul, even a traffic jam can provoke a comment on this Islamic nation's dismal state, which most people here believe is at its bleakest since the U.S. invaded to topple the Taliban in 2001. It's a striking sentiment when you consider it comes after eight years of international intervention, $60 billion in foreign aid and the lives of thousands of foreign troops and Afghan civilians.
The Obama administration is hoping to reverse that trend as an additional 30,000 American and 7,000 NATO troops pour into the conflict in coming months. But "the more soldiers they send here, the worse it gets," said 19-year-old carpet seller Hamid Hashimi.
In the year after the Taliban fell, international forces numbered a modest 12,000 or so. Today that figure has swollen to well over 100,000 and will approach 140,000 with the latest troop commitments. There are also 100,000 Defense Department contractors supporting the military effort, according to U.S. lawmakers.
The insurgency has mushroomed in equal measure.
The war – once mostly limited to Pakistan border – has spread to nearly ever corner of the country. It has also penetrated the frontier-like capital, where car bombings or other spectacular attacks like the October storming of a guest house filled with U.N. staff make news every couple of weeks.
Story continues below 
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
When the Taliban were overthrown in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, aid groups, analysts and Afghans themselves all believed the nation was finally emerging from a quarter century of war.
In retrospect, there wasn't much of a break.
"In those days people had hope, but unfortunately everything has turned upside down since then," said Hanif Hangam, who stars in an Afghan comedy TV show called Alarm Bell. "People expected things to go forward, but we've just been sliding back."
The irony is that so much has changed in Kabul.
A vast sea of blown-out buildings in the west of the city has been completely rebuilt. Multistory shopping malls encased in glass symbolize a newfound prosperity, towering above streets lined with travel agencies, internet cafes, and even Afghan Fried Chicken, a local fast-food chain.
At night, rainbow-colored flashing palm trees climb the walls of splashy new wedding halls. Newly connected electricity lines light up mountainsides ringing the capital, whose population has tripled in the last eight years to 4.5 million as millions of refugees returned.
Residents are also embracing freedoms anew: a majority of women have shed the once-ubiquitous blue burqas mandated by the Taliban in favor of flashy headscarves that shine in the night. And from one state TV channel in 2001, there are now more than 20 private stations with 3-D graphics and talk shows that rival any abroad.
"People can finally can talk openly about what's gone wrong," Hangam said of the media boom. "They can criticize the government and warlords, point out corruption. But unfortunately, nobody is listening. We never see anything change."
Indeed, the news today is the same as it was eight years previous, there is just more of it: Car bombs and rockets rock Kabul. Civilians die accidentally in U.S. air strikes. Afghan security forces are in dire need of training. The opium trade is booming.
And just like 2001, President Hamid Karzai is derided as the "mayor of Kabul" by critics who say his authority doesn't extend much further than the city limits.
"It's a disaster," said Ramazan Bashardost, a lawmaker who came in a distant third in the country's botched August election, which was marred by fraud so widespread a third of Karzai's ballots were thrown out. "The situation is getting worse every day for ordinary Afghans."
According to Bashardost, about 80 percent of the country is without electricity and unemployment is 60 percent. Many families can only afford to eat once a day and corruption is so rampant, "it's practically legal," he said.
"People ask, 'What has democracy brought?'" he said. Besides helping keep warlords accused of war crimes in power, Bashardost added, "the answer is: insecurity."
Guerrilla attacks have made even provinces surrounding the capital unsafe. Hashimi said his family owns land in Wardak province, which neighbors the city, but he hasn't been home in years because the roads are too dangerous.
Alongside billboards advertising modern utilities like BlackBerry smartphones are others hawking armored transport. The local "Scene" magazine includes ads for shops selling bulletproof vests, and most of the people pictured inside its "Party Scene" section are foreign correspondents who came to cover the war.
Downtown, protective blast walls have grown larger outside U.S. and U.N. facilities, and some streets have been closed to public traffic. Helmeted soldiers peek out of sandbagged guard posts at government ministries. Residents like Hashimi cringe whenever they walk past – fearful the offices will be targeted by bombers.
Outside Thai and Indian restaurants in one posh neighborhood, bodyguards in black suits stand in the middle of streets like gangsters, holding small, uzi-like automatic weapons as officials climb into black SUVs with tinted windows. And when security prevents dining out, the Wakhan cafe has signs that say: "Locked Down! No problems" – they deliver.
The U.S. Congressional Research Service said in a recent report that foreign assistance pledged to Afghanistan since 2001 has topped $58 billion, about $38 billion of it from the U.S. alone.
But "what happened to all this money?" said Bashardost. "Has garbage been cleaned up? Have all the streets been paved?"
Many think some of those funds have been diverted to places like the city's Shirpoor neighborhood, where the powerful clique Washington brought to power eight years ago bulldozed dozens of crumbling mud-brick homes occupied by squatters and divvied the land among cronies.
Residents deride the gaudy mirrored mansions as "poppy palaces" because they are believed to have also been constructed in part with money from the drug trade. Few believe their owners could have built them with paltry official salaries; they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and rent for $20,000 per month.
"We've built a lot of buildings," lawmaker Shukria Barakzai said with a sigh at a recent government ceremony commemorating the deaths of thousands of Afghan police and soldiers. "But we've lost a lot of hope."

Published on Friday, January 8, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Afghan Children Are Neglected Causulties of War
by César Chelala
2009 has been the deadliest year for Afghan children since 2001, according to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, a Kabul-based human rights group.  From January to December 2009, about 1,050 children died in suicide attacks, roadside blats, air strikes and in the cross-fire between Taliban insurgents and pro-government Afghan and foreign forces, states ARM.
Today in Afghanistan more than one in five children dies before the age of five, often of a preventable cause. Many children who survive birth then die because mothers stop breastfeeding them too soon. Traditionally, the women are not allowed to decide when to start or to stop breastfeeding or how to give supplementary food. Usually, that decision is reserved for the elders of the family, generally men.
More than 60% of all child deaths and disabilities are due to respiratory and intestinal infections, and of such vaccine preventable deaths as measles. Widespread malnutrition acutely affects children's growth. It is estimated that 7.5 million children and adults are presently at risk of hunger and malnutrition.
 "Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world," states Catherine Mbengue, UNICEF's country representative. Other indicators are equally appalling, such as 70% of the population lacking potable water. Diarrhea in particular kills tens of thousands of children every year and is, in Afghanistan, a particularly serious health risk.
Some cities, such as Jalalabad, the largest city in eastern Afghanistan located at the junction of the Kabul and Kunar rivers, are high risk areas for polio. This is due to some high risk factors for the disease such as massive and continuous population movements from and into polio infected areas, a large presence of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and a high population density. In South Asia in 2000, over 40 percent of the confirmed cases of polio occurred in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
To control the spread of the disease, UNICEF and the Department of Public Health in Nangarhar have launched the "Women Courtyard" initiative, aimed at giving local women an understanding of polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases as well as such related issues such as hygiene and water-borne illnesses.
Although this is an important initiative some popular traditions still constitute an impediment to carrying it successfully. One such tradition is that babies shouldn't be taken to the front door before their 40th day after birth, which prevents many newborns from being vaccinated.
Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined nations in the world. It also has one the highest proportions of disabled people, due in large part to the landmines placed extensively throughout the country. Children are landmines' most vulnerable victims, since they can be affected while playing, going to school, tending animals or scavenging.
To make matters worse, deadly attacks have targeted schools and impeded access to critical health care, according to UNICEF. "We have had attacks on villages and on schools by both anti-government elements as well as by coalition forces and international troops that have hit civilians," stated recently Daniel Toole, UNICEF's South Asia Director.
None of the children growing up today in Afghanistan has known peace in his lifetime. Children's deteriorated mental health is one of the consequences of a permanent state of war in the country. A UNICEF-supported study found that the majority of children under 16 years in Kabul suffer from psychological trauma.
Exposure to traumatic events has been shown to be associated with serious mental health problems. In this regard, the experience of five or more traumatic events substantially increases the risk of psychiatric disorders and post-traumatic stress syndrome. Children in Afghanistan are exposed not only to violence related to acts of war but also to violence   resulting from accidents, beatings by close relatives or neighbors or seeing close relatives being beaten or executed. As a study in the Lancet points out, "In Afghan children's lives, everyday violence matters just as much as militarized violence in the recollection of traumatic experiences."
 César Chelala, MD, PhD, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award. He is also the foreign correspondent for Middle East Times International (Australia).

Published on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
After this 60-year Feeding Frenzy, Earth Itself has Become Disposable

Consumerism has, as Huxley feared, changed all of us – we'd rather hop to a brave new world than rein in our spending

by George Monbiot
Who said this? "All the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness." Was it a) the boss of Greenpeace, b) the director of the New Economics Foundation, or c) an anarchist planning the next climate camp? None of the above: d) the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, who currently runs the Financial Services Authority. In an interview broadcast last Friday, Lord Turner brought the consumer society's most subversive observation into the mainstream.
In our hearts most of us know it is true, but we live as if it were not. Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country's most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.
As the Guardian revealed today, the British government is now split over product placement in television programmes: if it implements the policy proposed by Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, plots will revolve around chocolates and cheeseburgers, and advertisements will be impossible to filter, perhaps even to detect. Bradshaw must know that this indoctrination won't make us happier, wiser, greener or leaner; but it will make the television companies £140m a year.
Though we know they aren't the same, we can't help conflating growth and wellbeing. Last week, for instance, the Guardian carried the headline "UK standard of living drops below 2005 level ". But the story had nothing to do with our standard of living. Instead it reported that per capita gross domestic product is lower than it was in 2005. GDP is a measure of economic activity, not standard of living. But the terms are confused so often that journalists now treat them as synonyms. The low retail sales of previous months were recently described by this paper as "bleak" and "gloomy". High sales are always "good news", low sales are always "bad news", even if the product on offer is farmyard porn. I believe it's time that the Guardian challenged this biased reporting.
Those who still wish to conflate welfare and GDP argue that high consumption by the wealthy improves the lot of the world's poor. Perhaps, but it's a very clumsy and inefficient instrument. After some 60 years of this feast, 800 million people remain permanently hungry. Full employment is a less likely prospect than it was before the frenzy began.
In a new paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , Sir Partha Dasgupta makes the point that the problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure to be as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.
Most important, no deduction is made to account for the depreciation of natural capital: the overuse or degradation of soil, water, forests, fisheries and the atmosphere. Dasgupta shows that the total wealth of a nation can decline even as its GDP is growing. In Pakistan, for instance, his rough figures suggest that while GDP per capita grew by an average of 2.2% a year between 1970 and 2000, total wealth declined by 1.4%. Amazingly, there are still no official figures that seek to show trends in the actual wealth of nations.
You can say all this without fear of punishment or persecution. But in its practical effects, consumerism is a totalitarian system: it permeates every aspect of our lives. Even our dissent from the system is packaged up and sold to us in the form of anti-consumption consumption, like the "I'm not a plastic bag", which was supposed to replace disposable carriers but was mostly used once or twice before it fell out of fashion, or like the lucrative new books on how to live without money.
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley proposed different totalitarianisms: one sustained by fear, the other in part by greed. Huxley's nightmare has come closer to realisation. In the nurseries of the Brave New World , "the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. 'I do love flying,' they whispered, 'I do love flying, I do love having new clothes ... old clothes are beastly ... We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending'". Underconsumption was considered "positively a crime against society". But there was no need to punish it. At first the authorities machine-gunned the Simple Lifers who tried to opt out, but that didn't work. Instead they used "the slower but infinitely surer methods" of conditioning: immersing people in advertising slogans from childhood. A totalitarianism driven by greed eventually becomes self-enforced.
Let me give you an example of how far this self-enforcement has progressed. In a recent comment thread, a poster expressed an idea that I have now heard a few times. "We need to get off this tiny little world and out into the wider universe ... if it takes the resources of the planet to get us out there, so be it. However we use them, however we utilise the energy of the sun and the mineral wealth of this world and the others of our planetary system, either we do use them to expand and explore other worlds, and become something greater than a mud-grubbing semi-sentient animal, or we die as a species."
This is the consumer society taken to its logical extreme: the Earth itself becomes disposable. This idea appears to be more acceptable in some circles than any restraint on pointless spending. That we might hop, like the aliens in the film Independence Day , from one planet to another, consuming their resources then moving on, is considered by these people a more realistic and desirable prospect than changing the way in which we measure wealth.
So how do we break this system? How do we pursue happiness and wellbeing rather than growth? I came back from the Copenhagen climate talks depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens' summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalised.

2020: China Rises, the U.S. Declines and the Planet Strikes Back

By Michael T. Klare and Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on January 6, 2010, Printed on January 6, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/144968/

You can already see a new style of writing about China emerging in our American world.  The New York Times set it off recently by publishing a front-page piece on a $3.4 billion Chinese investment in one of the planet’s last great copper reserves -- in Afghanistan.  In passing, reporter Michael Wines also pointed out that Chinese energy companies had gained a stronger foothold in the future exploitation of Iraq’s massive oil reserves than had U.S. multinationals.  The ironies were legion and painfully visible. 
Our two wars have been sucking us dry in two countries where state-owned Chinese companies have just scored significant economic victories.  “While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan],” wrote Wines, “China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.”
Already, the follow-up pieces are starting to come out and heady cocktails they are:  one part awe and one part bitterness mixed with one part despair.  In Esquire online, Thomas P.M. Barnett put it this way:  “Worse still: Will the rest of the world end up profiting from our blood and money?... The reason why Obama neglects to mention any regional interests like Pakistan's? Admitting the larger logic of regionalization would make too painfully obvious the nature of our current strategic bankruptcy. Because it would suggest that the only 'victory' to be found would be 'won' by those neighboring powers who did nothing to stabilize the situation. In other words, their 'treasure' and our 'blood.'"  At Foreign Policy online, Stephen M. Walt chimed in:  “While we've been running around playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban and 'investing' billions each year in the corrupt Karzai government, China has been investing in things that might actually be of some value, like a big copper mine.”
Under George W. Bush, the U.S. set out, in part, to turn the Greater Middle East into an American “lake” of energy reserves via two invasions, and you know how that worked out.  The Chinese, on the other hand, only last year sent their warships abroad -- to hunt pirates as part of an international flotilla in the Gulf of Aden -- for the first time since the eunuch Zheng He commanded a Ming dynasty armada that reached Africa six centuries ago.  Unfortunately, as Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, makes clear below, China’s leaders are as unlikely to learn from our deepest mistakes as they were 30-odd years ago when China’s post-Cultural Revolution leadership looked our way and made a logical but calamitous decision: that the auto industry --all those millions of individual cars burning fossil fuels -- would be a crucial pillar of their future industrial development. 
Right now, they may still seem to be acting out a key lesson of this American moment:  Stay off the hard stuff.  You know, all that advanced weaponry (and the military-industrial complex that goes with it), all those aircraft carrier battle groups, all those “expeditionary forces” ready to be sent thousands of miles from home to fight “little wars.”  Once again, however, as Klare suggests, our present symbols of “power” are likely to be their paragon and the future will be a mess.  It’s not enough, it seems, to make money, not war.  Once you have the money, it has to be spent on something and our imaginations remain so limited.
Too bad.  Here’s where you could only wish the future might be a little less predictable.  No such luck, Klare tells us, when it comes to military power as the measure of greatness on planet Earth in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  Tom Engelhardt

The Blowback Effect, 2020
By Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch
As the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, we find ourselves at one of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become visible to all.  If the first decade of the century witnessed profound changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world of 1999 in certain fundamental respects:  the United States remained the world’s paramount military power, the dollar remained the world’s dominant currency, and NATO remained its foremost military alliance, to name just three.
By the end of the second decade of this century, however, our world is likely to have a genuinely different look to it.  Momentous shifts in global power relations and a changing of the imperial guard, just now becoming apparent, will be far more pronounced by 2020 as new actors, new trends, new concerns, and new institutions dominate the global space.  Nonetheless, all of this is the norm of history, no matter how dramatic it may seem to us. 
Less normal -- and so the wild card of the second decade (and beyond) -- is intervention by the planet itself.  Blowback, which we think of as a political phenomenon, will by 2020 have gained a natural component.  Nature is poised to strike back in unpredictable ways whose effects could be unnerving and possibly devastating.   
What, then, will be the dominant characteristics of the second decade of the twenty-first century?  Prediction of this sort is, of course, inherently risky, but extrapolating from current trends, four key aspects of second-decade life can be discerned: the rise of China; the (relative) decline of the United States; the expanding role of the global South; and finally, possibly most dramatically, the increasing impact of a roiling environment and growing resource scarcity.
Let’s start with human history and then make our way into the unknown future history of the planet itself. 
The Ascendant Dragon
That China has become a leading world power is no longer a matter of dispute.  That country’s new-found strength was on full display at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December where it became clear that no meaningful progress was possible on the issue of global warming without Beijing’s assent.  Its growing prominence was also evident in the way it responded to the Great Recession, as it poured multi-billions of dollars into domestic recovery projects, thereby averting a significant slowdown in its economy.  It spent many tens of billions more on raw materials and fresh investments in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, helping to ignite recovery in those regions, too. 
If China is an economic giant today, it will be a powerhouse in 2020. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), that country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will jump from an estimated $3.3 trillion in 2010 to $7.1 trillion in 2020 (in constant 2005 dollars), at which time its economy will exceed all others save that of the United States.  In fact, its GDP then should exceed those of all the nations in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East combined.  As the decade proceeds, China is expected to move steadily up the ladder of technological enhancement, producing ever more sophisticated products, including advanced green energy and transportation systems that will prove essential to future post-carbon economies.  These gains, in turn, will give it increasing clout in international affairs.
China will undoubtedly also use its growing wealth and technological prowess to enhance its military power.  According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China is already the world’s second largest military spender, although the $85 billion it invested in its armed forces in 2008 was a pale shadow of the $607 billion allocated by the United States.  In addition, its forces remain technologically unsophisticated and its weapons are no match for the most modern U.S., Japanese, and European equipment.  However, this gap will narrow significantly in the century’s second decade as China devotes more resources to military modernization.
The critical question is:  How will China use its added power to achieve its objectives?
Until now, China's leaders have wielded its growing strength cautiously, avoiding behavior that would arouse fear or suspicion on the part of neighbors and economic partners.  It has instead employed the power of the purse and “soft power” -- vigorous diplomacy, development aid, and cultural ties -- to cultivate friends and allies.  But will China continue to follow this “harmonious,” non-threatening approach as the risks of forcefully pursuing its national interests diminish?  This appears unlikely.
A more assertive China that showed what the Washington Post called “swagger” was already evident in the final months of 2009 at the summit meetings between presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao in Beijing and Copenhagen.  In neither case did the Chinese side seek a “harmonious” outcome:  In Beijing, it restricted Obama’s access to the media and refused to give any ground on Tibet or tougher sanctions on key energy-trading partner Iran; at a crucial moment in Copenhagen, it actually sent low-ranking officials to negotiate with Obama -- an unmistakable slight -- and forced a compromise that absolved China of binding restraints on carbon emissions. 
If these summits are any indication, Chinese leaders are prepared to play global hard-ball, insisting on compliance with their core demands and giving up little even on matters of secondary importance.  China will find itself ever more capable of acting this way because the economic fortunes of so many countries are now tied to its consumption and investment patterns -- a pivotal global role once played by the United States -- and because its size and location gives it a commanding position in the planet’s most dynamic region.  In addition, in the first decade of the twenty-first century Chinese leaders proved especially adept at nurturing ties with the leaders of large and small countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that will play an ever more important role in energy and other world affairs. 
To what ends will China wield its growing power?  For the top leadership in Beijing, three goals will undoubtedly be paramount: to ensure the continued political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to sustain the fast-paced economic growth which justifies its dominance, and to restore the country’s historic greatness.  All three are, in fact, related:  The CCP will remain in power, senior leaders believe, only so long as it orchestrates continuing economic expansion and satisfies the nationalist aspirations of the public as well as the high command of the People’s Liberation Army.  Everything Beijing does, domestically and internationally, is geared to these objectives.  As the country grows stronger, it will use its enhanced powers to shape the global environment to its advantage just as the United States has done for so long.  In China’s case, this will mean a world wide-open to imports of Chinese goods and to investments that allow Chinese firms to devour global resources, while placing ever less reliance on the U.S. dollar as the medium of international exchange.
The question that remains unanswered:  Will China begin flexing its growing military muscle?  Certainly, Beijing will do so in at least an indirect manner.  By supplying arms and military advisers to its growing network of allies abroad, it will establish a military presence in ever more areas.  My suspicion is that China will continue to avoid the use of force in any situation that might lead to a confrontation with major Western powers, but may not hesitate to bring its military to bear in any clash of national wills involving neighboring countries.  Such a situation could arise, for example, in a maritime dispute over control of the energy-rich South China Sea or in Central Asia, if one of the former Soviet republics became a haven for Uighur militants seeking to undermine Chinese control over Xinjiang Province.
The Eagle Comes in for a Landing
Just as the rise of China is now taken for granted, so, too, is the decline of the United States.  Much has been written about America’s inevitable loss of primacy as this country suffers the consequences of economic mismanagement and imperial overstretch.  This perspective was present in Global Trends 2025, a strategic assessment of the coming decades prepared for the incoming Obama administration by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an affiliate of the Central Intelligence Agency.  “Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor [in 2025],” the NIC predicted, “the United States’ relative strength -- even in the military realm -- will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained.” 
Some unforeseen catastrophe aside, however, the U.S. is not likely to be poorer in 2020 or more backward technologically.  In fact, according to the most recent Department of Energy projections, America’s GDP in 2020 will be approximately $17.5 trillion (in 2005 dollars), nearly one-third greater than today.  Moreover, some of the initiatives already launched by President Obama to stimulate the development of advanced energy systems are likely to begin bearing fruit, possibly giving the United States an edge in certain green technologies.  And don’t forget, the U.S. will remain the globe’s preeminent military power, with China lagging well behind, and no other potential rival able to mobilize even Chinese-level resources to challenge U.S. military advantages. 
What will change is America’s position relative to China and other nations -- and so, of course, its ability to dominate the global economy and the world political agenda.  Again using DoE projections, we find that in 2005, America’s GDP of $12.4 trillion exceeded that of all the nations of Asia and South America combined, including Brazil, China, India, and Japan.  By 2020, the combined GDP of Asia and South America will be about 40% greater than that of the U.S., and growing at a much faster rate.   By then, the United States will be deeply indebted to more solvent foreign nations, especially China, for the funds needed to pay for continuing budget deficits occasioned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget, the federal stimulus package, and the absorption of “toxic assets” from troubled banks and corporations. 
Count on this, though:  in an increasingly competitive world economy in which U.S. firms enjoy ever diminishing advantages, the prospects for ordinary Americans will be distinctly dimmer.  Some sectors of the economy, and some parts of the country, will certainly continue to thrive, but others will surely suffer Detroit’s fate, becoming economically hollowed out and experiencing wholesale impoverishment.  For many -- perhaps most -- Americans, the world of 2020 may still provide a standard of living far superior to that enjoyed by a majority of the world; but the perks and advantages that most middle class folks once took for granted -- college education, relatively accessible (and affordable) medical care, meals out, foreign travel -- will prove significantly harder to come by.
Even America’s military advantage will be much eroded.  The colossal costs of the disastrous Iraq and Afghan wars will set limits on the nation’s ability to undertake significant military missions abroad.  Keep in mind that, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, a significant proportion of the basic combat equipment of the Army and Marine Corps has been damaged or destroyed in these wars, while the fighting units themselves have been badly battered by multiple tours of duty.  Repairing this damage would require at least a decade of relative quiescence, which is nowhere in sight.
The growing constraints on American power were recently acknowledged by President Obama in an unusual setting:  his West Point address announcing a troop surge in Afghanistan.  Far from constituting a triumphalist expression of American power and preeminence, like President Bush’s speeches on the Iraq War, his was an implicit admission of decline.  Alluding to the hubris of his predecessor, Obama noted, “We’ve failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.  In the wake of the economic crisis, too many of our neighbors and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills…. Meanwhile, competition in the global economy has grown more fierce.  So we simply can’t afford to ignore the price of these wars.”   
Many have chosen to interpret Obama’s Afghan surge decision as a typical twentieth-century-style expression of America’s readiness to intervene anywhere on the planet at a moment’s notice.  I view it as a transitional move meant to prevent the utter collapse of an ill-conceived military venture at a time when the United States is increasingly being forced to rely on non-military means of persuasion and the cooperation, however tempered, of allies.  President Obama said as much:   “We’ll have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power…. And we can’t count on military might alone.”  Increasingly, this will be the mantra of strategic planning that will govern the American eagle in decline. 
The Rising South
The second decade of the century will also witness the growing importance of the global South:  the formerly-colonized, still-developing areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  Once playing a relatively marginal role in world affairs, they were considered open territory, there to be invaded, plundered, and dominated by the major powers of Europe, North America, and (for a time) Japan.  To some degree, the global South, a.k.a. the “Third World,” still plays a marginal role, but that is changing. 
Once a member in good standing of the global South, China is now an economic superpower and India is well on its way to earning this status.  Second-tier states of the South, including Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey, are on the rise economically, and even the smallest and least well-off nations of the South have begun to attract international attention as providers of crucial raw materials or as sites of intractable problems including endemic terrorism and crime syndicates.
To some degree, this is a product of numbers -- growing populations and growing wealth.  In 2000, the population of the global South stood at an estimated 4.9 billion people; by 2020, that number is expected to hit 6.4 billion.  Many of these new inhabitants of planet Earth will be poor and disenfranchised, but most will be workers (in either the formal or informal economy), many will participate in the political process in some way, and some will be entrepreneurs, labor leaders, teachers, criminals, or militants.  Whatever the case, they will make their presence felt.
The nations of the South will also play a growing economic role as sources of raw materials in an era of increasing scarcity and founts of entrepreneurial vitality.  By one estimate, the combined GDP of the global South (excluding China) will jump from $7.8 trillion in 2005 to $15.8 trillion in 2020, an increase of more than 100%.  In particular, many of the prime deposits of oil, natural gas, and the key minerals needed in the global North to keep the industrial system going are facing wholesale depletion after decades of hyper-intensive extraction, leaving only the deposits in the South to be exploited. 
Take oil:  In 1990, 43% of world daily oil output was supplied by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (the major Persian Gulf producers plus Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela), other African and Latin American producers, and the Caspian Sea countries; by 2020, their share will rise to 58%.  A similar shift in the center of gravity of world mineral production will take place, with unexpected countries like Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Niger (a major uranium supplier), and the Democratic Republic of Congo taking on potentially crucial roles.
Inevitably, the global South will also play a conspicuous role in a series of potentially devastating developments.  Combine persistent deep poverty, economic desperation, population growth, and intensifying climate degradation and you have a recipe for political unrest, insurgency, religious extremism, increased criminality, mass migrations, and the spread of disease.  The global North will seek to immunize itself from these disorders by building fences of every sort, but through sheer numbers alone, the inhabitants of the South will make their presence felt, one way or another. 
The Planet Strikes Back
All of this might represent nothing more than the normal changing of the imperial guard on planet Earth, if that planet itself weren’t undergoing far more profound changes than any individual power or set of powers, no matter how strong.  The ever more intrusive realities of global warming, resource scarcity, and food insufficiency will, by the end of this century’s second decade, be undeniable and, if not by 2020, then in the decades to come, have the capacity to put normal military and economic power, no matter how impressive, in the shade. 
“There is little doubt about the main trends,” Professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in awarding the Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore in December 2007:  “More and more scientists have reached ever closer agreement concerning the increasingly dramatic consequences that will follow from global warming.”  Likewise, a growing body of energy experts hasconcluded that the global production of conventional oil will soon reach a peak (if it hasn’t already) and decline, producing a worldwide energy shortage.  Meanwhile, fears of future food emergencies, prompted in part by global warming and high energy prices, are becoming more widespread.
All of this was apparent when world leaders met in Copenhagen and failed to establish an effective international regime for reducing the emission of climate-altering greenhouse gases (GHGs).  Even though they did agree to keep talking and comply with a non-binding, aspirational scheme to cut back on GHGs, observers believe that such efforts are unlikely to lead to meaningful progress in controlling global warming in the near future.  What few doubt is that the pace of climate change will accelerate destructively in the second decade of this century, that conventional (liquid) petroleum and other key resources will become scarcer and more difficult to extract, and that food supplies will diminish in many poor, environmentally vulnerable areas.
Scientists do not agree on the precise nature, timing, and geographical impact of climate-change effects, but they do generally agree that, as we move deeper into the century, we will be seeing an exponential increase in the density of the heat-trapping greenhouse-gas layer in the atmosphere as the consumption of fossil fuels grows and past smokestack emissions migrate to the outer atmosphere.  DoE data indicates, for example, that between 1990 and 2005, world carbon dioxide emissions grew by 32%, from 21.5 to 31.0 billion metric tons.  It can take as much as 50 years for GHGs to reach the greenhouse layer, which means that their effect will increase even if -- as appears unlikely -- the nations of the world soon begin to reduce their future emissions.
In other words, the early manifestations of global warming in the first decade of this century -- intensifying hurricanes and typhoons, torrential rains followed by severe flooding in some areas and prolonged, even record-breaking droughts in others, melting ice-caps and glaciers, and rising sea levels -- will all become more pronounced in the second.  As suggested by the IPCC in its 2007 report, uninhabitable dust bowls are likely to emerge in large areas of Central and Northeast Asia, Mexico and the American Southwest, and the Mediterranean basin.  Significant parts of Africa are likely to be devastated by rising temperatures and diminished rainfall.  More cities are likely to undergo the sort of flooding and destruction experienced by New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.   And blistering summers, as well as infrequent or negligible rainfall, will limit crop production in key food-producing regions.
Progress will be evident in the development of renewable energy systems, such as wind, solar, and biofuels.  Despite the vast sums now being devoted to their development, however, they will still provide only a relatively small share of world energy in 2020.  According to DoE projections, renewables will take care of only 10.5% of world energy needs in 2020, while oil and other petroleum liquids will still make up 32.6% of global supplies; coal, 27.1%; and natural gas, 23.8%.  In other words, greenhouse gas production will rage on -- and, ironically, should it not, thanks to expected shortfalls in the supply of oil, that in itself will likely prove another kind of disaster, pushing up the prices ofall energy sources and endangering economic stability.  Most industry experts, including those at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, believe that it will be nearly impossible to continue increasing the output of conventional and unconventional petroleum (including tough to harvest Arctic oil, Canadian tar sands, and shale oil) without increasingly implausible fresh investments of trillions of dollars, much of which would have to go into war-torn, unstable areas like Iraq or corrupt, unreliable states like Russia. 
In the latest hit movie Avatar, the lush, mineral-rich moon Pandora is under assault by human intruders seeking to extract a fabulously valuable mineral called "unobtainium."  Opposing them are not only a humanoid race called the Na’vi, loosely modeled on Native Americans and Amazonian jungle dwellers, but also the semi-sentient flora and fauna of Pandora itself.   While our own planet may not possess such extraordinary capabilities, it is clear that the environmental damage caused by humans since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is producing a natural blowback effect which will become increasingly visible in the coming decade.
These, then, are the four trends most likely to dominate the second decade of this century.  Perhaps others will eventually prove more significant, or some set of catastrophic events will further alter the global landscape, but for now expect the dragon ascendant, the eagle descending, the South rising, and the planet possibly trumping all of these. 
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency.
Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.

Published on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 by Creators.com
Anti-Terrorism Officials Are Regulating Us, Not Terrorists
by Jim Hightower
You didn't get a virgin when you drew me as one of your political commentators, for I've been through the fires of Texas politics, including having been elected state agriculture commissioner. Among other duties, this office made me the regulator of such matters as pesticide use, the accuracy of gas pump gauges and even the sizing of eggs.
I can tell you from experience that wielding regulatory authority is both a blessing and a curse for political officials. You can do some real good for the public, but your best efforts can also make fast enemies of the regulatees.
So my general instruction to the staff was that we should not regulate just for the hell of it, just because we could. Rather, any rules we imposed should respond to a real need and should actually work - work in the sense that they would deliver the protection the public needs.
We had a little internal slogan to guide us: "When in doubt, try common sense."
I'd like to loan this slogan to the national authorities in charge of protecting us from terrorist attacks, for they seem determined to restrict the American people rather than actually to stop terrorists. In response to the deranged Nigerian who tried to blow up a passenger jet with his underwear on Christmas Day, they've done a collective regulatory knee-jerk that is kicking us ever deeper into the wilds of security silliness.
This was not their first knee-jerk. Thanks to the fizzled shoe bomb incident aboard a 2001 flight, they still require all of us who fly in our Land of the Free to bow to the gods of global terrorism before entering the terminal by removing our booties and putting our tiny tubes of toothpaste in little zippy bags. This ridiculous ritual, we're told, will fend off another shoe bomber.
But terrorists seem to be somewhat adaptive (gosh, who could've imagined it?), so the latest attack comes not from shoes, but from an al-Qaida guy's shorts.
The only way to stop this, cry the knee-jerkers, is to have authorities peek under every passenger's skivvies.
To allow airport screeners to do just that, corporate profiteers are peddling super-sophisticated x-ray machines with "superman eyes." You will have to stand in the scanner, and spread your legs and raise your arms in the arrest position to give your friendly screener a front-and-back, full-body look right through your clothes. Supposedly, faces will be blurred out, but body contours of every man, woman and child who flies will be on the screen - and some images almost certainly will pop up on Internet postings. "So what?" bark the authorities. Freedom comes at a price, and this new rule is all about us protecting you.
Really? Let's note that one of the big backers of the full-body technology is former homeland security honcho Michael Chertoff. In dozens of interviews he gave after the Christmas incident, Chertoff demanded nationwide deployment of these machines to stop more underwear attacks by terrorists. Now, guess whose Washington consulting firm represents Rapiscan Systems, one of the major contractors selling the machines to the government. Right. Chertoff's firm.
Rather than searching every one of us, officials need to be searching for actual terrorists, using old-fashioned intelligence-gathering and common-sense coordination to stop assailants before they even get to an airport. The Christmas Day bomber should never have gotten near that plane, for he was known by U.S. officials to be a terrorist threat.
How did they know? His own father told our officials about him last November! Yet, in a gross failure of inter-agency communications, no official revoked his visa or put him on the "no fly" list.
Our authorities want us to pay (in cash and liberties) for a whiz-bang technological gimmick that will enrich a couple of corporations, but will do nothing to stop the next thing the terrorists come up with. Let's raise common sense to high places. One group fighting this latest technological silliness can be reached at flyersrights.org.

Robert Kuttner

Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect
Huffington Post: January 3, 2010 11:00 PM

New Year's Resolution: Clean House

President Obama's own instincts on how do deal with the economy seem to be somewhat better than those of his most senior advisers. At the White House jobs summit in December, he sounded less like Larry Summers or Tim Geithner and more like the man we heard on the campaign trail.
But Obama is under immense political pressure from the center and the right, and from some of his own top aides such as OMB Director Peter Orszag, to put deficit reduction ahead of job creation. Last month, the House Democratic leadership decided to jump the gun on the administration to create some salutary pressure from the left, and put forward a $154 billion jobs package, which included $50 billion in public works plus emergency aid to the states and extension of unemployment benefits.
On December 16, the bill just barely passed, 218-214 -- with several defections of conservative Democrats, and no help whatever from the White House. Had the bill failed, that would have doomed any Obama jobs program as politically unrealistic. Why didn't the president weigh in with wavering Dems?
We will soon find out, in the State of the Union Address, whether Obama will deliver on his promises to do something more about jobs, or whether his more conservative economic advisers will prevail.
If you are a congenital optimist about this president, your story goes something like this: Now that health care is almost wrapped up, and the decision about how to proceed in Afghanistan has been made (like it or not), Obama can turn more of his laser-like attention to the economy. As time passes, the health bill will look better than it does now, because at least it represents the beginning of federal regulation of the insurance industry, and the beginning of the end of employer-provided insurance.
Also, say the optimists, Obama may be losing some public support, but just look at the lunatic Republicans; they have even less support. Finally, some of the greatest presidents looked pretty feeble after just a year. Lincoln was losing the Civil War. John Kennedy couldn't get Congress to act and Nikita Khrushchev had adjudged him a weakling. Give the guy a little more time.
I happen to think that this comforting talk is mostly delusional. The path that Obama is on, unless he alters it fast, will lead to prolonged economic stagnation and Republican champagne next November. If you think a lunatic-fringe Republican party is any protection, look at the blowout victory of Pat Robertson protégé Bob McConnell in the Virginia governor's race two months ago. And this in a blue-trending state.
As Obama famously said when Senator McCain tried to use the financial crisis as a pretext to back out of the debate scheduled for Oxford, Mississippi, a president needs to be able to do more than one thing at a time. This president did not lift a finger as Congress gutted his bill on financial reform. That was the same week that Obama gave a rather calculated interview to Sixty Minutes, in which he blasted the bankers for not doing more about mortgage relief. But he didn't walk the talk. Despite brave rhetoric, the administration's mortgage program is a failure.
A financial industry that is alive thanks only to taxpayer bailouts continues to use its political influence to block reform and the president takes it while his Treasury Department keeps spooning out the help.
One problem is Obama's own penchant for consensus and compromise. As Matt Bai observed in Sunday's Times, Obama's line in the Sixty Minutesinterview, "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of far cat bankers" just didn't sound like Obama. It "gave the impression of a man trying on an ill-fitting suit." But the next day, when the president sat down for an amiable chat with the same bankers, opined Bai, that was the real Obama.
True enough. But where Bai has it totally wrong is to insist that Obama would be ill-advised to strike a more populist set of rhetoric or policies. Bai contrasts failed "populists" such as Huey Long and William Jennings Bryan with successful "progressives" such as the Roosevelts. But of course FDR sided with the people against the banks. His entirely populist brand of progressivism delivered for regular people. Bankers hated FDR. Obama has yet to earn Wall Street's enmity.
Obama's professorial caution, Bai insists, reflects a leader who is "serious and methodical" about reforming the banks, and that beats hot rhetoric. If only Bai's fantasy were true. All that Obama's conciliatory caution has produced so far is legislation that sells out to the bankers.
What will it take for Obama to recover his footing? Some key personnel changes might be a start. As investigative reporters did deeper into the mess that Larry Summers made of Harvard's finances, you have to be thankful that the man isn't running the nation's economy (oh, whoops, he is.)
Summers reinforces all of Obama's conservative instincts and none of his progressive ones.
Tim Geithner, who was in charge of relations with Congress for Obama as the House deliberated the financial reform bill, weighed in mostly on the wrong side. If Obama is truly to signal a change of course and mean it, one constructive sign would be replacements for Summers and Geithner.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may pay for these sins. Bernanke, needlessly appointed by Obama to a second term, has become the lightening rod for popular frustration at the Wall Street bias of this administration, and there could easily be 35 or 40 Senate votes against his confirmation -- the most in the history of a Fed chairman. A majority of Republicans on the Banking Committee voted no and most Republicans, attuned to this backlash, will likely vote no on the floor. Democrats must decide whether to save him. You can bet Obama will be personally be working this vote.
Thus far at the Obama White House, unfortunately, it's only progressives who get thrown under the proverbial bus. White House Counsel Greg Craig was forced out for the sin of taking Obama seriously when the president promised to close the prison at Guantanamo and end CIA complicity in torture. This could have opened several former top CIA people to acute embarrassment.
Sources tell me that CIA chief Leon Panetta, who as Clinton chief of staff saved Rahm Emanuel's bacon when Emanuel was nearly fired, called in an IOU.
But isn't prolonging the recession by propping up insolvent banks rather than emphasizing jobs and mortgage relief as serious a sin as embarrassing the CIA?
To replace Summers, how about his old nemesis, Joe Stiglitz, author of the superb new book Freefall? And to succeed Geithner, maybe Geithner's most astute critic, Elizabeth Warren of the Congressional Oversight Panel? Or the courageous FDIC Chair who keeps standing up to Geithner, Sheila Bair?
Let's not give up on the promise of Barack Obama. There is just too much at stake, and there is a part of him that has decent progressive instincts. But he is being led to ruin both by the insularity of a circle of advisers too wired to Wall Street, and by his own habitual temporizing. It will take a lot for Obama to change his operating style. Turning to a broader circle of advisers would help.

US Is Increasing Its Hegemony As the "Global War Gladiator" Under Obama

By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on January 4, 2010, Printed on January 4, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/144910/

According to the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger.  We don’t name our years, but if we did, this one might prospectively be called the Year of the Assassin.
We, of course, think of ourselves as something like the peaceable kingdom.  After all, the shock of September 11, 2001 was that “war” came to “the homeland,” a mighty blow delivered against the very symbols of our economic, military, and -- had Flight 93 not gone down in a field in Pennsylvania -- political power.   
Since that day, however, war has been a stranger in our land.  With the rarest of exceptions, like Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, this country has remained a world without war or any kind of mobilization for war.  No other major terrorist attacks, not even victory gardens, scrap-metal collecting, or rationing.  And certainly no war tax to pay for our post-9/11 trillion-dollar “expeditionary forces” sent into battle abroad.  Had we the foresight to name them, the last few years domestically might have reflected a different kind of carnage -- 2006, the Year of the Subprime Mortgage; 2007, the Year of the Bonus; 2008, the Year of the Meltdown; 2009, the Year of the Bailout.  And perhaps some would want to label 2010, prematurely or not, the Year of Recovery. 
Although our country delivers war regularly to distant lands in the name of our “safety,” we don’t really consider ourselves at war (despite the endless talk of “supporting our troops”), and the money that has simply poured into Pentagon coffers, and then into weaponry and conflicts is, with rare exceptions, never linked to economic distress in this country.  And yet, if we are no nation of warriors, from the point of view of the rest of the world we are certainly the planet’s foremost war-makers.  If money talks, then war may be what we care most about as a society and fund above all else, with the least possible discussion or debate. 
In fact, according to military expert William Hartung, the Pentagon budget has risen in every year of the new century, an unprecedented run in our history.  We dominate the global arms trade, monopolizing almost 70% of the arms business in 2008, with Italy coming in a vanishingly distant second.  We put more money into the funding of war, our armed forces, and the weaponry of war than the next 25 countries combined (and that’s without even including Iraq and Afghan war costs).  We garrison the planet in a way no empire or nation in history has ever done.  And we plan for the future, for “the next war” -- on the ground, on the seas, and in space -- in a way that is surely unique.  If our two major wars of the twenty-first century in Iraq and Afghanistan are any measure, we also get less bang for our buck than any nation in recent history. 
So, let’s pause a moment as the New Year begins and take stock of ourselves as what we truly are:  the preeminent war-making machine on planet Earth.  Let’s peer into the future, and consider just what the American way of war might have in store for us in 2010.  Here are 10 questions, the answers to which might offer reasonable hints as to just how much U.S. war efforts are likely to intensify in the Greater Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia, in the year to come.
1. How busted will the largest defense budget in history be in 2010? 
Strange, isn’t it, that the debate about hundreds of billions of dollars in health-care costs in Congress can last almost a year, filled with turmoil and daily headlines, while a $636 billion defense budget can pass in a few days, as it did in late December, essentially without discussion and with nary a headline in sight?  And in case you think that $636 billion is an honest figure, think again -- and not just because funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal and actual “homeland defense,” among other things most countries would chalk up as military costs, wasn’t included. 
If you want to put a finger to the winds of war in 2010, keep your eye on something else not included in that budget: the Obama administration’s upcoming supplemental funding request for the Afghan surge.  In his West Point speech announcing his surge decision, the president spoke of sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan in 2010 at a cost of $30 billion.  In news reports, that figure quickly morphed into “$30-$40 billion,” none of it in the just-passed Pentagon budget.  To fund his widening war, sometime in the first months of the New Year, the president will have to submit a supplemental budget to Congress -- something the Bush administration did repeatedly to pay for George W.’s wars, and something this president, while still a candidate, swore he wouldn’t do.  Nonetheless, it will happen.  So keep your eye on that $30 billion figure.  Even that distinctly low-ball number is going to cause discomfort and opposition in the president’s party -- and yet there’s no way it will fully fund this year’s striking escalation of the war.  The question is:  How high will it go or, if the president doesn’t dare ask this Congress for more all at once, how will the extra funds be found?  Keep your eye out, then, for hints of future supplemental budgets, because fighting the Afghan War (forget Iraq) over the next decade could prove a near trillion-dollar prospect. 
Neither battles won nor al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders killed will be the true measure of victory or defeat in the Afghan War.  For Americans at home, even victory as modestly defined by this administration -- blunting the Taliban’s version of a surge -- could prove disastrous in terms of our financial capabilities.  Guns and butter?  That’s going to be a surefire no-go.  So keep watching and asking:  How busted could the U.S. be by 2011?
2. Will the U.S. Air Force be the final piece in the Afghan surge? 
As 2010 begins, almost everything is in surge mode in Afghanistan, including rising numbers of U.S. troops, private contractors, State Department employees, and new bases.  In this period, only the U.S. Air Force (drones excepted) has stood down.  Under orders from Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal, based on the new make-nice counterinsurgency strategy he’s implementing, air power is anything but surging.  The use of the Air Force, even in close support of U.S. troops in situations in which Afghan civilians are anywhere nearby, has been severely restricted.  There has already been grumbling about this in and around the military.  If things don’t go well -- and quickly -- in the expanding war, expect frustration to grow and the pressure to rise to bring air power to bear.  Already unnamed intelligence officials are leaking warnings that, with the Taliban insurgency expanding its reach, “time is running out.”  Counterinsurgency strategies are notorious for how long they take to bear fruit (if they do at all).  When Americans are dying, maintaining a surge without a surge of air power is sure to be a test of will and patience (neither of which is an American strong suit).  So keep your eye on the Air Force next year.  If the planes start to fly more regularly and destructively, you’ll know that things aren’t looking up for General McChrystal and his campaign.    
3.  How big will the American presence in Pakistan be as 2010 ends? 
Let’s start with the fact that it’s already bigger than most of us imagine.  Thanks to Nationmagazine reporter Jeremy Scahill, we know that, from a base in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, officers of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, with the help of hired hands from the notorious private security contractor Xe (formerly Blackwater), “plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”  Small numbers of U.S. Special Forces operatives have also reportedly been sent in to train Pakistan’s special forces.  U.S. spies are in the country.  U.S. missile- and bomb-armed drones, both CIA- and Air Force-controlled, have been conducting escalating operations in the country’s tribal borderlands.  U.S. Special Operations forces have conducted at least four cross-border raids into Pakistan’s tribal borderlands unsanctioned by the Pakistani government or military (only one of which was publicly reported in this country).  And the CIA and the State Department have been attempting (against some Pakistani resistance) to build up their personnel and facilities in-country.  This, mind you, is only what we know in a situation in which secrecy is the order of the day and rumors fly. 
In the meantime, the Obama administration has been threateningto widen its drone war (and possibly other operations) to thepowder-keg province of Baluchistan, where most of the Afghan Taliban’s leadership reportedly resides (evidently under Pakistani protection) and to the fighters of the Haqqani network, linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, in the Pakistani border province of North Waziristan.  Right now, these threats from Washington are clearly meant to motivate the Pakistani military to do the job instead.  But as that is unlikely -- both groups are seen by its military as key players in the country’s future anti-Indian policies in Afghanistan -- they may not remain mere threats for long.  Any such U.S. moves are only likely to widen the Af-Pak war and further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan.  In addition, the Pakistani military is not powerless vis-à-vis the U.S.  For one thing, as Robert Dreyfuss of the Nation’s “Dreyfuss Report” recently pointed out, it has a potential stranglehold on the tortuous U.S. supply lines into Afghanistan, already under attack by Taliban militants, that make the war there possible. 
Pakistan is the Catch-22 of Obama’s surge.  As in the Vietnam War years, sanctuaries across the border ensure limited success in any escalating war effort, but going after those sanctuaries in a major way would be a war-widening move of genuine desperation.  As with the Air Force in Afghanistan, watch Pakistan not just for spreading drone operations, but for the use of U.S. troops.  If by year’s end Special Operations forces or U.S. troops are periodically on the ground in that country, don’t be shocked.  However it may be explained, this will represent a dangerous failure of the first order.
4.  How much smaller will the American presence in Iraq be?
Barack Obama swept into office, in part, on a pledge to end the U.S. war in Iraq.  Almost a year after he entered the White House, more than 100,000 U.S. troops are still deployed in that country (about the same number as in February 2004).  Still, plans developed at the end of the Bush presidency, and later confirmed by President Obama, have set the U.S. on an apparent path of withdrawal.  On this the president has been unambiguous.  “Let me say this as plainly as I can,” he told a military audience in February 2009. “By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end... I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.”  However, Robert Gates, his secretary of defense, has not been so unequivocal.  While recently visiting Iraq, he disclosed that the U.S. Air Force would likely continue to operate in that country well into the future.  He also said:  “I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see agreements between ourselves and the Iraqis that continues a train, equip, and advise role beyond the end of 2011.” 
For 2010, expect platitudes about withdrawal from the President and other administration spokespeople, while Defense Department officials and military commanders offer more “pragmatic” (and realistic) assessments.  Keep an eye out for signs this year of a coming non-withdrawal withdrawal in 2011.
5.  What will the New Year mean for the Pentagon's base-building plans in our war zones?
As the U.S. war in Afghanistan ramps up, look for American bases there to continue along last year’s path, becoming bigger, harder, more numerous, and more permanent-looking.  As estimates of the time it will take to get the president’s extra boots on the ground in Afghanistan increase, look as well for the construction of more helipads, fuel pits, taxiways, and tarmac space on the forward operating bases sprouting especially across the southern parts of that country.  These will be meant to speed the movement of surge troops into rural battle zones, while eschewing increasingly dangerous ground routes. 
In Iraq, expect the further consolidation of a small number of U.S. mega-bases as American troops pull back to ever fewer sites offering an ever lower profile in that country.  Keep your eyes, in particular, on giant Balad Air Base and on Camp Victory outside Baghdad.  These were built for the long term.  If Washington doesn’t begin preparing to turn them over to the Iraqis, then start thinking 2012 and beyond.  Elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region, look for the U.S. military to continue upgrading its many bases, while militarily working to strengthen the security forces of country after autocratic country, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, in part to continue to rattle Iran’s cage.  If those bases keep growing, don’t imagine us drawing down in the region any time soon. 
6.  Will the U.S. and Israel thwart the Iranian insurgency?
Iran has long been under siege.  A founding member of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” the Islamic Republic was long on his administration’s hit list.  It also found itself in the unenviable position of watching the American military occupy and garrison two bordering countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, while also building or bolstering bases in nearby Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.  The Obama administration is now poised to increase key military aid to Iran’s nemesis, Israel, and the Pentagon has flooded allied regimes in the region with advanced weaponry.  Years of saber-rattling and sanctions, encirclement and threats nonetheless seemed to have little palpable effect.  In 2009, however, a disputed election brought Iranians into the streets and, months later, they’re still there.
What foreign militarism couldn’t do, ordinary Iranians themselves now threaten to accomplish.  In earlier street protests, young middle-class activists in Tehran chanting “Where is our vote?" were beaten and martyred by security forces.  Today, the protestscontinue and oppositional Iranians from all social strata are refusing to retreat while, when provoked, sometimes fighting back against the police or the regime’s fearsome Basiji militia, even inducing some of them to step aside or switch sides. 
A continuing cycle of ever-spreading arrests, protests, and violence in 2010 threatens to further destabilize the regime.  How Washington reacts could, however, deeply affect what happens.  The memory of the CIA’s toppling of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 is still alive in Iran.  Any perceived U.S. interference could have grave results for the Iranian insurgency, as could Israeli actions.  Recently, President Obama, evidently trying to bring the Chinese into line on the question of imposing fiercer sanctions, reportedly told China’s president that the United States could not restrain Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities much longer.  Such an Israeli attack would certainly strengthen the current Iranian regime; so, undoubtedly, would pressure to increase potentially crippling sanctions on that country over its nuclear program.  Either or both would help further cement the current tumultuous status quo in the Middle East.
7.  Will Yemen become the fourth major front in Washington’s global war?
George W. Bush unabashedly proclaimed himself a “war president.”  President Obama seems to be taking up the same mantle.  Right now, the Obama administration’s war fronts include the inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a not-so-covert war in Pakistan, and a potential new war in Yemen.  (There are also rarely commented upon ongoing military actions in the Philippines and a U.S.-aided drug war in Colombia, as well as periodic strikes in Somalia.)  Though the surge in Afghanistan and Pakistan was supposed to contain al-Qaeda there, the U.S. now finds itself focusing on yet another country and another of that organization’s morphing offspring.   
In 2002, a USA Today article about a targeted assassination in Yemen began: “Opening up a visible new front in the war on terror, U.S. forces launched a pinpoint missile strike in Yemen...”  Just over seven years later, following multiple U.S. cruise missiles launched into the country and targeted air strikesby the air force of the U.S.-aided Yemeni regime against “suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda,” the New York Timesannounced, “In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.”  In the wake of a botched airplane terror attack by a single young Nigerian Muslim, and credit-taking by a group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the usual cheery crew of U.S. war advocates are lining up behind the next potential front in the war on terror.  (Senator Joseph Lieberman:  "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war.")  What began as a one-off Bush assassination effort now threatens to become another of Obama’s wars. 
The U.S. has not only sent Special Forces teams into the country, but is now pouring tens of millions of dollars into Yemen’s security forces in a dramatic move to significantly arm yet another Middle Eastern country.  At the same time, U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia -- whose alliance with Washington ignited the current war with al-Qaeda -- is aiding the Yemeni forces in a war against Houthi rebels there. 
This is a witch’s brew of trouble.  Keep your eye on Yemen (with an occasional side glance at Somalia, the failed state across the Gulf of Aden).  Expect more funding, more trainers, more proxy warfare, and possibly a whole new conflict for 2010. 
8.  How brutal will the American way of war be in 2010? 
When it comes to war, American-style, the key word of 2009 was “counterinsurgency” or COIN.  Think of it as the kindly version of war the American way, a strategy based on “clearing and holding” territory and “protecting” the civilian population.  Its value, as expounded by Afghan War commander McChrystal, lies not in killing the enemy but in winning over “the people.”  On paper, it sounds good, like a kinder, gentler version of war, but historically counterinsurgency operations have almost invariably gone into the ditch of brutality.  So here’s one word you should keep your eyes out for in 2010:  “counterterrorism.”  Consider it the dark underside of counterinsurgency.  Instead of boots on the ground, it’s bullets to the head. 
General McChrystal was, until recently, a counterterrorism guy.  He ran the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His operatives were referred to, more or less politely, as “manhunters.”  Think:  assassins.  With McChrystal, a general who credits his large-scale assassination program for a great deal of the Iraq surge’s success in 2007, it was just a matter of time before counterterrorism -- which is just terrorism put in uniform and given an anodyne name -- was ramped up in Afghanistan (and undoubtedly Pakistan as well).  Though the planes may still be grounded, the special ops guys who kick in doors in the middle of the night and have often been responsible for grievous civilian casualties will evidently be going at it full tilt. 
As 2009 ended, the news that black-ops forces were being loosed in a significant way was just hitting the press.  So watch for that word “counterterrorism.”  If it proliferates, you’ll know that the expanding Afghan War is getting down and dirty in a big way.  For Americans, 2010 could be the year of the assassin. 
9. Where will the drones go in 2010?
If there’s one thing to keep your eye on in the coming year, it might be the unmanned aerial vehicles -- drones -- flown secretly, in the case of the Air Force, from distant al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and, in the case of the CIA, even more distantly out of Langley, Virginia.  American drones are already in a widening air war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, while Washington threatens to create an even wider one.  Think of these robotic planes as the leading edge of global war, American-style.  While “hot pursuit” into Pakistan may still be forbidden to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the drones have long had a kind of hot-pursuit carte blanche in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands. 
Perhaps more important, they can, to steal a Star Trek line, boldly go where no man has gone before.  Since the first drone assassination attack of the Global War on Terror -- in Yemen in 2002 -- in which several men, reputedly al-Qaeda militants, were incinerated inside a car, drones have been taking war into new territory.  They have already struck in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and possibly Somalia.  As the first robot terminators of our age, they symbolize the loosing of American war-making powers from the oversight of Congress and the American people.  In principle, they have made borders (hence national sovereignty) increasingly insignificant as assassination attacks can be launched 24/7 against those we deem our enemies, on the basis of unknown intelligence or evidence. 
With our drones, there is little price to be paid if, as has regularly enough been the case, those enemies turn out not to be in the right place at the right time and others die in their stead.  Globally, we have become the world’s leading state assassins -- a judge, jury, and executioner beyond the bounds of all accountability.  In essence, those pilot-less planes turn us into a law of war unto ourselves.  It’s a chilling development.  Watch for it to spread in 2010, and keep an eye out for which countries, fielding their own drones, follow down the path we’re pioneering, for in our age all war-making developments invariably proliferate -- and fast.   
The Element of Surprise
We know one thing:  2010 will be another year of war for the United States and, from assassination campaigns to new fronts in what is no longer called the Global War on Terror but is no less global or based on terror, it could get a lot uglier.  The Obama administration may, from time to time, talk withdrawal, but across the Middle East and Central Asia, the Pentagon and its contractors are digging in.  In the meantime, more money, not less, is being put into preparations and planning for future wars.  As William Hartung points out, “if the government’s current plans are carried out, there will be yearly increases in military spending for at least another decade.”
When it comes to war, the only questions are:  How wide?  How much?  Not:  How long?  Washington’s answer to that question has already been given, not in public pronouncements, but in that Pentagon budget and the planning that goes with it:  forever and a day. 
Of course, only diamonds are forever.  Sooner or later, like great imperial powers of the past, we, too, will find that the stress of fighting a continuous string of wars in distant lands in inhospitable climes tells on us.  Whether we “win” or not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Yemen, we lose. 
Which brings us to our last question:
10.  What will surprise us in 2010? 
It would be the height of hubris to imagine that we can truly see into the future, especially when it comes to war.  It is, in fact, Washington’s hubris to believe itself in control of its own war-making destiny, whether via shock-and-awe tactics that are certain to work, a netcentric military-lite that can’t fail, or most recently, a force dedicated to a “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan and, in the future, globally (under the ominous new acronym GCOIN). 
The essence of war is surprise.  So, despite all those billions of dollars and the high-tech weaponry, and the nine areas discussed above, keep your eyes open for the unexpected and confounding, and in the meantime, welcome to the grim spectacle of war American-style as the second decade of the twenty-first century begins in turmoil.

Published on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Leading an Empire in Decline: Obama’s First Year
by Lewis Seiler & Dan Hamburg
Almost a year ago, in an editorial published on this site we called on Barack Obama to be the hero our country so sorely needed. We pointed back in time to the flush of hope that greeted Bill Clinton's election in 1992, hope that was quickly dashed on the shoals of NAFTA and the Contract with America. Would Obama's early tenure follow a similar trajectory?
So far it has. Obama's first year, including the ongoing health care snafu, has served only to amplify the fact that the government of our country is run by corporations. As Ralph Nader pointed out over a decade ago, it is government "of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and for the DuPonts." Meanwhile, these corporate "persons" slyly deflect public anger back onto the government for the dysfunction and cruelty that results.
This is a society in which the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider even as the work-for-a-living class forks it over to cover bad bets made by the wealthiest. It's a society in which health care remains a privilege, tens of millions of middle-class homes are submerged and untold millions of well-paying industrial and information jobs have been outsourced. Public and private debt has reached astronomical proportions. It's a society inured to perpetual war in service to a vast armaments industry. As Rabbi Michael Lerner put it, it's a society that "leaves people hungry not only for life's necessities, but for ethical and spiritual fulfillment as well."
While the failure to reach a climate agreement in Copenhagen is being blamed on China, it was the US -- the world's lone superpower -- that lost face. Mark Lynas exposed this in the Guardian writing "The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal..."
But the most hideous manifestations of the current moral, ethical and legal swamp we inhabit -- worse even than the ongoing hijacking by Wall Street banksters -- are the nearly decade-old wars/occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. These demonstrate how far we have strayed from the nation's founding principles. Today, our patriarchs are people like Alan Greenspan, who casually admit that "The Iraq War is really about oil." In truth, as author Dallas Darling recently put it, "In the end, the Global War on Terror is really a ruse for a centuries old dream by western powers to dominate the Arabian Peninsula."
The AfPak war is more of the same. Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar's sums it up: "Once again, since the late 1990s, it all comes back to TAPI -- the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India gas pipeline -- the key reason Afghanistan is of any strategic importance to the US."
Barack Obama understands this. He also knows that beneath the soil of Afghanistan is a rich store of uranium, tungsten, molybdenum and rare earths (used for everything from TVs to wind turbines to Priuses). And the corporations that supply the missiles, the drones, the surveillance equipment, the helicopters and the fighter jets know that Obama knows this. Why else would they have made him the heavily funded presidential hopeful in history?

In fulfillment of his pledge to the armchair warriors, President Obama has just signed the largest military budget in history, larger than the combined spending of the rest of the planet. Now this military is being unleashed on a semi-literate people engaged in a decades-long civil war. Chances of "success" are slim. As Florida Democrat Alan Grayson explains, "This is an 18th century strategy being employed against a 14th century enemy." 

Military intelligence inside the Obama administration estimates that there are approximately 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country of Afghanistan. This is the "cancer" the president says justifies sending 30,000 more troops at a cost of a billion dollars for every soldier. Once the latest Obama surge is in place, the US will have twice as many troops and contractors in Afghanistan as did the USSR at the height of their south Asian disaster.
While the elites -- economic, military and political -- hold tight to their faith in the "exceptional" character of the American imperium, pressure is building for a new narrative. "Burgeoning forces for democracy are emerging," writes Middle East scholar Mark Levine, "both in the Muslim world and across the global south." These forces were on display in Copenhagen and are now bravely gathering on the streets of Tehran. US preoccupation with the Global War on Terror has helped Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and other Latin American countries free themselves from decades of subservience.
The new decade could even bring a resurgence of democracy here at home. If Barack Obama isn't prepared to help lead such a movement, he'll have to get out of the way. As Dylan warned a few decades back, "You'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone."

Published on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by Creators.com
Six Things to Do in 2010
by Jim Hightower
In my travels, I've heard many cries of despair from you good folks about the timorous Obama presidency. On issue after issue, it's been go-slow and don't-rock-the-corporate boat. "Where's the 'audacity of hope?'" people are asking. "Where's the 'change you can believe in?'"
The answer is that in our country's democracy, audacity and change are where they've always resided: out there with you and me, at the grassroots level. For some reason, the guy who was elected by running from the outside is now trying to govern from the inside - which is where change is taken to die.
The good news is that the American majority is with us on nearly every issue, so the chance for change remains strong - if we can push it. Now is the time for us to be more aggressive, more demanding, more active than ever. Many of you have asked, "Fine - but how?" Here are some suggestions:
1. Start by considering what's reasonable for you. Few of us can be full-time activists, and the list of issues and problems is long and complex. So, just take one bite, choosing an issue that interests you the most, then start contributing what you can (time, skills, contacts, money, enthusiasm, etc.) to making progress. Every little contribution helps - it all adds up. As a young Oregon woman said of her half-day-a-week of volunteer door-knocking in a legislative race: "I was only a drop in the bucket, but I was a drop. And without all of us, the bucket would not have filled up."
2. Inform yourself. A little effort can quickly connect you to accessible, usable information and insights on any given topic, helping you gain a "citizen's level" of expertise so you can talk to others about it. Read progressive periodicals, tune in to progressive broadcasts, get information from public-interest groups and plug in to good websites and blogs.
Don't know how to go online? Nearly all public libraries not only have computers, but also librarians and volunteers who'll help you find the info you want and teach you how to use the machines.
Or, find a youngster (maybe your granddaughter or someone at church) who'll help you. Yes, you can do this!
3. Democracy belongs to those who show up. Join with others. Everyone feels better when they're part of a group, a movement, a community (whether real or virtual). In your own town or neighborhood, many others share your progressive outlook and are either already working together or willing to help form a group - seek them out, maybe at bookstores, book clubs, coffee shops, events, churches, blogs, websites or other meeting places.
4. A community is more than a collection of issues and endless meetings. Get to know each other by combining the serious with the social. Remember the Yugoslavian proverb: You can fight the gods and still have fun! So discuss your issues and strategies at potluck suppers, throw an annual festival of politics, establish sessions of beer-mug democracy at local taverns or political coffee talk at the coffee shop, etc.
5. Become the media. Create a local newsletter, blog, online bulletin board (or, a real one), an Internet radio broadcast, etc. Just as importantly, enlist high school or community college speech and journalism teachers to help others learn how to do radio and TV interviews and how to get local media to cover your issues. Also, get them to train you and others in public speaking, so you can have your own speakers' bureau to address clubs, churches, schools, etc.
6. Hold your own "what to do" sessions in your community. National progressive groups haven't figured out a cohesive strategy for focusing people's anger about the meekness of the Washington's Democratic leaders, so don't wait on them. Instead, have your own discussions about what should be done nationally - if anything - and start zapping those ideas to other communities, heads of national groups, progressive media outlets and so forth. Let the ideas/discussion percolate up from a thousand localities!
If you're looking for genius, don't look up, look around where you are, and trust you're the wisdom of your own community. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Common sense is genius with its work clothes on."

Max Blumenthal

Author, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party"
Posted: December 28, 2009 11:40 AM

Obama, the Fallen Messiah

During a time of economic decline, persistent cultural strife, deepening American involvement in far-off military conflicts, and rapid environmental deterioration, is there any wonder that so many Americans believe in salvation fantasies promising them both a transcendent, everlasting future and violent retribution against perceived evildoers? A 2002 CNN poll found that 59% of Americans believed that the prophecies in the Book of Revelations would come true. The startling number reflected the still-fresh trauma of the 9/11 attacks, but I suspect that it has held steady, if not risen. Indeed, mainstream American culture is permeated by apocalyptic beliefs and the yearning for messianic deliverance; the success of the movie 2012 and the forthcoming schlockbuster Legacy are just two recent examples.
I spent several chapters in my book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, following the Christian right's ascent to the mountain top with George W. Bush's re-election; detailing how the movement shrouded science and reason in the shadow of the cross; then observing it as it swiftly imploded during the Terri Schiavo charade. Because I completed my book just days after Barack Obama's inauguration, I was only able to foreshadow the right's plan to undermine the new president without much analysis of what Obama would do, or how the movement that propelled his success would behave.
The Obama phenomenon is impossible to analyze or understand without considering the deep levels of anxiety and desperation that progressives suffered during the radical presidency of George W. Bush. When the Democratic primary began, some progressives seemed to embrace a secular version of the Christian right's salvation fantasy. They ached for a secular messiah to descend from the political heavens, reverse Bush's disastrous legacy and save the country from itself. A mere politician, even with solid progressive credentials, would have been unacceptable to them.
Many progressives believed they had discovered their savior in Barack Obama, a gifted orator and writer who proclaimed in his book, The Audacity of Hope, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." As Obama's primary battle against Hillary Clinton intensified, his rhetoric and the language of his supporters grew increasingly messianic. At a rally in South Carolina, Oprah Winfrey referred to Obama as "The One," a fusion of Jesus and Neo from The Matrix. Then, when Obama defeated Clinton in Iowa, he quoted from a Hopi Indian End Times prophecy that had become popular among New Agers: "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Moved to the point of ecstasy by Obama's victory speech, Ezra Klein declared the candidate, "not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of the word over flesh... Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our higher selves."
How did this...
Though he is a social conservative who briefly flirted with involvement in the Republican Party, it is worth noting that Louis Farrakhan, who had consistently ordered his followers to boycott elections and who attacked black politicians from Harold Washington to Jesse Jackson as tools of the white power structure, declared in a dramatic address to his followers that Obama was the Messiah. Farrakhan's prophecy years before of the coming of a black savior (along with a Japanese-built UFO his mentor Elijah Muhammad called the "mother plane") was, in his view, fulfilled at last through the rise of Obama.
Now that some of Obama's most zealous supporters are beginning to express grave doubts about his ability to deliver the transcendent change he promised, they should consider their role in contributing to the problems Obama faces with both his Democratic base and his opponents on the right. Many of Obama's harshest progressive critics embraced a secular salvation fantasy that Obama cleverly channeled and cultivated to excite them and distract from his lack of progressive accomplishments. In the end, Obama's messianization created false expectations while establishing political space for the right to undermine and delegitimize him.
...enable this?
To be sure, the salvation fantasy Obama offered stood in stark contrast to the dualistic, malignant Rapture visions of the Christian right. Obama did not play to his supporters' dark sides by promising them holy retribution against their perceived enemies. Instead, he repudiated partisan rancor, declaring that there was no "conservative America" where people rejected science, demonized gays and assailed minority and women's rights. In the words of Andrew Sullivan, a disaffected conservative who fervently supported Obama, Obama was destined to be "a liberal Reagan who can reunite America." Throughout the campaign, Obama and many of his supporters seemed to believe a Messiah could deliver them without having to confront the Devil first.
In my book, I detailed a series of experiments by a group of political psychologists seeking to provide evidence that the profound fear of death inspired extreme conservative beliefs. Their studies were inspired by the theory of famed cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker: "The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity -- designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man." The professors discovered that time and again, their study subjects would register more conservative responses to questions if they were first reminded of their own deaths. (See John Judis' excellent article, "Death Grip" on the studies for more).
The use of mortality reminders came in to play as soon as Obama was inaugurated, when the right attempted to delegitimize him by reversing the phenomenon he relied on to win: While Obama attempted to provide a blank screen for Americans to project their aspirations upon, conservatives projected their most fearsome inner demons onto him instead.
The tactic was born during the October McCain-Palin rallies, when Sarah Palin and far-right surrogates like Joe the Plumber began to attack Obama as a nebulous Other, a strange outsider who did not share mainstream American values. Their intention was to make him as unfamiliar and frightening as possible, and in doing so, to scare off wavering independent voters. By this time, it was too late in the campaign for the tactic to take effect, so it extendedinto this year and peaked with the Fall Teabagger rallies and town hall disruptions.
During the 9.12 Tea Party rally on the National Mall, thousands of far-right activists carried signs depicted images of Stalin and Hitler transposed onto Obama's face. (The Teabagger propaganda bore a disturbing resemblance to the signs waved by right-wing Jewish settlers during rallies against Yitzhak Rabin that depicted the soon to be assassinated Israeli PM in Nazi SS garb and as the collaborator Marshall Petain, two seemingly incongruous images). Obama was a Muslim; Obama was a commie pinko; Obama was a cosmopolitan globalist; Obama was a black nationalist. It did not matter who Obama really was. The right simply wanted to portray him as culturally alien and insidious.
As cynical as the right's tactic was, it succeeded in tainting Obama's post-partisan veneer not only because he had insisted he could bridge the partisan divide, but because he had offered himself up as "a blank screen," defining himself as he thought different audiences wished to see him, and therefore not establishing a very clear identity at all. Thus the liberal left's messianization of Obama enabled and even encouraged his otherization by the radical right.
The right complemented its anti-Obama propaganda with false rumors designed to inject the language of death into the healthcare debate. The single most damaging rumor, adopted from the cult of Lyndon LaRouche, refined by former New York State Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey, and mainstreamed by Palin, was that Obama's health care reform proposal included a plan to implement "death panels." While the president pleaded for compromise and reason, the right repeated the baseless charge over and over, insisting that the president had a secret plan to pull the plug on grandma, euthanize the severely handicapped, and kill the sick. Though healthcare reform appears certain to pass, albeit in a severely diluted form, Obama never recovered from the damage the right's mortality reminders did to his political standing.
When Obama announced his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan and appeared to stand by passively as the public option and Medicare buy-in proposals were scrapped to mollify Joseph Lieberman, the progressive left went into contortions. Former Obama zealots now openly attack him as everything from a warmonger to a tool of Wall Streeters like Rahm Emanuel and Robert Rubin. "Kill the bill!" has become the battle cry of a major sector of the progressive movement, including Moveon.org, a group that endorsed Obama even though he had just voted to condemn them for attacking General David Petraeus.
The liberal left has become so disgruntled that a leading conservative talk radio host asked me recently if progressives were considering a primary challenge to Obama. I laughed and stated my belief that despite his troubles, Obama would win a second term. Whether or not that happens, those former Obama fanatics experiencing a crisis in faith should look in the mirror. They demanded a secular salvation fantasy and participated in the messianization of the candidate who delivered it to them. They now know that Obama is just a politician. What they have refused to acknowledge is that he would not have fallen so hard had they not lifted him so high.

Obama's ratings sink on economy, healthcare
Last Updated: 2009-12-17 15:46:55 -0400 (Reuters Health)
* Democratic president is at odds with some on the left
* Obama's job approval ratings hovering under 50 percent
* President says he is taking a longer-term view
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - High unemployment and a fractious debate over healthcare have combined to push down President Barack Obama's job approval ratings and highlight the potential for political dangers ahead.
Obama, experiencing his first holiday season in the White House, finds himself at odds with some in the left wing of his own Democratic Party and losing the support of independent voters who were key to his 2008 election victory.
Public opinion polls show Obama's approval rating hovering at 50 percent or lower, 11 months after he took office with a high of 69 percent approval. Majorities disapprove of his handling of the U.S. economy and healthcare.
The president and his White House team, battle-hardened from an election campaign in which they were initially dismissed by better-known challengers, are shrugging off the polls and taking the long view.
"It was inevitable," Obama told interviewer Oprah Winfrey. "We have 10 percent unemployment. I told (my wife) Michelle when we got here that in six months my poll numbers will start crashing, so we can't play to the polls. I'm concerned with where we'll be in two to three years."
Obama gave himself a "B-plus" grade, just shy of an excellent "A" in the U.S. education system, for his work staving off an even worse economic crisis, putting U.S. troops on a path out of Iraq and improving the U.S. image abroad.
'WORK IN PROGRESS'
Political analysts say Obama deserves credit for his steps helping to prevent the possibility of another Depression but that other challenges remain.
The president is immersed, for example, in the prolonged debate over revamping the U.S. healthcare system, engaged in efforts to reach a climate-change agreement in Copenhagen and seeking new spending measures aimed at creating jobs.
"It's still a work in progress, and probably the best grade (for Obama) would be 'incomplete,'" said Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, who worked in the Clinton White House.
Under pressure to create jobs, Obama struck a populist tone urging executives at leading banks this week to increase lending to small businesses, telling CBS's "60 Minutes" show that he did not run for president to help "fat cat bankers."
While job losses appear to have bottomed out, the country still is mired in a 10 percent unemployment rate that experts believe will remain high for months.
All this comes as Democrats gird to defend their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate in elections next November. Republicans sense they may have an opportunity to make a comeback after devastating losses in 2006 and 2008.
"Frankly, he's in the position that most presidents find themselves in when the economy goes south - they get blamed for it," said Andy Smith, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
"Until the economy turns around, his job-approval ratings are going to be hovering in the areas where they are now, or perhaps sink a little bit lower," he said.
KILL THE BILL
Obama has spent most of the year working on a healthcare overhaul and trying to thread a needle between various conflicting factions among Democrats in Congress.
In recent days, the left has rebelled against a Senate compromise that jettisons many of the provisions liberals have demanded, first a new government-run health insurance program and then a proposal to allow people ages 55 to 64 to buy into the Medicare government insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. Americans become eligible for Medicare at age 65.
Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, a liberal and a medical doctor, said it would be better to "kill the Senate bill" as it stands because, as he told Vermont Public Radio, "This is essentially the collapse of healthcare reform in the United States Senate."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the complaints. He said Dean had neglected to mention the many good things about the bill, such as providing insurance for 30 million Americans who do not have it and ending what Democrats call discriminatory practices by the insurance industry.
Democratic strategist Phil Singer said he believes Obama and the Democrats would have plenty to campaign on by the time the 2010 elections roll around - keeping the economy from cratering, a likely healthcare overhaul and a new direction in foreign policy.
"People will make a decision when they go into the polls whether we want to continue the path we are on, or whether they want to we want to go back to the type of government we had under the Republicans," he said.

Top 10 Ethics Scandals of 2009

By CREW Staff, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Posted on December 24, 2009, Printed on December 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144780/

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not a year goes by that isn't marred by scandal, but in the world of ethics, 2009 just might take the cake. This list of the year's top 10 ethics scandals was compiled by the staff of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington -- better known as CREW.
Let Them Eat Cake!
As the federal government authorized the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out the nation's failing financial institutions, the Wall Street executives responsible for the financial meltdown awarded themselves $18.4 billion in bonuses. AIG, which is now 80 percent owned by American taxpayers, doled out $165 million in executive bonuses. Merrill Lynch authorized $3.6 billion in bonuses after receiving $10 billion from the government and on the brink of bankruptcy, $209 million of which went to 10 bankers alone. President Obama voiced the public's anger over the bonuses, stating, "It is shameful. And part of what we're going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility."
In June 2009, the White House appointed Kenneth Feinberg as "special master for compensation," more commonly known as the "pay czar," to oversee the compensation for senior executives and the top 100 earners at AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial, all companies that received money through TARP.
Although the pay czar is taking steps to limit bonuses, Wall Street expects to dole out bonuses 40 percent higher than 2008 levels, totaling an estimated $26 billion, by the end of 2009. The federal pay czar is currently trying to force AIG to cut back on $198 million in bonuses. Meanwhile, the government still awaits TARP repayments from some of these firms.
CREW's holiday wish: For the federal government's pay czar to exert his authority over bailed out firms to stop excessive bonuses, demonstrating that the government really does value the interests of Main Street at least as much as Wall Street.
The SEC: Failing to Catch Madoff Since '92
A series of reports from the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Inspector General revealed the complete failure of the SEC to detect and prevent Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme over a period of at least 16 years. The reports detail deep systemic problems within the SEC's Enforcement Division, the repeated incompetence of SEC staff, and the commission's seeming indifference when confronted time and again with unmistakable evidence of Madoff's massive fraud.
The first substantive complaint about the Madoff Ponzi scheme was filed in 1992 and resulted in an insufficient and inconclusive SEC inquiry. That complaint was followed by five additional complaints and multiple SEC inquiries that were again poorly executed and indeterminate. One of those complaints was filed by whistleblower Harry Markopolos, who first informed the SEC of Madoff's illegal operations in 2000. Markopolos followed up with the SEC numerous times, providing them with additional analysis and evidence. (One of his reports was titled, "The World's Largest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud.") After the scandal broke Markopolos was hailed as a hero. He testified before Congress, calling the SEC, "captive to the industry it regulates," and adding that it "roars like a lion and bites like a flea."
CREW's holiday wish: A new and completely reconstituted SEC with an enforcement division that understands how to enforce the vital laws that protect the public from schemers like Bernard Madoff.
Public Corruption Prosecutions Were So 2009
In 2009, the Supreme Court accepted three cases challenging honest services law, a provision in the federal mail-fraud statute making it illegal for public or private employees to "deprive another of the intangible right of honest services." A critical prosecutorial tool for fighting public corruption, this statute has been used to convict former Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, and a large number of those involved in the Jack Abramoff scandal. During oral arguments, the Supreme Court justices focused on all the ways the statute can be misapplied, strongly suggesting they plan to limit the statute's breadth, if not hold it unconstitutional. Already, the prosecutors handling the case of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich have indicated they will re-indict the governor to delete the honest services fraud counts. In addition, Rep. Jefferson plans to ask the court to give him a new trial, though he was convicted of other charges in addition to honest services fraud.
CREW's holiday wish: For the honest services fraud statute to remain intact so the law can continue to be used to convict the likes of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Jefferson.
What, the FEC Is Supposed to Enforce (Not Gut) Campaign Finance Laws?
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is failing in its mandated mission to administer and enforce regulations governing the financing of federal elections. Violations of federal campaign finance law are likely to go unpunished thanks to the partisan deadlock that has rendered the FEC ineffectual. With three Republican and three Democratic appointees, the FEC consistently fails to take action against even the most egregious violations. As the Washington Post wrote in an op-ed on June 15: "The three Republican appointees are turning the commission into The Little Agency That Wouldn't: wouldn't launch investigations, wouldn't bring cases, wouldn't even accept settlements that the staff had already negotiated."
By not taking action against federal candidates who break the rules, the FEC is encouraging unethical campaign tactics that privilege money over principle. The FEC commissioners' failure to take their oversight mission seriously threatens to undermine campaign finance laws and further flood the electoral process with money. With a lack of campaign finance oversight, political influence on Capitol Hill will be bought by the highest bidder and the common good will be sacrificed to special interests.
CREW's holiday wish: A restructured FEC with an odd number of commissioners, as opposed to the current even six, would go a long way toward ending the deadlock and allowing the FEC to effectively enforce campaign finance laws.
How Sen. John Ensign Is Losing Friends and Alienating Constituents
On June 16, 2009, Sen. John Ensign, R-NV, confessed he had engaged in an affair with Cynthia Hampton, his campaign and PAC treasurer, who is married to Doug Hampton, the senator's then-administrative assistant. In his attempts to cover up the affair, Sen. Ensign likely violated multiple ethics regulations and laws. First, by terminating the Hamptons after the affair ended, Sen. Ensign may have engaged in sexual harassment. Second, the failure to disclose the $96,000 severance payment made to Cynthia Hampton likely was a criminal violation of campaign finance law. Most damning, Sen. Ensign conspired with Doug Hampton to help him violate the one-year lobbying ban for senior staff. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, does not come out all that well either. He admitted to serving as an intermediary between Sen. Ensign and Doug Hampton, but ludicrously claimed to be "counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon. That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the [Senate] Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody." Sen. Coburn also helped Doug Hampton violate the lobbying ban by meeting with Hampton's lobbying clients at Hampton's request.
CREW's holiday wish: Sen. Ensign should resign and save us all from more excruciating details about his reprehensible conduct. More realistically, Sens. Ensign and Coburn should be investigated and held accountable for their actions.
Gov. Mark Sanford's Excellent Argentinian Adventure
In June, it was revealed that conservative Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had taken a secret trip to Argentina to see his mistress. In an effort to evade discovery, the governor told his staff he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail and cut off all communication, leaving the state without an acting governor, potentially in violation of the state Constitution. Later, Americans learned that Gov. Sanford had visited his mistress on several occasions and may have illegally used state funds to facilitate the affair.
On Dec. 16, 2009, the Judiciary Committee of the South Carolina State House voted not to impeach the governor but instead unanimously proposed censure for abuse of power. The State Ethics Commission is considering 37 charges against the governor for a variety of travel and campaign finance violations, which could result in thousands of dollars in fines and the state Attorney General is considering criminal charges. When the affair was exposed, Gov. Sanford resigned his post as chair of the Republican Governors Association. The question remains, why was Gov. Sanford's misconduct serious enough to force him to step down as chair of the RGA, but not bad enough for him to resign as governor?
CREW's holiday wish: For South Carolina's Attorney General and State Ethics Commission to find the governor violated state laws, forcing him (finally!) to do the honorable thing and resign. This would allow the state's government to focus on serving the citizens of South Carolina, where nearly one in four adults are unemployed.
Rep. Charlie Rangel and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year
In 2009, Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY, became the poster child for congressional corruption thanks to his flagrant violations of House rules. The House ethics committee is considering six separate matters: Rep. Rangel's lease of four rent-stabilized properties in New York, one of which he used as a campaign office; his use of congressional stationery to raise funds for the Charles B. Rangel Center at the City College of New York; his failure to report on his financial disclosure forms and to the IRS approximately $75,000 in rental income on a Dominican Republic villa; his legislative support for Nabors Industries in exchange for a donation to the Rangel Center; amendments to his personal financial disclosure records, disclosing at least $600,000 in unreported assets; and misuse of the House garage.
CREW, editorial boards across the country, and some members of Congress -- noting the irony of the chairman of the tax writing committee failing to pay taxes and filing inaccurate financial disclosure reports -- have called for him to resign his chairmanship pending the outcome of the ethics committee inquiry. As long as Rep. Rangel retains the confidence of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, his position remains secure.
CREW's holiday wish: For Rep. Rangel to resign his chairmanship pending the outcome of the ethics committee's investigation and that he (finally!) be held accountable for his misconduct.
Sure, the Senate Passed Ethics Legislation. Oh, Did You Think That Meant Something?
The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), which became law in 2007, required senators to identify themselves when using a "hold," a parliamentary maneuver that is frequently used to stall or stop legislation or presidential nominations. Prior to HLOGA, senators had been able to secretly and indefinitely place holds with no questions asked. To see if the new law was being enforced, CREW undertook a day-by-day review of the Senate Calendar, where these disclosures were supposed to be made, and found that a proper disclosure had been made only twice in over two years. Meanwhile, CREW found numerous examples of anonymous senators using this decidedly undemocratic tactic to block nominations and bills, including bills promoting government transparency, from seeing the light of day.
CREW's holiday wish: For the Senate ethics committee to investigate members who have placed secret holds in violation of HLOGA and for senators to abide by their promise – ironically, made in an ethics reform package, but promptly reneged upon – to end this cowardly practice.
Earmarks Traded for Campaign Contributions? CREW is Shocked. Shocked.
CREW has covered the ongoing saga of the now-defunct PMA Group since 2007, when we first added Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, to our Most Corrupt report for his involvement with the shady lobbying firm. The PMA Group, founded by former House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee aide Paul Magliocchetti, is under federal investigation for its role in an alleged influence trading and pay-to-play scheme to win contracts for its lobbying clients. Earlier this year it was reported that the PMA Group had been raided by federal agents as part of their investigation into the allegations. In addition to Rep. Murtha, the scandal has ensnared at least six other lawmakers in investigations by both the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) and the House ethics committee. Not surprisingly, the OCE advised against a formal investigation into the activities of at least four of those lawmakers, including Rep. Murtha.
CREW's holiday wish: For Congress to institute real ethics reform that would prevent these cozy relationships between lobbyists and members from taking hold in the first place; and for the House ethics committee to hold members involved in these pay-to-play schemes accountable for their actions.
No Really, Congress Will Drain the Swamp Next Year...Promise
This year, for the first time in Gallup's annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll, 55 percent of Americans said the honesty and ethical standards of "members of Congress" are low or very low. Despite vows to "drain the swamp" Congress continues to protect its own; not a single representative was publicly reprimanded or sanctioned by the House ethics committee in 2009 -- and it's not as if there were no offenders to choose from. Moreover, although the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) was created to strengthen ethics enforcement, there has been no noticeable change and ethics investigations still drag on for years. For example, after learning he was listed on a leaked House ethics committee memo as under investigation, Rep. Gary Miller, R-CA -- a member CREW has targeted for ethics violations -- fumed that he has heard nothing from the ethics committee several years after charges were first leveled. Rep. Miller told The Hill, "I gave them three big books of information -- proprietary, private information -- and I heard nothing back. Not a peep, and now this? To say that I am angry is a vast understatement."
There is also significant confusion regarding the roles of each ethics body, with both members and staffers expressing puzzlement over the dual track with both the ethics committee and the OCE investigating the same matters, such as in the case of members' involvement with the PMA Group. Another problem is the animosity between the two bodies. This fall, the turf battle boiled over into public view over charges against Rep. Sam Graves, R-MO, after the OCE found reason to believe there was an appearance of a conflict of interest, but the ethics committee exonerated the congressman while criticizing the OCE's investigative procedures.
CREW's holiday wish: For both the ethics committee and the OCE to work cooperatively to enforce ethics regulations and restore the public's trust in Congress.

Published on Thursday, December 24, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Holiday Reading List 2009

by Ralph Nader
This is the golden age of muckraking books and documentaries but some of them may have escaped your attention because reviews and promotions cannot keep up with the sheer volume of material.

Here are my recommendations for your Holiday and later reading time: 

1. Achieving the Impossible by Lois Marie Gibbs; Published by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (www.chej.org) is an inspiring collection of short stories about how ordinary people have risen to meet the challenges of toxic pollution confronting their families and communities. The author herself rose from the Love Canal controversy in Niagara Falls, New York to lead a grand national grass roots organization.

2. Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope In An Insecure Age by Steven Hill (University of California Press, 2010.) His thesis is that Western Europe treats its people better in many ways than the United States does its people, and not just in social insurance and services. Read, wonder and galvanize!

3. Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in A Two-Party Tyranny by Theresa Amato (New Press, 2009.) My former campaign manager weighs in with an indictment of the two-party barriers to a competitive electoral system, candidate ballot access and voter choice. Partly personal memoir of her battles in 2000 and 2004, part history about the decades long ago when third parties could get on the ballot easier and make a difference and part a series of reforms that only an outraged public can make happen.

4. Priceless Money: Banking Time for Changing Times by Edgar S. Cahn is a revolutionary elevation of traditional assets in how time can become a currency—a means of exchange that is beyond price—that does not allow market price to define value. It is a limited edition booklet you’ll never forget, free. Send two first class stamps to TimeBanksUSA, 5500 39th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20015.

5. Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges (Nation Books, 2009) The Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent turned prolific author and lecturer, Mr. Hedges goes to the core of a culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. He “exposes the mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, political and moral collapse around us.” In gripping, memorable concrete prose that resonates the moment we let ourselves think.

6. The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisisby Josh Kosman (Portfolio Hardcover, 2009.) Think it is all about the brand names of a corrupt, reckless Wall Street? Try the entirely unregulated private equity firms that acquire and strip mine them under the guise of saving them, then leave behind debt time bombs and mass layoffs as the value of these leveraged buyouts is sucked out by the corporate bunccaneers. Kosman predicts a coming private equity-caused big bubble crisis.

7. Ordinary People Doing the Extraordinary: The Story of Ed and Joyce Koupal and the Initiative Process by Dwayne Hunn and Doris Ober. This husband-wife team “just ordinary people,” in their words, started out powerless and in over a decade, largely in the seventies, built Initiative power to qualify reforms on the California ballot for the popular vote. A story for the ages that strips away excuses steeped in a sense of powerlessness. This small but invigorating paperback can be obtained from The People’s Lobby (peopleslobby.hypermart.net) for $15, including shipping. California St., Unit 201, San Francisco, CA 94109.

8. Getting Away With Torture: Secret Government, War Crimes, and the Rule of Law byChristopher H. Pyle (Potomac Books, 2009) A former captain in army intelligence and Congressional staffer, now teaching constitutional law at Mount Holyoke College, Mr. Pyle shatters our belief in the rule of law before the unconstitutional government of Bush and Cheney in waging war crimes and torture, while seeking Congressional amnesty to those responsible for implementing their rogue, secret regime. Veteran constitutional law specialist, Louis Fisher asserts these practices have “left American weaker politically, economically, morally, and legally.”

9. It Takes A Pillage by Nomi Prins (Wiley, 2009.) A former managing director of Goldman Sachs, who quit Wall Street, and now is dedicated to educating and mobilizing the American people so that they press for reforms to prevent myopic greed from bringing down our economy again and to hold the speculators and crooks accountable. She “gets inside how the banks looted the Treasury, stole the bailout, and continued with business as usual,” in the words of one reviewer. 

10. Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09 edited by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff with Project Censored (Seven Stories Press, 2009.) This book contains investigative pieces on important topics too often neglected by the mainstream news organizations. Read this book, it will make you angry and then it will energize you to take on a significant societal problem in the New Year. 
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel -  is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

Rewarding a Catastrophe

Bernanke and the Corruption of Washington Culture

By DEAN BAKER
The Senate Finance Committee overwhelmingly voted to approve Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for another 4-year term. This is a remarkable event since it is hard to imagine how Bernanke could have performed worse in his last 4-year term. By Bernanke’s own assessment, his policies brought the economy to the brink of another Great Depression. This sort of performance in any other job would get you fired in a second, but for the most important economic policymaker in the country it gets you high praise and another 4-year term.
There is no room for ambiguity in this story. Bernanke was at the Fed since the fall of 2002. (He had a brief stint in 2005 as chair of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.) At a point when at least some economists recognized the housing bubble and began to warn of the damage that would result from its collapse, Bernanke insisted that everything was fine and that nothing should be done to rein in the bubble.
This is worth repeating. If Bernanke knew what he was doing, he should have been able to see as early as 2002 that there was a housing bubble and that its collapse would throw the economy into a recession. It was also entirely predictable that the collapse could lead to a financial crisis of the type we saw, since housing was always a highly leveraged asset, evenbefore the flood of subprime, Alt-A and other nonsense loans that propelled the bubble to ever greater heights. Of course as the bubble expanded, and the financial sector became ever more highly leveraged, the risks to the economy increased enormously.
Through this all, Bernanke just looked the other way. The whole time he insisted that everything was just fine.
To be clear, there was plenty that the Fed could have done to deflate the bubble before it grew to such dangerous proportions. First and foremost the Fed could have used its extensive research capabilities to carefully document the evidence for a housing bubble and the risks that its collapse would pose to the economy.
It then should have used the enormous megaphone of the Fed chairman and the platform of the institution to publicize this research widely. The Fed could have ensured that every loan officer who issued a mortgage, as well as all the banks officers who set policy, clearly heard the warnings of a bubble in the housing market, backed up by reams of irrefutable research. The same warnings would have reached the ears of every potential homebuyer in the country. It’s hard to believe that such warnings would have had no impact on the bubble, but it’s near criminal that the Fed never tried this route.
The second tool that the Fed could have pursued was to crack down on the fraudulent loans that were being issued in massive numbers at the peak of the bubble. It is absurd to claim that the Fed didn’t know about the abuses in the mortgage market. I was getting e-mails from all over the country telling me about loan officers filling in phony income and asset numbers so that borrowers would qualify for mortgages. If the Bernanke and his Fed colleagues did not know about these widespread abuses, it is because they deliberately avoided knowing.
Finally, the Fed could have had a policy of interest rate hikes explicitly targeted to burst the bubble. Specifically, it could have announced that it will raise rates by half a point at every meeting, until house prices begin to fall and it will keep rates high until house prices approach their pre-bubble level.
This is what a responsible Fed policy would have looked like. But Ben Bernanke did not pursue a responsible Fed policy. He insisted that everything was just fine until he had to run to Congress last September, saying that if it didn’t immediately give $700 billion to the banks through the TARP program then the economy would collapse.
How on earth can you do worse in your job as Fed chair then bring the economy to the brink of a total collapse? If this is success, what does failure look like?
But, in Washington no one is ever held accountable for their performance. The economic collapse is treated like a fluke of nature – a hurricane or an earthquake – not the result of enormous policy failures.
So, it is the 15 million unemployed that go without work, not Ben Bernanke. Instead, the senators praise Bernanke to the sky and thank him for his service. The running line in the Senate is: “it could have been worse.”
That is the way Washington works these days. And, everyone should be very very disgusted.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.

Can We Rescue the Republic Before the Dark Politics Take Over?

By Kirk Nielsen, Miller-McCune.com
Posted on December 25, 2009, Printed on December 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144809/

Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don't come to their more deliberative senses. Each of the books offers an informed diagnosis of the dangers that widespread ignorance and ideological polarization pose for American democracy, though none offers a comprehensive treatment for the malaise.
I read the three books in less than two weeks; friends ask how that was possible. The trick is to avoid not only Facebook and Twitter but also: celebrity news, cable news,Oprah, Jerry Springer, American Idol, The Swan, other reality-TV shows, professional wrestling, violent pornography, positive psychology and right-wing Christian fundamentalism.
The latter list includes some of the spectacularly mind-numbing American pursuits that Chris Hedges examines in Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Hedges submits that while they mesmerized large portions of the American citizenry, CEOs being paid millions of dollars a year to run companies that feed on taxpayer money usurped our government — with the help of elected officials bought by campaign contributions and tens of thousands of corporate lobbyists who now write many of the nation's laws.
"Those captivated by the cult of celebrity do not examine voting records or compare verbal claims with written and published facts and reports," Hedges writes. "The reality of their world is whatever the latest cable news show, political leader, advertiser, or loan officer says is reality. The illiterate, semiliterate, and those who live as though they are illiterate are effectively cut off from the past. They live in an eternal present. They do not understand the predatory loan deals that drive them into foreclosure and bankruptcy. They cannot decipher the fine print on credit card agreements that plunge them into unmanageable debt. They repeat thought-terminating clichés and slogans. They seek refuge in familiar brands and labels. ... Life is a state of permanent amnesia, a world in search of new forms of escapism and quick, sensual gratification."
Of course, they did not get into this clueless state by themselves. They were manipulated by "agents, publicists, marketing departments, promoters, script writers, television and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photographers, bodyguards, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers, and television news personalities who create the vast stage for illusion," Hedges continues. "They are the puppet masters. ... The techniques of theater have leeched into politics, religion, education, literature, news, commerce, warfare, and crime."
I know those fools are out there — many millions of them. I might even be one. But what is absolutely maddening about this book is Hedges' penchant for stating sweeping, generalized claims as absolutes. And yet this master of divinity turned New York Times war correspondent become sociological scholar often bolsters his summations with just enough research, statistical data and anecdotal evidence to make them plausible. The book takes readers to Madison Square Garden for an exegesis of professional wrestling; to the Adult Video News Expo in Las Vegas for lengthy interviews with porn actors and producers and an inflatable doll vendor; and to Claremont Graduate University in California for a seminar on positive psychology, which Hedges terms a "quack science" that "is to the corporate state what eugenics was for the Nazis."
As a resident of Miami Beach, where the pornographic sensibility is a way of life, I wasn't shocked to read that annual porn sales in the United States "are estimated at $10 billion or higher" or that DIRECTV distributes "more than 40 million streams of porn into American homes every month." But I shuddered when Hedges documented not just a growing appetite for violent forms of porn in America but their remarkable visual similarity to photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society," he writes. "The violence, cruelty, and degradation of porn are expressions of a society that has lost the capacity for empathy. ... The Abu Ghraibimages that were released, and the hundreds more disturbing images that remain classified, could be stills from porn films."
Unfortunately, Empire of Illusion won't enlighten or offend the large swaths of functionally illiterate Americans transfixed by smut, pro wrestling, reality TV or celebrity gossip, because those people won't read the book. But this scholarly 193-page diatribe, which draws from a 100-author bibliography ranging from the late neo-Marxist Frankfurt School icon Theodor Adorno (The Culture Industry) to Princeton professor emeritus Sheldon Wolin (Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism), would surely madden many proud affiliates and alumni of America's elite university system.
Hedges, who attended New England prep schools, Colgate and Harvard as a young man, and later taught at Princeton, Columbia and New York University, asserts in Chapter 3, "The Illusion of Wisdom," that Harvard, Yale, Princeton and most elite schools "do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think." Elite universities are in the business of producing "hordes of competent systems managers" not critical thinkers. Those statements strike me as generally accurate. But I'd expect some fierce academic blowback from this notion: "The elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent, and often subversive." And Hedges suggests that these high-end schools "refuse to question a self-justifying system" in which "organization, technology, self-advancement, and information systems are the only things that matter."
Hedges not only blames the elite universities for our mortgage-fueled financial crisis but is sure their alumni on Wall Street and in Washington have no capacity to really fix the economic system. "Indeed, they'll make it worse," he predicts, exchanging his reportorial register for the absolutist. "They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of how to replace a failed system with a new one." (He includes George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Obama's "degree-laden" cabinet members in this group.)
If Hedges knows how to fix the system, he doesn't tell us in Empire of Illusion. I hope that'll be the subject of his next book, because in the meantime, "powerful corporate entities, fearful of losing their influence and wealth" are waiting for "a national crisis that will allow them, in the name of national security and moral renewal, to take complete control," he warns, without citing verifiable evidence for his dire prediction.
What if PBS, Fox and YouTube organized a national debate featuring Chris Hedges, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, his predecessor Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Christian Coalition president Roberta Combs and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? That panel is a little far-fetched, but it's the sort of cross-ideological forum that Cass Sunstein prescribes in Republic.com 2.0 as a way of preventing the nation from sliding into factional, perhaps even violent strife.
Sunstein is a law professor, author and perennial all-star in the world of public intellectuals; he took leave from Harvard Law School to be administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at President Obama's Office of Management and Budget. "The American constitutional order was designed to create a republic, as opposed to a monarch or direct democracy," he writes. "Representatives would be accountable to the public at large. But there was also supposed to be a large degree of reflection and debate, both within the citizenry and within government itself."
Of course, the Founding Fathers knew public debate could get ugly. Sunstein notesAlexander Hamilton's belief that the "jarring of parties" was a good thing because it would engender deliberation and, over time, a "republic of reasons."
Are we one today? Not as much as we could be, Sunstein thinks. His fundamental concern in Republic.com 2.0 is the Internet's potential for impeding deliberation between groups with opposing viewpoints, eventually increasing ideological rigidity and polarization to a point of no return. It's vastly easier to join like-minded Internet "enclaves" across the world than to drive across town for a meeting in which someone might challenge one's pre-established beliefs and positions. Sunstein walks readers through behavioral studies finding that when groups of like-minded individuals are isolated from different viewpoints, they tend toward consensus on the most extreme position held within the group.
At worst, Sunstein says, Internet-induced polarization could lead to social instability. "The danger is that through the mechanisms of persuasive arguments, social comparisons, and corroboration, members will move to positions that lack merit," he writes. "It is impossible to say, in the abstract, that those who sort themselves into enclaves will generally move in a direction that is desirable for society at large or even for its own members. It is easy to think of examples to the contrary, as, for example, Nazism, hate groups, terrorists, and cults of various sorts."
Clearly, the Internet has potential to create political good. Citizens have access to vast amounts of information and commentary. Even like-minded enclave proliferation can be good: The more there are, the greater the potential for inter-enclave discussion.
But a study of 1,400 liberal and conservative blogs found the vast majority of bloggers link only to like-minded blogs. Worse, another study showed that when "liberal" bloggers comment on "conservative" blog posts, and vice-versa, a plurality of comments simply cast contempt on opposing views. "Only a quarter of cross-ideological posts involve genuine substantive discussion. In this way, real deliberation is often occurring within established points of view, but only infrequently across them," Sunstein reports.
One cure for Internet-driven polarization lies with "general interest intermediaries." By that terminology, Sunstein means media outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, current affairs magazines, PBS, NPR and old-fashioned network news broadcasts: "People who rely on such intermediaries have a range of chance encounters, involving shared experiences with diverse others, and also exposure to materials and topics that they did not seek out in advance."
Of course, these are the media that are in decline because of the Internet. Sunstein imagines a greater role for private and public institutions, including the federal government, in ensuring enough general-interest intermediaries exist to make the republic's communications system "a help rather than a hindrance to democratic self-government" and a counterbalance to the echo chambers of the Web.
For the most part, Thom Hartmann's Threshold: Crisis of Western Civilizationfunctions as a general-interest intermediary in book form. Still, readers can be forgiven for wondering, at times, whether they are in a no-conservatives zone. Hartmann is host of the Thom Hartmann Show, a nationally syndicated "progressive" radio talk show.
Just the same, Threshold is so geographically and temporally sprawling that it offers material even progressive readers might not have chosen in advance: a refugee camp in contemporary Darfur in southern Sudan (Lesson: Famine leads to war and more suffering.); ancient New Zealand, where the Maoris exterminated the moa birds, forcing them to become cannibals (Don't repeat this mistake.); contemporary Denmark, where people happily send 30 to 60 percent of their income to the government in exchange for free health care, free university tuition, yearlong maternity leave, ample unemployment coverage and more (Americans should consider this.); Caral in ancient Peru, where anthropologists have found no evidence of weaponry ("Maybe peace is the natural state of things."); the Iroquois people, who made certain decisions based on how they would affect tribe members seven generations hence. (If only the rest of us Americans would do that.)
In sum, Threshold is 262 pages of scientific and historical anecdote suggesting that unregulated markets, undemocratic behavior and unecological practices lead to catastrophe. If you haven't already read a good overview of topsoil depletion, the marine fisheries crisis, rain forest destruction, the democratic behavior of red deer, the 1888 Supreme Court decision that defined corporations as "persons," the $15 million that 30,000 corporate lobbyists spend weekly when Congress is in session, President Eisenhower's premonition of a military-industrial complex with "unwarranted influence," the 2004 computerized voting machines controversy, the $1 trillion in tax dollars the U.S. government spent on war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not on infrastructure and schools, and the subprime loan/toxic securities debacle — you can find one in Threshold. Hartmann's common-sense remedies include "recovering a culture of democracy," "balancing the power of men and women," "reuniting with nature," "creating an economy modeled on biology" and "influencing people by helping them rather than bombing them." His book offers few specifics on how these ends might be accomplished in the real world.
So are we drifting along in a pre-fascist state? Has our democratic system really fallen under the control of corporate America? Hartmann's take obviously starts and stays (far) to the left of center, and we'll just have to stay tuned and see whether future events support the dire view he and Hedges have of America's political direction. Meanwhile, I'll be on the lookout for a persuasive book telling me how it isn't exactly so, and why America can escape from the economic and ecological spectacle it has made itself.
Kirk Nielsen is an independent journalist based in Miami Beach. HIs articles have also appeared in Salon, The Progressive, The Village Voice, and Poder magazine.

Published on Sunday, December 27, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Well, That Sure Sucked: Good Riddance to the Devil’s Decade
by David Michael Green
As I understand it, certain pundits are struggling with finding an appropriate name for the decade now mercifully coming to an end. 
What's the problem, I wonder?  Are their word processor dictionaries redacted of all four-letter words?  I mean, I could think of a few dandies, right of the top of my head. 
Short of the 1860s or 1930s, this was perhaps the most disastrous decade in American history, and it deserves a good goddamed label to celebrate that fine achievement. 
More on that below.  Meanwhile, whatever the appropriate term, it's important to keep things in perspective.  I think the most crucial notion to understand about our time - and perhaps the only way to make sense of it - is to see it as the point where the process of imperial decline shifted into third gear.  That explains a lot.  I like to think that even Americans wouldn't be capable of the sick stupidity we've witnessed over these harrowing years without the effects of rapid altitude decline and the loss of cabin pressure that the ship of state has been experiencing during this era. 
Perhaps I'm too generous toward a people who don't deserve a lot of that sentiment, either because of their diminished intelligence, generosity, compassion, sophistication or all of the above.  I imagine that would be the feeling on the streets of, say, Fallujah, where the attitude might well be confined to a lovely blend of schadenfreude and indifference, were it not for the fact that the paroxysms of the flailing elephant send so many fruit stands flying as the mortally wounded beast goes careening down the main street of the global village, toward inevitable defeat in its struggle with unforgiving gravity. 
America probably must come down to earth again, its abortive ‘century' of world dominance having anyhow been artificially fabricated from a toxic combination of circumstance and theft right from the beginning.  I can even say that's not necessarily a bad thing.  But it is, of course, all relative to what replaces Pax Americana.  Anyone who assumes that it can only get better on the international front isn't thinking real clearly or real historically.  Indeed, in all fairness, the US may well have run the most benign and least imperial empire in history - though not for lack of trying by the likes of, say, Paul Wolfowitz or John Bolton. 
Thus it may well be that the next big thing is even less pretty.  Watching the Chinese government in action at home, where they are unfettered, doesn't exactly inspire confidence in what a Pax Sinica would bring once they are also unfettered abroad.  If the same cats who brought us Tiananmen Square and Tibet are next gonna be seeking planetary domination, for once in my life I may actually come to appreciate the value of nuclear weapons... 
But I digress.  As I was saying before those proverbially inscrutable Asian aspiring hegemons so rudely interrupted me, the fall of American global dominance was only ever a matter of time in the coming.  What is most lamentable, however, is the way in which we've handled that transition, and most especially, the degree to which we've exacerbated it.  In short, it didn't have to be like this.  If the post-war French and the British represent two rather caricatured but nevertheless illuminative models of how to grapple with the end of empire, we have unfortunately elected to adopt the violent and undignified Gaulist approach.  We even went with a actual full-scale replication of the draining Vietnam experience.  At this rate, we'll be invading Algeria next.  Heck, maybe that's just what Bush meant to do, but he pushed the wrong button, mixing up, as he was wont to do, those Islamic countries whose names start with the letter ‘A' (watch out Albania!). 
Probably we'll just settle for repeating the French experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of actually attacking Algeria.  What seems more assured is that we will replicate the catastrophic domestic meltdowns France experienced in 1958 and 1968, as the lunacies of reactionary politics and the realities of tectonic change met on the French battlefield, and the state nearly took on the role of the slaughtered innocent civilian bystander, or what the military nowadays likes to call collateral damage. 
If that happens, few will bear more responsibility than Barack Obama, who in less than a year's time has managed to revive a comatose Republican Party that - like Jimi Hendrix,  was dying from asphyxiation of its own vomit - whilst simultaneously flushing away the good will that he and his own party enjoyed down into the overflowing sewers of failed American presidencies.  Miraculously, he even managed to do all of this without any serious ‘mistake', epic blunder, or fresh crisis on his watch.  About the lamest positive act Obama did all year was the decidedly inartful and astonishingly unnecessary comment he made about the Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Department.  If all you're counting is the proactive mistakes made, Obama had fewer in a year than many presidents do in a typical week. 
On the other hand, if you include blown opportunities into the mix, perhaps only Herbert Hoover can equal this president's record.  If you look at what he didn't do, in short, it's hard to imagine a more prolific record of non-achievement.  Does he know this?  Sometimes - especially when I watched his Afghanistan speech about getting in so that we could turn right around and get back out - I wondered if it could be possible that he has taken it as his task to quietly and heroically direct the managed decline of the American empire, even at the cost of his own presidency. 
That, of course, is pretty hard to imagine, but more to the point it is really unnecessary to do it this way, anyhow.  We can be a lot better than that, even if decline is inevitable.  (And it may not be, at least in an absolute sense.  Relative decline cannot be escaped, however, if for no other reasons than that China has other plans.  As does India, Europe and Latin America.)  A forward-thinking set of politics could really advance the nation and its economy in a hugely positive way, if only the accretionary shackles of predatory rentier pretend-capitalism could be busted off, freeing American society to realize its potential. 
To choose but the most proximate example, we could have had real healthcare reform, I believe, if Obama had fought for it like George W. Bush or Lyndon Johnson fought for their respective legislative agendas.  To see what I mean, think of Bush hawking the manifestly idiotic idea of invading Iraq.  When he first began his marketing campaign for the war, most Americans wanted no more part of that imperial folly than they were hankering for a good dose of the clap.  But Bush and his people were as relentless as they were ubiquitous, and in a few months time they turned public opinion, managing to get about two-thirds of the country lined up behind their plans for a most excellent adventure in Mesopotamia.  Obama, on the other hand, is possessed of rhetorical skills that drive someone like W - who couldn't have conjugated his way (in English!) out of tenth grade, even after his grandpa paid for the new school gymnasium - nearly apoplectic just thinking about them.  And yet the bloodless current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can't be bothered to work up either a passion or a sweat to sell his policy wares.  Or is it that he just realizes, as so many progressives now have, that what he's selling just isn't worth getting excited about? 
These two presidencies really do illustrate all too nicely the pathos that is twenty-first century America.  Consider their respective situations, and what each did with those circumstances.  Bush came into office after marketing himself as a moderate, after one of the most contentious election meltdowns in American history, with a Congress almost exactly evenly divided (and the Senate soon to fall into the hands of the Democrats), with no particular crisis going on short of a mild recession, and with really no mandate of any sort, apart from hopefully not acting as ill-suited and unprepared for the job as he seemed to be during the campaign (no worries there, though - Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell would be keeping him on the right path - remember?).  So what does he do under these circumstances?  He adopts a radical regressive agenda.  He polarizes the country.  He lets loose a marketing campaign of epic intensity, he hammers Congress, he aggrandizes to himself probably more unilateral power than any president in history.  And he gets virtually everything he wants.  If you can hold your nose long enough to get past the results of his policies, it's quite an amazing story of boldness and presidential success, made all the more remarkable because of how astonishingly bad his ideas were for the country, and how transparent that fact was even at the time.  This guy was selling melted poisonous ice-cubes to Eskimos in wintertime, and he not only made the sale, he got them to want the purchase. 
Obama, on the other hand, is dealt almost the opposite hand when he comes to office.  He is elected in a clear and compelling victory.  He gets a Congress with his party controlling both houses by lopsided 60-40 margins.  He receives a clear mandate for change, and he is backed by a stunning outpouring of goodwill, both at home and abroad.  He's got crises that everyone agrees need some serious tending to.  In short, you could hardly come up with a better set of circumstances for presidential success if you sat down and created them yourself.  So what does he do with this gift?  Again, the opposite of Bush.  He demands nothing.  He fights for nothing.  He negotiates with everyone, including those who have zero intention of voting for a bill that he is nevertheless allowing them to dilute, and those (generally the same folks) explicitly trying to ruin his presidency. 
And what does he have to show for it?  More looting of the public fisc by the already fantastically wealthy.  Policies that would be heartily applauded by the far right if enacted by Bush and a Republican Congress.  But, since they aren't, he is hated by those same people anyhow.  And, as an extra added bonus, he's managed to alienate millions of progressives and young first-time enthusiasts in the political system who rallied to his cause - thinking it was their cause - in 2008.  This is an astonishing act of cynicism for the history books, and one which will come back to haunt both Obama and his party in a huge way.  For which I, personally, am delighted. 
However, Obama's abuse of real people who really care about their country, and who for precisely that reason rolled up their sleeves and worked their butts off to get him into the White House, will also have grave repercussions for what's left of the republic - and those consequences I do happen to care about.  There is huge anger out there, huge antipathy to politics as usual, and huge reluctance to get fooled again.  The situation is ripe, the moment pregnant.  My guess is the next stop is some form of radical demagoguery (can you say "Palin"?), perhaps followed by a complete abandonment altogether of the two-century-plus American experiment in democracy, when the demagoguery tanks even worse than Obama.  Yep, the guy who just won the Nobel Prize could be the guy who unravels democracy in America.  Of course, he's had a tremendous amount of help, so we can't give him all the blame.  But more and more he looks to me like James Buchanan, the man widely considered the worst president in American history.  And why?  Because the fifteenth president continued practicing politics as usual as crisis for the republic loomed large.  As a result of trying to please everyone, Buchanan pleased no one, lost popularity, had a one-term presidency, split the Democratic Party, and stood by as the country plunged toward civil war.  Why does that sound a bit too frighteningly familiar to anyone besides me? 
America has been ‘blessed' in the twenty-first century with two presidents who are fine exemplars of their parties.  One stood for the absolute worst tendencies in American politics, but knew his convictions and would take no prisoners fighting to win at all costs (especially somebody else's costs).  The other seems to have no ideational tendencies of particular note whatsoever, and would certainly not be so rude as to break decorum in any way, even for purposes of advocating for something that might actually improve the condition of the country.  I mean, what would people think? 
Seeing this talented African-American president benefit so much from the struggles of prior generations of progressives, and from the massive outpouring of goodwill from those who need deliverance and wanted to believe his rhetoric of hope - only for him to win election and then muster the full weight of the oligarchy-sponsored American government to stand on their throats, choking off the life of the country and the planet - well, that's a fitting end to this particular sorry decade. 
It began, equally fittingly, with the Enron debacle, which demonstrated emphatically the nature of a society that has come to worship above all else a greed so rapacious that alleged people could even contemplate tripping electrical system blackouts for an entire region of the country, just to make an extra buck.  So what did we do about that?  How about institutionalize it as a full-blown system of governance, and choose for president a guy who was up to his faux cowboy belt-buckle in the Enronics of Kenny Boy Lay, one of his biggest contributors? 
Well, of course, ‘choose' isn't quite the right term, is it?  Shortly thereafter came Bush vs. Gore, when the United States Supreme Court jettisoned any and every pretense of dispassionate apolitical jurisprudence in favor of a judicial-led regressive coup so blatant that it actually issued an order halting the counting of the votes.  You know your democracy is toast when masses don't assemble in the streets over that one.  Iranians do.  We, on the other hand, just wanted it all to be over. 
The new president, as stripped of a mandate as he was of a conscience, immediately proceeded to begin dismantling wholesale the bipartisan foreign and domestic pillars of the post-war Pax Americana system, many of which had even survived the Reagan years.  Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty?  Gone.  International Criminal Court?  Gutted.  Kyoto?  Abandoned.  Transatlantic alliance?  That was ‘Old Europe'.  Massive tax cut for the already fantastically wealthy, leaving gaping revenue gaps in its place?  You betcha.  Let's not forget.  This was already a radical presidency on September 10, 2001. 
Then, of course, the next day came.  As the events of that day came into focus, my first thought was for the poor people in those buildings.  But I must confess that my second thought was that having this occur on the Bush administration's watch could only mean much ugliness around the corner.  I felt a bit guilty for thinking about politics at the time, but I must say in retrospect:  Check.  Got that one right. 
There is much evidence to suggest that the politically correct conspiracy theory about 9/11 - that is, the conventional story - has both some gaping holes and some holy lies in it.  But even if we leave aside the horrifying implications of that thought, the idea that a president who was minimally criminally negligent on terrorism policy could benefit so much for so long from this tragedy is yet another reminder of how bad the decade was. 
Then came Afghanistan, which shortly thereafter became one of the myriad casualties of Iraq.  There are no words for this.  There is no meaningful difference - in law, morality, politics, culture or civilization - between Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq.  The only divergence between the two acts of pure aggression is that when the hegemon does it, there's no one around to block or punish the crime.  Although I must say, in the longer term, the gods of karma have gotten better on that score - notwithstanding the fact that Bush and Cheney and the rest of the cowardly crew who ordered up this outrage have so far escaped more or less untouched. 
History will also record this as the decade when the evidence for global warming became so compelling that even George Bush endorsed it.  And then we did nothing.  If this country was a drunkard spouse who was bringing a hailstorm of destruction down on the family, you'd toss the creep out on the street and get a divorce.  We haven't.  And, really, when you think about it - why should we?  There are plenty of other planets out there to choose from once we wreck this one, aren't there? 
Of course there are myriad further tales of woe to be told.  After all, this was the decade in which the thirty year assault of radical regressivism came to full fruition, and was there for people to observe in all its glory.  The damages have been incalculable, and I haven't even gotten to Sarah Palin yet. 
If there was one bright spot, it was the seeming recognition by the American public that this full glory of regressive politics was a fairly horrifying prospect to behold, once stripped by a sufficient dose of reality immersion to reveal the truth behind the marketing slogans.  Americans seemed to finally come to their senses just a bit, and decide that the thirteenth century was best left in the history books, after all. 
But then along came Barack Obama to provide the fitting end to it all.  Crushing any sense of possible recovery or redemption (and even his own presidency) on the altar of perpetual obedience to corporate predation, he has now made the decade complete in every way.  Not only has he abandoned any meaningful solutions for the multiple crises he inherited, he has absolved by silence the folks who produced those very catastrophes.  No, strike that.  He has more than absolved them, he has revivified them. 
If there is any bright spot in the whole affair, it is that conditions are fertile for potentially big change in this country.  But, then, this is America, a place where a corporate milquetoast like Harry Reid defines the supposed left, and is considered some sort of Bolshevik revolutionary.  Or worse, I should say that it is an increasingly desperate, collapsing empire America, where the chances that such big change could be really ugly are lots higher than not.  Really, pushed off its fat ass toward one political pole or another, do you see this country careening more toward twenty-first century Sweden, or 18th century Prussia?  And when you look at the actors and energies out there working hard to move the nation in one direction or the other, just who seems to have the horses today?  (Hint:  The Tea Partyers are not progressives in this particular tableau.  Perhaps in Germany circa 1933, but not in the America of 2009.) 
So let's just hunker down for the new year, hope for the best, and call this one "The Devil's Decade", eh?  Chalk it up to the red guy with the tail and pitchfork.  Maybe we'll do better next time, but so far in the twenty-first century the score stands at:  Satan, one; Humanity, zero. 
Of course, I don't really believe in the Devil.  Or in angels, or saints or miracles, or any of the other human-made dramatis personae and sundry religious claptrap that get us into so much trouble. 
No, I don't really think there is a dude running around out there who is the Devil. 
Whole countries, on the other hand...? 
Well, now.  That's another matter entirely.   
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.  More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net .

Comment by ARAM ROSTON

This article appeared in the January 11, 2010 edition of The Nation.

December 22, 2009

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
As President Obama prepares a massive military buildup in Afghanistan, a House subcommittee has launched an investigation into whether Defense Department contractors are paying off the Taliban to protect American supply lines. The investigation was triggered by a Nation cover story [see Roston, "How the US Funds the Taliban," November 30].
Representative John Tierney, chair of the national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, said a "preliminary inquiry," including testimony from "a couple of whistleblowers," produced enough evidence to merit a full-fledged investigation. "If the allegations are taken to their conclusion," he said, "it would indicate that US taxpayer money is going to insurgents."
In interviews with The Nation, Afghan government officials, security contractors and trucking company executives outlined a giant protection racket, funded by US taxpayers, which raises millions for the Taliban. With no US military forces protecting their supply lines, contractors had to protect routes by other means: payoffs. As one trucking company official told The Nation, "If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially."
At the heart of the scandal is the Defense Department's $2.2 billion Host Nation Trucking contract, a military logistics operation launched with six major contractors, a number that has since risen to eight. One of the contractors under investigation is NCL Holdings, a US firm headed by Hamed Wardak, the Afghan-American son of Afghanistan's defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak. (NCL denies ever having made payments, directly or indirectly, to the Taliban.)
But it seems Hamed Wardak was more than just a defense contractor with a budding business. Parallel to his business ventures, he's been running an aggressive foreign policy campaign in Washington to keep the US heavily vested in Afghanistan. A confidential lobbying memoobtained by The Nation shows that Wardak commissioned a blue-chip lobbying firm to push for an extended US presence in Afghanistan--a potentially lucrative outcome for NCL.
Earlier this year Patton Boggs LLP, Washington's most monied lobbying firm, established a nonprofit front group on Wardak's behalf to act as the "face" of a campaign for increased US engagement in Afghanistan, according to confidential legal records. Patton Boggs is heavily involved in foreign policy and has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for governments and interests in Angola, Cameroon, China, Cyprus, India, Sri Lanka and Qatar, though not Afghanistan.
The documents obtained by The Nation are an influence-peddling playbook for the Wardak effort.
The website of the Campaign for a U.S.-Afghanistan Partnership offers up nothing controversial on its face. Calling itself "a membership organization for U.S. and Afghan citizens," CUSAP argues that the United States needs to remain engaged in Afghanistan long-term. "Afghanistan is not Vietnam," reads an introduction, "and it is not a quagmire." Since January CUSAP members, often introduced by Patton Boggs, have met with journalists, produced policy papers and lobbied on Capitol Hill.
CUSAP had one big name on its original eight-person board: Milton Bearden, a former CIA official whose name carries weight on Afghanistan because he helped run the war there against the Soviets in the 1980s. When Bearden testified about Afghanistan before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the fall, John Kerry called him a "legendary former CIA case officer." But in his testimony Bearden did not advertise his ties to Wardak or to the company's Defense Department contracts; Bearden is on the advisory board of NCL, a firm with millions of dollars at stake in Afghanistan. ("Aram," he said when I reached him on his mobile phone, "I don't have anything to talk to you about, so go ahead and do your story." Then he hung up.) Another former board member, Hedieh Mirahmadi, a prominent expert on Islamic radicalization, told me she had never been to a CUSAP board meeting. "I don't actually know what they did," she told me.
Hamed Wardak is listed as "one of eight founders" of CUSAP. A brilliant young man, he was valedictorian of his class at Georgetown in 1997 and won a Rhodes Scholarship. His CUSAP bio describes his company, NCL, as a "global professional services" firm. There is no mention that NCL has Defense Department contracts in Afghanistan worth tens of millions of dollars.
CUSAP's chief message was a ten-point plan for Afghanistan, whose recommendations included "strengthen and equip the Afghan National Army,'' which is overseen by Wardak's father. (As discussed in my previous Nation article, the defense minister told me he wasn't pleased with his son's business ventures.) In a written statement Hamed Wardak told The Nation that six of CUSAP's ten points were "echoed" by President Obama during his December 1 speech on the war. Indeed, both the CUSAP plan and the president's speech include calls for strengthening Afghanistan's security forces, for reconciliation with the Taliban and for identifying new Afghan leaders.
In an e-mail a Patton Boggs spokesperson said that CUSAP is "a legitimate non-profit organization," not a "front group." "To suggest otherwise," the e-mail continued, "is grossly misleading and inaccurate." In his statement to The Nation Wardak said, "The organization was formed out of my belief, and those of my friends and colleagues in the Afghan diaspora, that we have an obligation to help improve conditions in our country and to oppose vigorously the objectives of the Taliban and al Qaeda."
But the organization's history reveals it to be a classic Astroturf operation. On January 30, 2009, ten days after Obama's inauguration, Patton Boggs attorney Nicholas Allard wrote a memo to Wardak, copied to three other lawyers from his firm. Allard, listed by The Hill as a top DC lobbyist, is a former Ted Kennedy staffer known for his Democratic connections. In the memo Allard laid out a "comprehensive plan" that would "assist you in achieving your objective for Afghanistan" while meeting all legal and ethical standards. Patton Boggs would "collect information about the new Administration's emerging policy." It would advocate a "long-term U.S. strategy in Afghanistan that goes beyond military involvement." Most controversial, the firm would "launch a discreet campaign to find an alternative candidate to lead Afghanistan." It seems that Wardak, like UN official Peter Galbraith, was looking to replace President Hamid Karzai.
What was the "first step" in achieving these aims? "To establish an entity that will act as the 'face' of our campaign," the memo said. "This organization will be Patton Boggs's client. We suggest creating an organization such as the 'Campaign for a United Afghanistan' or the 'U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership.'"
On February 5, 2009, just six days after the date of the confidential memo, a Patton Boggs lawyer incorporated the Campaign for a U.S.-Afghanistan Partnership in Virginia. CUSAP was not created by Wardak's friends and colleagues in the Afghan diaspora after all. Eight days later CUSAP officially became a Patton Boggs client, according to Senate records. The firm had conceived CUSAP, launched the organization and brought it on as a client--all in the space of two weeks.
So far, CUSAP has paid $190,000 to Patton Boggs, according to lobbying records, with the most recent reported payment arriving on October 19.
I shared the Patton Boggs language with John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy and a critic of the lobbying industry. "This is an explosive document," he said, pointing out that such planning memos rarely see the light of day. "This is classic PR subterfuge," he said. "It's called the third party technique." One notorious example, he said, was when PR giant Hill & Knowlton set up Citizens for a Free Iraq for the Kuwaiti government in order to lobby for the 1991 US invasion of Iraq. The front group peddled a deceptive claim by the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter that she had witnessed atrocities in Iraq, including babies being torn from incubators.
In this case Patton Boggs appears to have presented a lobby front group as a grassroots organization while the firm's client stands to profit personally from extended US engagement in Afghanistan. One legislative aide who met with Wardak on Capitol Hill told me he was introduced to Wardak by Patton Boggs attorneys and was quite impressed. He said Wardak made it clear he was the Afghan defense minister's son but did not explain anything about his business in Afghanistan. The aide told me he had no idea at the time of the meeting that Wardak had received tens of millions of dollars in Afghanistan contracts through NCL.
One journalist who was approached on behalf of Wardak received an e-mail describing the young man as "on the board of a new organization, Campaign for US-Afghanistan Partnership" and that "his father is Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Defense Minister of Afghanistan." "Hamed knows many warlords," the PR representative for CUSAP said, "and can possibly provide you further insight."
Wardak declined an interview with The Nation, but he agreed to answer questions in writing. Concerning the potential conflict of interest, his answer was vague: "You have asked about the relationship between CUSAP and NCL Holdings," he wrote. "Long term stability within Afghanistan is in the interest of any business." He did not mention something I later learned from Patton Boggs: that the lobbying firm represents not only CUSAP, the "face" of Wardak's foreign policy campaign, but also NCL, Wardak's company.
NCL is still trucking for the logistics contract in Afghanistan, a job that is sure to grow with the influx of 30,000 fresh troops in need of supplies. So far, the firm's spokesperson said, NCL has done $45 million in business on the contract, which started in earnest in May. Hamed Wardak said in his statement that he welcomes Representative Tierney's investigation. He insisted that NCL made "no direct payments to any security firm in Afghanistan." Perhaps that is so, since almost all of NCL's trucking for the US contract is handled by subcontractors--and it's the subcontractors who are alleged to have arranged payments to the warlords and insurgents. As for the Congressional investigation, it may take months.

About Aram Roston

Aram Roston is an investigative journalist and the author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi (Nation Books).

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/one_day_well_all_be_terrorists_20091228/

Posted on Dec 28, 2009

By Chris Hedges
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.orgorwww.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day,  this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison inThomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism. 
Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).

Published on Wednesday, December 23, 2009 by Creators.com
Hoping for a New Ethic in 2010
by Jim Hightower
This special season got me to thinking about America's spirit of giving, and I don't mean this overdone business of Christmas gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving - giving of ourselves.
Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there's also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We're a people who believe in the notion that we're all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.
The establishment media pay little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls "philanthropists" - big tycoons who give a tiny piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of yourselves.
My own daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program, volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking P.A. system, etc., etc. Even after I moved on from Little League, he stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids ... but for all.
He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don't recall him ever going in that building, much less checking out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God's sake - indeed, he called himself a conservative.
My daddy didn't even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it's the best I've ever heard. He would often say to me, "Everybody does better when everybody does better."
If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American Philosophy.
click here
Maybe we could help get them in the proper frame of mind by urging a bit of introspection on their part. With New Year's Day right around the corner, I was working on my list of New Year's resolutions when it occurred to me that some of the people running our country could benefit from my suggestions for their lists. No need for them to thank me -I'm happy to help!
Let's start, then, with those proud-and-loud members of Congress who've adamantly opposed real health insurance reform for workaday Americans. Not only do I include the entire block of Republican lawmakers whose vocabulary is limited to the word "no," but also those pathetic Democrats who've compromised the reform idea into corporate mush. It would be neat (and only fair) for each of these stalwarts of the status quo to make this vow for 2010: "Since I helped kill reform, I will give up the excellent government-paid, socialized health coverage that I get so that I am in the same leaky boat as my constituents."
And here's one for the barons of Wall Street, who continue to float on billions of dollars in government bailout money, yet are grabbing bonus payments for themselves, while pouting that the public is not showing them the love they deserve: "I hereby pledge to go through the 12-step detox program of Greedheads Anonymous to cure my narcissism and become a human being again."
Let's not forget the Obamacans, either! They came into office on an antiwar, anti-fat cat, pro-middle-class program, yet they've expanded their war, catered to fat cats and offered the middle class nothing but "a jobless recovery." Here's the resolution we need from Obama: "In year two of my term, I promise to Democrat-up by getting some economic advisors who've actually met a real worker and downloading some recordings of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to my iPod. I'll also require top officials in my administration to volunteer at least one loved one to go to war in Afghanistan."
If only we can get those in charge to make these pledges, we'll all have a happier New Year!

Published on Monday, December 21, 2009 by The Nation
For Obama, No Opportunity Too Big To Blow
by Naomi Klein
Contrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India had all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, but only if the U.S. took the lead. Instead of leading, Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him.
(The "deal" that was ultimately rammed through was nothing more than a grubby pact between the world's biggest emitters: I'll pretend that you are doing something about climate change if you pretend that I am too. Deal? Deal.)
I understand all the arguments about not promising what he can't deliver, about the dysfunction of the U.S. Senate, about the art of the possible. But spare me the lecture about how little power poor Obama has. No President since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet. He has refused to use each and every one of them. Let's look at the big three.
Blown Opportunity Number 1: The Stimulus Package When Obama came to office he had a free hand and a blank check to design a spending package to stimulate the economy. He could have used that power to fashion what many were calling a "Green New Deal" -- to build the best public transit systems and smart grids in the world. Instead, he experimented disastrously with reaching across the aisle to Republicans, low-balling the size of the stimulus and blowing much of it on tax cuts. Sure, he spent some money on weatherization, but public transit was inexplicably short changed while highways that perpetuate car culture won big.
Blown Opportunity Number 2: The Auto Bailouts Speaking of the car culture, when Obama took office he also found himself in charge of two of the big three automakers, and all of the emissions for which they are responsible. A visionary leader committed to the fight against climate chaos would obviously have used that power to dramatically reengineer the failing industry so that its factories could build the infrastructure of the green economy the world desperately needs. Instead Obama saw his role as uninspiring down-sizer in chief, leaving the fundamentals of the industry unchanged.
Blown Opportunity Number 3: The Bank Bailouts Obama, it's worth remembering, also came to office with the big banks on their knees -- it took real effort not to nationalize them. Once again, if Obama had dared to use the power that was handed to him by history, he could have mandated the banks to provide the loans for factories to be retrofitted and new green infrastructure to be built. Instead he declared that the government shouldn't tell the failed banks how to run their businesses. Green businesses report that it's harder than ever to get a loan.
Imagine if these three huge economic engines -- the banks, the auto companies, the stimulus bill -- had been harnessed to a common green vision. If that had happened, demand for a complementary energy bill would have been part of a coherent transformative agenda.
Whether the bill had passed or not, by the time Copenhagen had rolled around, the U.S. would already have been well on its way to dramatically cutting emissions, poised to inspire, rather than disappoint, the rest of the world.
There are very few U.S. Presidents who have squandered as many once-in-a-generation opportunities as Barack Obama. More than anyone else, the Copenhagen failure belongs to him.

Published on Monday, December 21, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Agent of Change
by Ralph Nader
The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus (535-475 BC) said that "character is destiny." He might have added that "personality is decisive." Where is Barack Obama in this framework?
The venerable historian, James MacGregor Burns, in his book "Transforming Leadership," drew an important distinction between "transforming and transactional leadership," and calling Franklin Delano Roosevelt a reflection of the former genre.
Given all the burgeoning crises in the United States and the world, the only global military and economic superpower (albeit in serious deficit straits) needs a transforming leader, when, at best, it has a transactional leader in the White House.
I say "at best," because President Obama displays an uncanny inability to deal. He is not even anywhere near Lyndon Baines Johnson in that regard. This lack is due more to his personality than to his character.
His is a concessionary demeanor, an aversion to conflict and to taking on entrenched power, a devotee of harmony ideology not because he doesn't believe in necessary re-directions, but because he does not project the strength of his beliefs and willingness to draw the line-here and no further-as did Ronald Reagan or FDR.
In the shark tank known as the federal Washington, D.C. Obama's personality projects weakness as someone who does not take a stand and fight, as someone inclined to rely on his rhetoric to explain his withdrawals, retreats and reversals. Some examples follow.
First, the President has been openly for single payer health insurance (full Medicare for all with free choice of physician and hospital) since before he became a politician. His friends included single payer leaders such as the stalwart Dr. Quentin Young in Chicago.
So, instead of starting with "single payer," he descends to vague policy declarations, asks Congress to come up with a specific bill, while cutting private deals in meetings in the White House with drug industry and health insurance executives.
Now months later, with Blue Dog Democrats emboldened, with his progressive wing angry and starting to rebel, a hoked up insurance bill is having many provisions eviscerated. Once the Republicans smelled his lack of resolve, his wavering on one amendment after another, they became ravenous in their demands and obstructions.
Second, Barack Obama, before he came to Washington, was also a supporter of Palestinian rights. Between election and inauguration, he proceeded to categorically back the illegal blockade and invasion of Gaza by Israel and did not object to the slaughter of 1400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, young and old. Apparently, the impoverished, pummeled people of a half-destroyed Gaza, whose many newly elected members of the Palestinian parliament were kidnapped and jailed by the Israelis two years earlier, had no right to feebly defend themselves against constant border raids and missiles by the fifth most powerful army in the world.
Third, Mr. Obama's tough talk about a reckless and greedy Wall Street is not paralleled with tough regulatory proposals. He allowed, without working his will, the banks and Banking Committee Chairman, Barney Frank to produce a weakened regulatory bill that passed the House of Representatives.
For example, regulatory provisions on the rating agencies (such as Standard and Poor's and Moody's) and derivatives were mere taps on the wrists, ridiculed by former Chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission from both parties.
Fourth, on labor and NAFTA, his campaign speeches were about the need for reform. He has started nothing there and says nothing about this promise to revisit the U.S. participation in NAFTA. He believes in the card check version of labor law reform but has not used his political capital to advance this modest reform at all.
Fifth, on climate change, where so much of the world looks for him to be a transforming leader, Mr. Obama has bought into the cap and trade morass instead of a simpler, more enforceable carbon tax. His words on this subject are often well-spoken but his rhetoric is undermined by his inaction. His opponents in Congress and the corporate sector are strengthened as a consequence.
Mr. Obama leaves Copenhagen without a deal after outlining three steps-mitigation of greenhouse gases, openness of each country's progress or lack thereof, and a very modest financial commitment from the world's biggest polluter to help the more beleaguered countries with climate change (poor countries that are recipients of the Western countries emissions.) He hardly set an example for a government whose ownership and control of GM and Chrysler could transform automotive technology.
He cannot transform his hope and change slogan into meaningful policies if he signals that he can be had on one issue after another by being desperate to get any legislation so long as he can give it the right public relations label.
Most importantly, The President cannot be a transforming leader if he turns his back on the liberal and progressive constituency that elected him because he thinks they have nowhere to go.
He must give visibility to their expectations of him, including access to many cabinet secretaries and regulatory agency heads who have been reluctant even to meet with civic leaders, unlike the open doors regularly available to the corporatists and their lobbyists.
"Personality," "character," pretty soon they become indistinguishable and very resistant to both "hope and change."

Published on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Flares in the Political Dark
by Norman Solomon
The winter solstice of 2009 arrived as a grim metaphor for the current politics of healthcare, war and a lot more. “In a dark time,” wrote the poet Theodore Roethke, “the eye begins to see.” 

After a year of escalation in Afghanistan, solicitude toward Wall Street and the incredible shrinking healthcare reform, we ought to be able to see that the biggest problem among progressives has been undue deference to the Obama administration. 

In recent months, the responses from the progressive base to the Obama presidency have often resembled stages of grief -- with rotations of denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance. 

Mobilization of progressive movements to pressurize Obama in the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill has always been essential. It hasn’t happened. Instead, among Democratic loyalists, reflexive support for the latest line from the administration has made it easier for Obama to move rightward.

In 2010, we should concentrate on generating the kind of public information, vigorous debate and grassroots organizing that could shift the center of political gravity in a progressive direction. 

At every turn, progressives should be putting up a fight -- not only in all kinds of venues outside the electoral system but also inside the Democratic Party. Winning elections will require doing the methodical and difficult work of running candidates in Democratic primaries, sometimes against entrenched incumbents. 

For instance, that’s what stalwart anti-war progressive Marcy Winograd is doing in her challenge to Congresswoman Jane Harman in the Los Angeles area. Across the country, dozens of strong progressives are running for Congress with a real chance to win. They need our volunteer help and our financial support. 

In some congressional districts with many progressive voters, blue dog Democrats are running for re-election without any declared primary opposition so far. That should change. 

It’s time for progressives to get out there and fight the good fight in election campaigns. We should do what our conservative and centrist and mushy-liberal adversaries least want us to do. They don’t want more progressives to seriously engage in electoral battles. 

This year, left to their own devices, the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House have managed to demobilize the progressive base that swept them into office. The latest nationwide polls are foreshadowing grim consequences; Republicans express far more eagerness to vote in 2010 than Democrats do. 

In Washington, the conventional wisdom of top Democratic strategists has run amok, continually splitting the difference with Republicans. All year long we’ve seen Congress undermine basic progressive principles, whether for healthcare or peace or economic justice or environmental protection or civil liberties. 

Despite the Democratic Party’s leadership, we have a huge stake in thwarting GOP ambitions and in replacing tepid Democrats with progressives. It might be more comfortable to just engage in the politics of denunciation -- but we also need to change who is casting votes on Capitol Hill. 

Among progressives, in these dark closing days of 2009, there’s a surplus of frustration, anger and despair. Let’s transform those downbeat energies into fuel for the imperative political work ahead.
Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. Video of his mid-December appearance on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” is posted at www.normansolomon.com .

Published on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 by Informed Comment
Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade; Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs
by Informed Comment
by Juan Cole
By spring of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush was wrapping up the Republican nomination for president, and he went on to dominate the rest of the decade. If Dickens proclaimed of the 1790s revolutionary era in France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the reactionary Bush era was just the worst of times. I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the emergence of a class of lawless 'Oligarchs' in Russia, so Neoliberal tax policies and deregulation produced American equivalents. (For more on the analogy, see Michael Hudson .) We have always had robber barons in American politics, but the Neoliberal moment created a new social class. At about 1.3 million adults, it is not too large to have some cohesive interests, and its corporations, lobbyists, and other institutions allow it to intervene systematically in politics. It owns 45 percent of the privately held wealth and is heading toward 50, i.e. toward a Banana Republic. Thus, we have a gutted fairness doctrine and the end of anti-trust concerns in ownership of mass media, allowing a multi-billionaire like Rupert Murdoch to buy up major media properties and to establish a cable television channel which is nothing but oligarch propaganda. They established 'think tanks' like the American Enterprise Institute, which hires only staff that are useful agents of the interests of the very wealthy, and which produce studies denying global climate change or lying about the situation in Iraq. Bush-Cheney were not simply purveyors of wrong-headed ideas. They were the agents of the one percent, and their policies make perfect sense if seen as attempts to advance the interests of this narrow class of persons. It is the class that owns our mass media, that pays for the political campaigns of 'our' (their) representatives, that gives us the Bushes and Cheneys and Palins because they are useful to them, and that blocks progressive reform and legislation with the vast war chest funneled to them by deep tax cuts that allow them to use essential public resources, infrastructure and facilities gratis while making the middle class pay for them.
Here are my picks for the top ten worst things about the wretched period, which, however, will continue to follow us until the economy is re-regulated, anti-trust concerns again pursued, a new, tweaked fairness doctrine is implemented, and we return to a more normal distribution of wealth (surely a quarter of the privately held wealth is enough for the one percent?) It isn't about which party is in power; parties can always be bought. It is about how broadly shared resources are in a society. Egalitarianism is unworkable, but over-concentration of wealth is also impractical. The latter produced a lot of our problems in the past decade, and as long as such massive inequality persists, our politics will be lopsided.
10. Stagnating worker wages and the emergence of a new monied aristocracy . Of all the income growth of the entire country of the United States in the Bush years, the richest 1 percent of the working population , about 1.3 million persons, grabbed up over two-thirds of it. The Reagan and Bush cuts in tax rates on the wealthy have created a dangerous little alien inside our supposedly democratic society, of the super-rich, with their legions of camp followers (sometimes referred to as 'analysts' or 'economists' or 'journalists'). The new lords and ladies are the Dick and Liz Cheneys and the people for whom they shill. They are the Rupert Murdochs and the Richard Mellon Scaifes , and they are guaranteed to own more and more of the country as long as more progressive taxation (i.e. pre-Reagan, not pre-Bush) is not restored. They are the ones who didn't want a public universal health option, did not want the wars abroad to end abruptly, did not want the Copenhagen Climate convention to succeed. They are driven by pure greed and narrow profit-seeking for themselves. They always get their way, and they always will as long as you poor stupid bastards buy the line that when the government raises their taxes, it is taking something away from you. It is the alliance of the Neoliberal super-rich with the new lower middle class populists led by W. and now by Sarah Palin that produces clown politics in the US unmatched in most advanced industrial countries with the possible exception of Italy.
9. Health and food insecurity increased for ordinary Americans. Health care costs skyrocketed. Most Americans in the work force who have health care are covered via their employers. 'From 1999 to 2009 health insurance premiums increased 132%" for the companies paying most of the costs of coverage to their employees. Euromonitor adds, "Average private health insurance premiums for a family of four in 1999 were US$5,485 per annum or 7.2% of household disposable income. 2008 premiums were estimated at US$12,973 per annum or 14.8% of average household disposable income." By Bush's last year in office, food insecurity among American families was at a 14-year high . About 49 million Americans, one in six of us, worried about having enough food to eat at some points in that year, and resorted to soup lines, food stamps, or dietary shortcuts. Some 16 million, according to the NYT, suffered from '"very low food security," meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.' Hundreds of thousands of children are going hungry in the richest country in the world. From being a proud, wealthy people, our social superiors reduced us to the estate of third-world peasants, so as to make sure their bonuses were bigger.
8. The environment became more polluted. The Bush administration was the worst on record on environmental issues . Carbon emissions grew unchecked, and the threat of climate change accelerated. In fact, Bush muzzled government climate scientists and had their reports rewritten by lawyers from Big Oil.
7. The imperial presidency was ensconced in ways it will be difficult to pare back. But note that its powers were never used against the oligarchs (unlike the case in Putin's Russia), but rather deployed to ensure the continued destruction of the labor movement and the political bargaining power of workers and the middle class, and to harass and disrupt peace, rights and environmental movements. A part of this process was the abrogation of fourth amendmentprotections against arbitrary search, seizure and snooping into people's mail and effects, and of other key constitutional rights under vague and unconstitutional rubrics such as 'providing material aid to terrorists,'(rights which seem unlikely ever to be restored).
6. The Katrina flood and the destruction of much of historic African-American New Orleans, and the massive failure of the Bush administration to come to the aid of one of America's great cities. The administration's unconcern about the unsound dam infrastructure, about climate change, and about the fate of the victims are all a wake-up call for what all of us have in store from the small social class that Bush served.
5. The Bush administration's post-2002 mishandling of Afghanistan, where the Taliban had been overthrown successfully in 2001 and were universally despised. The Bush administration's attempt to assert itself with a big troop presence in the Pashtun provinces, its use of search and destroy tactics and missile strikes, its neglect of civilian reconstruction, and its failure to finish off al-Qaeda, allowed an insurgency gradually to grow. It should have been nipped in the bud, but was not. Once an insurgency becomes well established, it is defeated militarily only about 20 percent of the time. Eight years later, the Neoconservative thrust into Central Asia (in search of hydrocarbon leverage, or in a geopolitical pissing match with Russia and China?) of the early years of this decade has bequeathed us yet another war, this time one that could destabilize neighboring Pakistan-- the world's sole Muslim nuclear power.
4. The Iraq War, which the US illegally launched a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, displaced 4 million (over as million abroad), destroyed entire cities such as Fallujah, set off a Sunni-Shiite civil war, allowed Baghdad to be ethnically cleansed of its Sunnis, practiced systematic and widespread torture before the eyes of the Muslim Middle East and the world, and immeasurably strengthened Iran's hand in the Middle East. All this on false pretexts such as 'weapons of mass destruction' or 'democratization,' for the sake of opening the Iraqi oil markets to US hydrocarbon firms -- a significant faction of the oligarchic class. Cost to the US in American military life: 4,373 dead as of Dec 15 and 31,603 wounded in combat. The true totals of war-related dead and injured are higher, since 30,000 troops who were only diagnosed with brain injuries on their return to the US are not counted in the statistics, according to Michael Munk . The cost of the Iraq War when everything is taken into account will likely be $3 trillion .
3. The great $12 trillion Bank Robberry, in which unscrupulous bankers and financiers were deregulated and given free rein to create worthless derivatives, sell impossible mortgages to uninformed marks who could not understand their complicated terms, and then to roll this garbage up into securities re-sold like the Cheshire cat, with a big visible smile of asserted value hanging in the air even as their actual worth disappeared into thin air. Having allowed the one-percent oligarchs to capture most of the increase of the country's wealth in recent decades, Bush and Paulsen now initiated the surrender to them of nearly a further entire year's gross domestic product of the US, stealing it from the rest of us by deficit budget financing that will have the effect of deflating our savings and property values and relative value of our currency against other world currencies. That is, we are to be further beggared for sake of the super-rich. And while the banks and bankers are held harmless, the hardworking Americans who have lost and will lose their homes are extended virtually no help. While 500,000 American children will go hungry at least some of the time this year, the Oligarchs at Goldman, Sachs, will get millions in bonuses, on the backs of the ordinary taxpayers. It seems likely to me that the creation of a pool of vast excess liquidity for the super-rich by the Reagan-Cheney tax cuts was what impelled them to develop the derivatives, since they had too much capital for ordinary investment purposes and were restlessly seeking new gaming tables. The conclusion is that until we get our gini coefficient back into some sort of synch , we are likely at risk for further such meltdowns.
2. The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by al-Qaeda, an organization that stemmed from the Reagan administration's anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s and which decided that, having defeated one superpower, it could take down the other. Al-Qaeda's largely Arab volunteer fighters had confronted the Soviets over their occupation of a major Muslimm country, Afghanistan. Bin Laden was himself a Neoliberal Oligarch, but he broke with the Gulf consensus of seeking a US security umbrella, thus creating a fissure within his powerful social class. Al-Qaeda viewed the US as only a slightly less objectionable occupier, though they were willing to make an atliance of convenience in the 1980s. But they were increasingly enraged and galvanized to strike, they said, by the post-Gulf-War sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children, the debilitating Israeli occupation of the Palestinians, and the establishment of US bases in the holy Arabian Peninsula (with its oil riches that Bin Laden believed were being looted for pennies by the West, aided by a supine and corrupt Saudi dynasty). Al-Qaeda was a small fringe crackpot group of murderous conspiracy theorists, since most of what they considered an American 'occupation' of Muslims was no such thing. The leasing of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia was comparable to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? They intended to make themselves look like a world-historical force, and the US new Oligarchs, who no longer had the international Communist conspiracy with which to scare the American public into letting them have their way, were happy to buy in to the hyping of al-Qaeda, as well. But the catastrophe was not only the attacks, deadly and horrific though they were, but the alacrity with which Americans rsurrendered their birthright of yeoman liberties to a Bonapartist regime that ran roughshod over law, the constitution, the Congress, and anyone, such as Ambassador Joe Wilson, who dared oppose it.
1. The constitutional coup of 2000, in which Bush was declared the winner of an election he had lost , with the deployment of the most ugly racial and other low tricks in the ballot counting and the intervention of a partisan and far right-wing Supreme Court (itself drawn from or serving the oligarchs), and which gave us the worst president in the history of the union, who proceeded to drive the country off a cliff for the succeeding 8 years. And that is because he was not our president, but theirs.
© 2009 Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment .

Published on Monday, December 21, 2009 by The New York Times
A Dangerous Dysfunction
by Paul Krugman
Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It's a seriously flawed bill, we'll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it's nonetheless a huge step forward.
It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate - and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole - has become ominously dysfunctional.
After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster - a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule - turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill.
Now consider what lies ahead. We need fundamental financial reform. We need to deal with climate change. We need to deal with our long-run budget deficit. What are the chances that we can do all that - or, I'm tempted to say, any of it - if doing anything requires 60 votes in a deeply polarized Senate?
Some people will say that it has always been this way, and that we've managed so far. But it wasn't always like this. Yes, there were filibusters in the past - most notably by segregationists trying to block civil rights legislation. But the modern system, in which the minority party uses the threat of a filibuster to block every bill it doesn't like, is a recent creation.
The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, "extended-debate-related problems" - threatened or actual filibusters - affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.
Some conservatives argue that the Senate's rules didn't stop former President George W. Bush from getting things done. But this is misleading, on two levels.
First, Bush-era Democrats weren't nearly as determined to frustrate the majority party, at any cost, as Obama-era Republicans. Certainly, Democrats never did anything like what Republicans did last week: G.O.P. senators held up spending for the Defense Department - which was on the verge of running out of money - in an attempt to delay action on health care.
More important, however, Mr. Bush was a buy-now-pay-later president. He pushed through big tax cuts, but never tried to pass spending cuts to make up for the revenue loss. He rushed the nation into war, but never asked Congress to pay for it. He added an expensive drug benefit to Medicare, but left it completely unfunded. Yes, he had legislative victories; but he didn't show that Congress can make hard choices and act responsibly, because he never asked it to.
So now that hard choices must be made, how can we reform the Senate to make such choices possible?
Back in the mid-1990s two senators - Tom Harkin and, believe it or not, Joe Lieberman - introduced a bill to reform Senate procedures. (Management wants me to make it clear that in my last column I wasn't endorsing inappropriate threats against Mr. Lieberman.) Sixty votes would still be needed to end a filibuster at the beginning of debate, but if that vote failed, another vote could be held a couple of days later requiring only 57 senators, then another, and eventually a simple majority could end debate. Mr. Harkin says that he's considering reintroducing that proposal, and he should.
But if such legislation is itself blocked by a filibuster - which it almost surely would be - reformers should turn to other options. Remember, the Constitution sets up the Senate as a body with majority - not supermajority - rule. So the rule of 60 can be changed. A Congressional Research Service report from 2005, when a Republican majority was threatening to abolish the filibuster so it could push through Bush judicial nominees, suggests several ways this could happen - for example, through a majority vote changing Senate rules on the first day of a new session.
Nobody should meddle lightly with long-established parliamentary procedure. But our current situation is unprecedented: America is caught between severe problems that must be addressed and a minority party determined to block action on every front. Doing nothing is not an option - not unless you want the nation to sit motionless, with an effectively paralyzed government, waiting for financial, environmental and fiscal crises to strike.

Published on Monday, December 21, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Nader’s Utopia: The World According to Ralph
by Chris Hedges
Ralph Nader's new novel, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us ," is a window into the world the consumer advocate and independent presidential candidate wishes he could create. It is a world where the corporate state is dismantled, citizens are restored to power and the inequities and injustices meted out to the poor and the working classes are reversed. Nader describes his book as a "practical utopia."
"Basically this book was written out of frustration," Nader tells me when we meet on a Saturday afternoon in Princeton, N.J. "Increasingly over the last 30 years the doors have shut on a lot of citizen groups in Washington, D.C. And every year, you put in your mental imagination, at least I did, ‘What did we need to have kept those doors open?' Did we need more organizers? Did we need more media? Did we need more money? Did we need better strategies? Did we need ways to motivate millions of people who haven't figured it out yet? And that's why this book was so easy to write."
The engines of reform in the bulky novel are 17 mega-billionaires or millionaires. It is an odd decision for a man who has spent his life making war on the power elite, but, as Nader notes, popular movements, along with labor and the press, are largely ineffectual or dead. The super-rich, he laments, "are probably all we have left." His main characters include figures such as Warren Buffett, George Soros, Ted Turner, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue. The names of the villains, also often real-life characters, are mangled. Grover Norquist, for example, becomes Brovar Dortwist. The evil Dortwist owns a Doberman named Get'Em.
The super-rich ignite a progressive revolution using their enormous wealth. They recruit and fund citizen movements to challenge corporate power and its political puppets in Washington. The rich bring to the citizen movement what in reality it desperately lacks-billions in funding. The money, some $15 billion, makes it possible to sustain grass-roots movements to topple the oil industry, the insurance industry, arms manufacturers, the corporate media and Wall Street.
The book is Nader's quixotic answer to Ayn Rand's 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged," a celebration of raw capitalism and one of Alan Greenspan's favorite works. Rand's book is more than 1,000 pages long, so Nader, coming in at just above 730 pages, has at least beaten his nemesis in economy of style. By the end of the book, everything Nader has fought to achieve for decades is accomplished. Popular democracy triumphs. There is an ascendancy of independent third parties. An independent press challenges the status quo. There is universal not-for-profit health care for all Americans. Vibrant labor unions defend the working class. Flourishing public schools educate the rich and poor alike, and pot is legal. There is something endearing and even touching about Nader's faith in the good.
"It's probably the most important book I've ever written," he says. "There is a magnitude and critical mass to the money necessary to facilitate the political and civic energies of the people, to put a lot of them on the ground full time."
"Do liberals and progressives think that by putting out great documentaries, great books, great exposés-and we're in the golden age of muckraking-something is going to change with the two-party tyranny, oligarchic and corporate control of Washington?" he asks. "If they think they're going to change anything, year after year, they are living a dystopia. And between a dystopia on the ground, one that's at least 30 years old, and this proposal, I think this one has a higher probability."
The trigger to the popular revolt occurs when Buffett is watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on television. The fictional Buffett reacts to the disarray and human suffering by taking truckloads of supplies to the embattled residents of New Orleans. An elderly woman encounters him delivering relief supplies, grabs his hands and tells him, "Only the super-rich can save us!" This call to arms haunts Buffett on his way back to his home in Omaha. He decides to convene a gathering of the wealthy, or at least wealthy people with a conscience, in Maui in January 2006 to retake America.
The fantasy of the rich going to the rescue of ordinary Americans is born out of Nader's deep despair over the decline of our democratic mass movements. It will take angels-and this is what the super-rich become in the book-to descend from the heights to save the country from corporate neofeudalism.
"I think something's happened-50 years of looking at screens," Nader reflects. "The young generation is spending 50 hours a week at least in front of the Internet, television and video games. Two-to-5-year-olds, in a survey [published in October], ... watched 32 hours of television and DVDs a week. Two-to-5-year-olds! We don't tend to weigh the consequences. When you're in virtual reality-it's not like they're watching a re-creation of the Federalist discussion-then something happens. They don't know what a town meeting is like. They don't know what the wordscivic engagement mean."
"The other thing is the massive entrenchment of corporate power," he says. "The corporations have weakened the labor movement. The two parties, under the influence of corporate power, are converging. These corporations game the electoral process. Money and politics is cleverly distributed. They have deregulated the regulatory state. They are beginning to block the courtroom door. All the countervailing forces, which were built up in the late 19th century and the early 20th century to curb corporate power, are powerless."
In the book, set in 2006, the handful of wealthy renegades work in secret for the first six months. They form alternative sources of power such as a People's Chamber of Commerce to organize tens of thousands of small businesses. They buy time to saturate the airwaves with populist messages and distract right-wing talk show hosts, who have names like Bush Bimbo and Pawn Vanity, with the kind of faux controversies that are the staple of trash-talk television and radio. The movement, for example, proposes changing the national anthem from "The Star-Spangled Banner" to "America the Beautiful." The talk show hosts swallow the bait.
"The dialogue is rather good on that," Nader says.
The movement also persuades hundreds of inner-city schoolteachers to instruct pupils, when they pledge allegiance to the flag, to end with the phrase "liberty and justice for some," instead of "for all."
"Pawn Vanity and Bush Bimbo, they went nuts on that one for weeks," Nader laughs. "And there's even a congressional hearing on that. I put a lot of my frustrated experiences in this book. All the things you couldn't really do, because the money wasn't there. Can you imagine the sense of freedom? I didn't have to use one footnote either. See, there's utopian fiction in all of us, all of us who have struggled to improve their community or nation or world. And when we haven't won, we do consciously or subconsciously say ‘If we only had this,' or ‘If we only had that.' If we don't continue to elevate our imaginations we cannot envision possibilities."
No progressive vision of heaven would be complete without the destruction of Wal-Mart, which occupies many pages, as well as electoral reform.
"There's a section of the book on how they [those in the new movement] organize the most redneck, right-wing district in southwest Oklahoma against the chairman of the House Rules Committee," Nader says. "I put a lot of my frustration in that too. There's a lot of conversation about how conservative people started gravitating towards this movement, and why, and on what issues. As I said, they didn't write anybody off. It's a way to show that when you go down the abstraction ladder, to the daily lives of people, the so-called labels of conservative and liberals are not indelible. A conservative worker in Wal-Mart who wants a living wage will not say ‘I want to be paid $7.50 an hour because it helps Wal-Mart's bottom line.' When Toyota recalls cars because the throttle is sticking to the floor mat, is your reaction to the recall different if you're a liberal or a Republican? Are you going to say ‘I still want the freedom to go onto a highway'? The discussions on cable and radio are about abstract, ideological conflicts. They are empirically stark. I wanted to show what would happen if you brought it down to people's daily lives to appeal to their value system and sense of fair play. If I wrote this as nonfiction nobody would believe me. You have to write it as fiction. It gives you that imaginative elbowroom."
"I went to Princeton and Harvard Law School," Nader says. "We never talked about the commonwealth that the people owned. One-third of America's public lands, plus what is offshore, belongs to the people. We own them. But the oil, gas, uranium and the gold and silver industries control them. They take our resources for nothing or five bucks an acre. A Canadian gold company discovered $9 billion worth of our gold in Nevada in public lands over a decade ago. They got ownership of it for $30,000 under the 1872 Mining Act . The Department of the Interior had to sell them the projected acreage over the mine for five bucks an acre. We grow up corporate, even in the Ivy League universities. The public owns the airwaves, along with trillions of dollars of government research and development, along with the pension funds that the corporations control. The corporations don't care who owns anything, as long as they control it. All this money that Wall Street played around with, they didn't own most of it. It was other people's money. It was pension funds, mutual funds, but they controlled it. So what they [the new movement] did in this book was they educated people. They got hundreds of people around TV station buildings, two, three hours before the early evening news, and they had signs saying ‘PAY RENT,' because the television stations use our airwaves free and have since radio started. We're the landlords. They are the tenants, but they decide who says what and who doesn't on radio and TV, and they don't pay rent to the Federal Communications Commission."
"What would the framers of the Constitution say about the state of our country today?" Nader asks. "Well, they would say that the important parts of the Constitution are a dead letter. They are being ignored. Look at the equal protections clause between corporations as entities and real human beings. The declaration-of-war clause is dead. The one thing the framers never anticipated was that a branch of government-judicial, executive or legislative-would ever give up its power willingly to another branch. They didn't anticipate Congress abdicating its power to the executive branch. And it's getting worse and worse."
"Appropriation power is supposed to start in the House," Nader says. "Who's kidding who? It starts in the Office of Management and Budget. So as a result they didn't give us any revenue. No American can challenge this in a court of law, because they would not have any standing to sue. The case would be thrown out. And members of Congress don't have standing to sue over this violation of the Constitution, of their own authority. The only one who may have standing to sue is the attorney general, and the attorney general is not going to sue the president. So that's a very serious situation. We're getting a de facto destruction of the separation of powers. Madison and others did not want anybody but Congress to deliberate and take our country to war. They were adamant about this. In The New York Times, after Obama's [Dec. 1] speech, they had on the jump page a little paragraph that said President Obama will expand the war into Pakistan, if he can work with a weak and dysfunctional Pakistan government. Hello? Who gave him authority to do that? Is he going to the Air Force Academy in a year to talk about the war in Pakistan? We have accepted, as a people, that the president can go anywhere in the world, with any troops, at any time, under any pretext. Period."
"There are a lot of good people in this country who may not agree on some things, but they agree a lot on things that the mass media never emphasizes," Nader says. "But they've persuaded themselves they're powerless. Why didn't you show up? It doesn't make any difference. I was busy. Busy, doing what? Well, I had to take the kids to soccer practice. Half of democracy's showing up. There is demoralization. How do these super-rich people turn the motivation to action? How do they turn a demoralized, powerless population to action? You start with imagination. William Blake said his residence was his imagination. That's what's been squeezed out of us and out of our children. And children are the most imaginative human beings, but they have their imagination squeezed out of them with standardized testing and rote learning, etc., etc. We've got to make real-life discussions like this exciting so they happen again and again."

Stunning Statistics About the War in Afghanistan Every American Should Know

By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports
Posted on December 21, 2009, Printed on December 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144694/

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone -- that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan.  During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.
Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”
A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”
The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:
In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects.  According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects.  USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.

The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.
As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.
Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is available at RebelReports.com.

Matt Taibbi, Bill Moyers and Robert Kuttner: Why Can't Democrats Do Anything Right?

By Bill Moyers and Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner, Bill Moyers Journal
Posted on December 21, 2009, Printed on December 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144697/

BILL MOYERS: Something's not right here. One year after the great collapse of our financial system, Wall Street is back on top while our politicians dither. As for health care reform, you're about to be forced to buy insurance from companies whose stock is soaring, and that's just dandy with the White House.
Truth is, our capitol's being looted, republicans are acting like the town rowdies, the sheriff is firing blanks, and powerful Democrats in Congress are in cahoots with the gang that's pulling the heist. This is not capitalism at work. It's capital. Raw money, mounds of it, buying politicians and policy as if they were futures on the hog market. 
Here to talk about all this are two journalists who don't pull their punches. Robert Kuttner is an economist who helped create and now co-edits the progressive magazine THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, and the author of the book OBAMA'S CHALLENGE, among others. 
Also with me is Matt Taibbi, who covers politics for ROLLING STONE magazine where he is a contributing editor. He's made a name for himself writing in a no-holds-barred, often profane, but always informative and stimulating style that gets under the skin of the powerful. His most recent article is "Obama's Big Sellout," about the President's team of economic advisers and their Wall Street connections. It's been burning up the blogosphere. Welcome to both of you. 
BILL MOYERS: Let's start with some news. Some of the big insurance companies, Well Point, Cigna, United Health, all surged to a 52 week high in their share prices this week when it was clear there'd be no public option in the health care bill going through Congress right now. What does that tell you, Matt?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, I think what most people should take away from this is that the massive subsidies for health insurance companies have been preserved while it's also expanded their customer base because there's an individual mandate in the bill that's going to provide all these companies with the, you know, 25 or 30 million new people who are going to be paying for health insurance. So, it's, obviously, a huge boon to that industry. And I think Wall Street correctly read what the health care effort is all about. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff, was Bill Clinton's Political Director. And Rahm Emanuel's take away from Bill Clinton's failure to get health insurance passed was 'don't get on the wrong side of the insurance companies.' So their strategy was cut a deal with the insurance companies, the drug industry going in. And the deal was, we're not going to attack your customer base, we're going to subsidize a new customer base. And that script was pre-cooked so it's not surprising that this is what comes out the other side. 
BILL MOYERS: So are you saying that this, what some call a sweetheart deal between the pharmaceutical industry and the White House, done many months ago before this fight really began, was because the drug company money in the Democratic Party? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, it's two things. Part of it was we need to do whatever it takes to get a bill. Never mind whether it's a really good bill, let's get a bill passed so we can claim that we solved health insurance. Secondly, let's get the drug industry and the insurance industry either supporting us or not actively opposing us. So that there was some skirmishing around the details, but the deal going in was that the administration, drug companies, insurance companies are on the same team. Now, that's one way to get legislation, it's not a way to transform the health system. Once the White House made this deal with the insurance companies, the public option was never going to be anything more than a fig leaf. And over the summer and the fall, it got whittled down, whittled down, whittled down to almost nothing and now it's really nothing. 
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and this was Howard Dean's point this week was that this individual mandate that's going to force people to become customers of private health insurance companies, the Democrats are going to end up owning that policy and it's going to be extremely unpopular and it's going to be theirs for a generation. It's going to be an albatross around the neck of this party. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Think about it, the difference between social insurance and an individual mandate is this. Social insurance everybody pays for it through their taxes, so you don't think of Social Security as a compulsory individual mandate. You think of it as a benefit, as a protection that your government provides. But an individual mandate is an order to you to go out and buy some product from some private profit-making company, that in the case of a lot of moderate income people, you can't afford to buy. And the shell game here is that the affordable policies are either very high deductibles and co-pays, so you can afford the monthly premiums but then when you get sick, you have to pay a small fortune out of pocket before the coverage kicks in. Or if the coverage is decent, the premiums are unaffordable. And so here's the government doing the bidding of the private industry coercing people to buy profit-making products that maybe they can't afford and they call it health reform. 
BILL MOYERS: So explain this to the visitor from Mars. I mean, just this week, the Washington Post and ABC News had a poll showing that the American public supports the Medicare buy-in that- 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. 
BILL MOYERS: By a margin of some 30 points- 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. 
BILL MOYERS: And yet, it went down like a lead balloon. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Look, there are two ways, if you're the President of the United States sizing up a situation like this that you can try and create reform. One is to say, well, the interest groups are so powerful that the only thing I can do is I can work with them and move the ball a few yards, get some incremental reform, hope it turns into something better. The other way you can do it is to try to rally the people against the special interests and play on the fact that the insurance industry, the drug industry, are not going to win any popularity contests with the American people. And you, as the president, be the champion of the people against the special interests. That's the course that Obama's chosen not to pursue. 
MATT TAIBBI: And I think, you know, a lot of what the Democrats are doing, they don't make sense if you look at it from an objective point of view, but if you look at it as a business strategy- if you look at the Democratic Party as a business, and their job is basically to raise campaign funds and to stay in power, what they do makes a lot of sense. They have a consistent strategy which involves negotiating a fine line between sentiment on the left and the interests of the industries that they're out there to protect. And they've always, kind of, taken that fork in the road and gone right down the middle of the line. And they're doing that with this health care bill and that's- it's consistent. 
BILL MOYERS: If you were Republican, wouldn't you feel right now that it's going your way? I mean, the Democrats control the White House, they control Congress and the only thing they've been able to make happen this year is escalate the war in Afghanistan. 
MATT TAIBBI: The Democrats are in exactly the same position that the Republicans were in once the Iraq War turned bad. All the Republicans have to do now is sit back and watch the Democrats make a disaster out of this health care effort. And they're going to gain political capital whether they're in the right or not. And I think it's a very- it's a terrible thing for the party. 
BILL MOYERS: Some of your progressive readers and colleagues are going to take issue with you, of course, because there are progressive figures like John Podesta, of the Center for American Progress, Kevin Drum, and others who say, look, this bill has its real problems. It's got some real toxic qualities to it. But it's not as bad as Kuttner and Taibbi think. This is the Senate bill, it covers 30 million-plus more people, has subsidies for low-income families, spreads the risk, lowers some premium costs, creates some exchanges where people can shop for better coverage and prices. You know, don't be too hard on it. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, my co-editor, Paul Starr in the editorial in the current issue of "The Prospect" takes exactly that position. Don't be too hard on Obama, he inherited a really difficult situation and we're making incremental progress. If we could've done better we would've. Paul and I disagree about that. I mean, I think one of the challenges of a president is to transform the reality rather than just work within its parameters. I think the other problem, frankly, is that those of us who consider ourselves progressives invested so much in this remarkable figure, Barack Obama. And we read our own hopes into him. We saw him as a potentially great president. We saw this as a potentially transformative moment, I certainly did, where he could've chosen to be the kind of president Roosevelt was. And it turns out that's not who is characteralogically and that's not how he chose to play the moment. 
BILL MOYERS: Yes or no. If you were a senator, would you vote for this Senate health care bill? 
MATT TAIBBI: No. 
BILL MOYERS: Bob? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Yes. 
BILL MOYERS: Why? You just said it's designed to enhance the fortunes of the industry. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, it's so far from what I think is necessary that I don't think it's a good bill. But I think if it goes down, just because of the optics of the situation and the way the Republicans have framed this as a make or break moment for President Obama, it will make it easier for the Republicans to take control of Congress in 2010. It will make Obama even more gun-shy about promoting reform. It will create even more political paralysis. It will embolden the republicans to block what this President is trying to do, some of which is good, at every turn. So I would hold my nose and vote for it. 
MATT TAIBBI: My feeling on it is just looking more concretely at the health care problem, this is a bill that to me doesn't address the two biggest problems with the health care crisis. One is the inefficiency and the bureaucracy and the paperwork which it doesn't address at all. It doesn't standardize anything. The other is price, which has now fallen by the wayside because there's no going to be no public option that's going to drive down prices. So, if a health care bill that doesn't address those two problems, to me, is- and additionally is a big give-away to the insurance companies because it provides, you know- it creates this new customer base, it's something I personally couldn't vote for. 
BILL MOYERS: Aren't you saying that in order to save the Democratic President and the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2012 you have to have a really rotten health insurance bill? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, when you come down to one pivotal moment where a bill is before Congress and the administration has staked the entire presidency on this bill and you're a progressive Democrat are you going to vote for it or not? Let me put it this way, if I were literally in the position that Joe Lieberman is in and it was up to me to determine whether this bill live or die, I would hold my nose and vote for it even though I have been a fierce critic of the path this administration has taken. 
BILL MOYERS: But doesn't that further the dysfunction and corruption of the system that you write so often about? I mean, you said a few weeks ago that our failed health care system won't get fixed because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system, the political entity known as the United States of America. You said we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crisis. So if Bob votes for a bill that in his heart and in his mind he does not believe really helps the situation, isn't he furthering a government that can't solve the actual crisis? 
MATT TAIBBI: I think so. I understand his point of view. But I my feeling is that if you vote for this bill and it passes, that's your one shot at fixing a catastrophic and completely dysfunctional health care system for the next generation maybe. And I think it's much better for the Democrats to lose on this issue and then have to regroup maybe eight years later, or six years later, and try again and do a better job the next time than to have it go through. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: We're going to have to do that anyway. In other words, these fights never end. We're going to have to go back and make a fight another day. And hopefully, that won't be 20 years from now. Hopefully, it will be six years from now. I think if this bill goes down it's going to be even harder to get the kind of legislation we want because the Republicans are really going to be on the march. So, the Democrats are really between a rock and a hard place here, because if it loses, there's one set of ways the Republicans gain. If it wins, there could be another set of ways that the Republicans gain. And this is all because of the deal that our friend, Rahm Emanuel struck back in the spring of passing a bill that's a pro-industry bill that doesn't really get at the structural problems. 
MATT TAIBBI: But that's the whole point. If the Democrats had used as a political strategy, we're just going to do what the vast majority of our constituents want and pass a bill that was real, that had real teeth to it, that provided real benefits and actually fixed the problems then, you know, the political benefits that the Republicans could've had after the passage of the bill would've been very limited it seems to me. They could've only gone that one direction and criticized that you know, as a, you know, a socialist give-away. They couldn't have criticized it as an industry give-away and ineffective. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Look, this is not Monday morning quarterbacking. 
MATT TAIBBI: Right. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean, I was making the same criticisms that you were at the time. But now we're down to a moment of final passage. And maybe my views are very ambivalent. But I would still vote for it because I think the defeat would be absolutely crushing in terms of the way the press played it, in terms of the way it would give encouragement to the far right in this country that we can block this guy if we just fight hard enough, if we just demagogue it.
MATT TAIBBI: But couldn't that defeat turn into- that crushing defeat, couldn't that be good for the Democrats? Couldn't it teach them a lesson that, you know, maybe they have to pursue a different course in the future? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, you're younger than I am. 
BILL MOYERS: Matt, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a very progressive member of Congress who's been at this table wanted a public option. He says this health care bill appears to be the legislation that the president wanted in the first place. 
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. Yeah, it's quite obvious that at the outset of this process, the White House didn't want, for instance, single payer even on the table, you know, when Max Baucus had his initial discussions in committee on this bill, he invited something like 43 people to give their ideas about, you know, how the bill might look in the future. And he didn't invite a single person from- who was an advocate of single payer health care. So that was never on the table. And it's quite clear that the public option was looked at more as a political obstacle for the White House as opposed to something that they really wanted. They kind of used it as something to scare the Republicans and the moderates with. And that's really all it ended up turning out to be. 
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, if he had wanted a public option, if he'd wanted a Medicare buy-in, he could have tried to persuade the public and the Congress. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: That's what's so galling. Yeah. 
BILL MOYERS: Galling? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean, if you if you roll back the tape he could've played it so differently and he could've gotten a better bill. But we are where we are. 
MATT TAIBBI: I mean, that's what George Bush did when he wanted to get something unpopular passed or something that was iffy. I mean, he just took, you know, if there were any recalcitrant members, he just took him in the back room and beat him with a rubber hose until they changed their minds. I mean, he could've taken Joe Lieberman back there and said, look, if Connecticut ever wants a dime of highway money again, you're going to have to play ball on this thing. That's what the president does. I mean, the president has an enormous amount of power. The leaders, the majority leaders have an enormous amount of power. And if they want to pass something, they can do it. And especially when there's a tremendous public mandate to get something like this passed. I just- the idea that they couldn't do this was- is a fallacy. 
BILL MOYERS: But members of Congress, they take the same contributions from the same insurance and real estate and drug industry. You look at the list of contributions to members of Congress- they are as saddled by obligations as the President, right? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, some are and some aren't. I mean, the House, at least, just passed a bill that's over $100 billion to extend unemployment, extend insurance benefits in the interim prevent lay-offs at the level of state and local government. Now, you have a group of Democrats, and this is the real pity of it. The Democrats are supposed to be the party of the average person. You have the so-called New Democrats who are really the party of Wall Street. And then you have the Blue Dogs who are fiscal conservatives. And if you look at what happened in Barney Frank's committee to the financial reform bill, he's a pretty good liberal, he ended up looking like a complete stooge for industry because in order to get a bill out of his own committee, he had to appease the 15 New Democrats, so-called, who were put on that committee mostly by Rahm Emanuel when he was the- 
MATT TAIBBI: Sort of as a means to raise money. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: As a means to raise money. So Melissa Bean, who's a two-term Democratic Congressman ends up being the power broker because she controls 15 votes on Barney Frank's committee of what she's going to allow out of committee and what she isn't. 
BILL MOYERS: Why does she control 15 votes? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Because there are 15 New Dems, and this is the centrist caucus that particularly specializes in taking money from the financial industry. 
BILL MOYERS: You call them centrist, don't you mean corporate Democrats? I mean- 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Corporate, yes, sorry. That's too kind. They're corporate Democrats who were put on that committee because Rahm Emanuel felt that there's no better place than the House Financial Services Committee if you want to shake down Wall Street, to put it bluntly. 
MATT TAIBBI: There's a great example of Melissa Bean's power was when the banks wanted to pass an amendment into the bill that would have prevented the states from making their own tougher financial regulatory rules. And Bean put through this amendment that basically said that the federal government would have purview over all these laws. And it passed. And this was the kind of thing that the banks wanted. They just go to Melissa Bean, she puts that amendment in there and it and it gets through. 
BILL MOYERS: If you were Barack Obama in a city that's overrun by money, how would you try to fix it? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I would go over the heads of the special interests to the people. I think there's a lot of sullen apprehension, frustration out in the country. And I think the people are hungry for leadership. He's not doing that sufficiently. 
MATT TAIBBI: It's absolutely a political winner for the president to hit Wall Street very hard and do all the things that he's supposed to be doing right now. You know, that all the things that FDR did. If he did those things, if he remade Wall Street in the way that it needs to be remade, he would do nothing but gain popularity. And I think that's the strategy he should have pursued. 
BILL MOYERS: But what if by nature, that's not what he wants to do? What if, by nature, he prefers to head the establishment, than to change it? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Then he runs the risk of being a failed president. And I do have the audacity to hope that he's a smart enough, principled enough guy, that some time in his second year in office, he's going to realize that he's at a crossroads. 
MATT TAIBBI: This isn't a purely political problem. This isn't just a question of how does Barack Obama get reelected. This is a serious problem. He has to put aside maybe his inclinations to think about what he can do to actually fix the country. And it's, you know, desperately in need of fixing. And so, if he's not that guy, he has to become that guy. 
BILL MOYERS: You say it's a serious problem. But isn't from your own experiences, your long experience, your recent experience, isn't this the fundamental question issue of why it's not working, that there's too much money canceling out other imperatives, other needs, other possibilities? 
MATT TAIBBI: This is the fundamental question. Is there a way that we can have a politician get elected without the sponsorship of special interests? Can we get somebody in the White House who's independent of the special interests that are in the way of real reform? And that's the problem. We haven't been able to have that happen. And we need to find a way to have that happen. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. And I think it's not accidental that the last three Democratic presidents have been at best, corporate Democrats. And one hoped because of the depth of the crisis and the disgrace of deregulation and ideology, and the practical failure of the Bush presidency, this was a moment for a clean break. The fact that even at such a moment, even with an outsider president campaigning on change we can believe in, that Barack Obama turned out to be who he has been so far, is just so revealing in terms of the structural undertow that big money represents in this country. The question is: Is he capable of making a change -- he's only been in office less than a year -- in time to redeem the moment, redeem his own promise? 
BILL MOYERS: When you talk about corporate Democrats, exactly what do you mean? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean Democrats who are reluctant to cross swords with the corporate elite that has so much power in this country, whether it's the Wall Street elite or whether it's the health-industrial complex. 
MATT TAIBBI: And I think, you know, back in the in the mid-'80s, after Walter Mondale lost, I think the Democrats made a conscious decision that they were no longer going to rely entirely on interest groups and unions to fund their campaigns, that they were going to try to close that funding gap with the Republicans. And they made a lot of concessions to the financial services industry to big corporations. And that's who they are now. I mean-- 
ROBERT KUTTNER: That's a little too harsh. Just the pity of it is there are probably 40 Democrats in the Senate who are not corporate Democrats. And there are probably 200 Democrats in the House who are not corporate Democrats. If we could push a little harder, we can take back our political system and have a democratically elected set of officials who are the kind of counterweight to big money that we need in order to get reform. 
BILL MOYERS: So Democrats have their own obstructionists? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah. You have Republican wall-to-wall obstructionism, which is partisan. And with a few exceptions, Republicans are totally in bed with big business. And you have just enough Democrats who are in bed with big business that it makes it much harder for progressive Democrats to follow the agenda that the country needs. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: It just takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of nerve. It takes a willingness to be somewhat radical. 
BILL MOYERS: What you mean, radical? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean, confronting the elite that really has a hammerlock on politics in this country and articulating the needs of ordinary people. Now, in Washington, that's considered radical. 
BILL MOYERS: I was thinking about both of you Sunday night when President Obama was on 60 MINUTES and he said... 
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street. 
BILL MOYERS: Then on Monday afternoon, he had this photo opportunity in which he scolded the bankers and then they took it politely and graciously, which they could've done because the Hill at that very moment was swarming with banking lobbyists making sure that what the President wants doesn't happen. I mean, what did you think as you watched him on 60 MINUTES or watched that press conference? 
MATT TAIBBI: It seemed to me that it was a response to a lot of negative criticism that he's been getting in the media lately, that they are probably looking at the President's poll numbers from the last couple of weeks that have been remarkably low. And a lot of that has to do with some perceptions about his ties to Wall Street. And I think they felt a need to come out and make a strong statement against Wall Street, whether they're actually do anything is, sort of, a different question. But I think that was my impression. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I was appalled. I was just appalled because think of the timing. On Thursday and Friday of last week, the same week when the president finally gives this tough talk on "60 Minutes," a very feeble bill is working its way through the House of Representatives and crucial decisions are being made. And where is the President? I mean, there was an amendment to put some teeth back in the provision on credit default swaps and other kinds of derivatives. And that went down by a handful of votes. And to the extent that the Treasury and the White House was working that bill, at all, they were working the wrong side. There was a there was a provision to exempt foreign exchange derivatives from the teeth in the bill. That-- 
MATT TAIBBI: Foreign exchange derivatives are what caused the Long Term Capital Management crisis-- 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Sure. 
MATT TAIBBI: A tremendous problem. 
BILL MOYERS: Ten or 12 years ago, right? 
MATT TAIBBI: Right. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah. And, Treasury was lobbying in favor of that. There was a provision in the bill to exempt small corporations, not so small, I believe at $75 million and under, from a lot of the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requiring honest accounting. Rahm Emanuel personally was lobbying in favor of that.
BILL MOYERS: So you had the Treasury and the White House chief of staff arguing on behalf of the banking industry? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. Right. And so here's the president two days later giving a tough speech. Why wasn't he working the phones to toughen up that bill and, you know, walk the talk? 
BILL MOYERS: Get on the phone with the Chairman of the Committee and say, if you want that dam in your district, I want your vote on this. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. 
MATT TAIBBI: Right. 
BILL MOYERS: And that's what you mean? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah. 
BILL MOYERS: You might praise them in public, but you threaten them in private, right? 
MATT TAIBBI: Exactly, yeah. They have-- 
BILL MOYERS: Nobody's afraid of Obama, you know. You go to Washington as you do, report from Washington. Nobody's afraid of him. 
MATT TAIBBI: Right. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: This style is rather diffident. His style is rather hands-off. He's very principled. But, if you're going to be a politician, you have to get in there and mix it up. And to the extent that his surrogates are mixing it up, when it comes to reforming Wall Street, they're mixing it up on the wrong side. 
BILL MOYERS: Well, explain this to me. What is your own take on why he chose Geithner and Summers and people from Goldman Sachs and Wall Street to come and be his financial advisors, instead of choosing Stiglitz-- 
MATT TAIBBI: Volker-- 
BILL MOYERS: Some of his advisors from the progressive wing of the Democratic system? 
MATT TAIBBI: Most people that I've talked to have taken one of two positions on this. One is that Obama was naïve, that he doesn't know a whole about the financial services industry, and he felt the need to rely upon people who'd been there before, people who've had these jobs before, and you know, who have this expertise. And there's another school of thought that look, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate in history. Goldman Sachs was his number one private campaign contributor. And if you just look at the evidence, it's just really business as usual. This is what the Democratic Party has done since the mid-'80s. They've relied heavily on the financial services industry to fund their campaigns. And it's the quid pro quo. They gave a lot of money to help these guys run, and in return, they get the big jobs, you know, in the White House. 
BILL MOYERS: But here's how they repay him. This is on "The Huffington Post:" "Bank lobbyists launch call to action to crush financial reform. The American Bankers Association issued a call to action on Wednesday urging its lobbyist and member banks to make an all-out effort to crush regulatory reform in the Senate." This is how they reward his own tolerance towards them, right? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. And you've got to play hardball against these guys now. I do not want to leave this show with your viewers thinking this has been just a council of despair. So will you allow me to play Pollyanna for 30 seconds? Because I think this guy is nothing if not a work in progress. He's nothing if not a learner. And I think there is a chance. I don't think I would bet my life on it but I think there's a possibility that by the fall of 2010, looking down the barrel of a real election blowout, you could see him change course, if only for reasons of expediency, but hopefully for reasons of principle as well, if he feels that the public doesn't have confidence that he is delivering the kind of recovery that the public needs. This is a guy who is a very smart, complicated man. And I think don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin. I don't want to totally give up. 
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I mean, obviously, it's too early to completely abandon hope that he's going to turn things around. But I think that's a belief that's not really based on evidence. If you look at the evidence of how he's behaved so far, and who he's got, you know, working in the White House, and who he's getting his money from, and how the party has behaved over the last couple of decades. You're really basically relying upon the impression that he gives as a kind, decent, warm-hearted intellectual guy. That's what the basis of that faith that there's going to be this turnaround. It's really not anything that's actually concretely happened that would give you reason to think that. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: The other thing that's missing, if you compare him with Roosevelt or LBJ or Lincoln, the other thing that's missing is a social movement. In all of these great periods of transformation, you had social movements doing a complicated dance with the president, where sometimes they were working with him, sometimes they were beating up on him. That certainly describes the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson. It describes the abolitionists and Lincoln. It describes the labor movement and Roosevelt. Where's the movement? 
BILL MOYERS: Coming down to the office this morning, the cab driver turned and said, "You see the newspaper this morning?" And he turns and hands me the NEW YORK POST. "It's Wall Good: Wall Street Earnings Soar to $49 Billion in the First Three Quarters of the Year ... Profitability has soared because revenues rose ... Wall Street bonuses for employees in the city may be as much as 40 percent higher than in 2008." What would you say to the President about this? Does he know? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I think, to some extent, the White House lives in an echo chamber. They do these public events that are intended to demonstrate that the president's listening, that he's feeling our pain. Congress gets a very bad rap. But I was invited to speak to the House Democrat caucus a couple a weeks ago. And they are furious. They can't publicly embarrass their president, but they go home on weekends and they talk to their folks and they hear the individual stories of suffering. And they feel that certainly the Treasury, to some extent the White House, just doesn't get it and the Republicans are going to end up with a narrative and the Tea Party folks, it's the far right that is on the march when ordinary people need a champion. 
BILL MOYERS: So, what are people to do? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I think there are there are things that are not too complex for people to understand. If the value of your home is going down the drain because the government's not doing anything about an epidemic of foreclosures, that's the kind of thing that people can talk about across a kitchen table. They do talk about it across the kitchen table. And you need more leadership like a Marcy Kaptur or a Maria Cantwell, elected officials who get it, who have not been bought and paid for by Wall Street stirring up people and turning this into a movement. 
MATT TAIBBI: And that's really where Barack Obama's failings are the biggest. This is exactly where we need a president with the communication skills that he has. I mean, he's probably the one person who could help all of America make sense of all this stuff. And he's not doing it. I mean, he's doing these photo ops, you know, earlier in the week, with a couple of bankers. It's a kabuki dance to show that he's against Wall Street. But he's not explaining to people how all this stuff works. And that's the problem. 
BILL MOYERS: Are you a cynic after all your reporting this year? 
MATT TAIBBI: No, not at all. I mean, I think on the contrary. I think cynicism is accepting all this as, you know, politics, as the way it is. I think we have to not accept what's going on. And that's not being cynical. That's being helpful. 
BILL MOYERS: But is it naïve to think that in a country of so many clashing interests, we might get better results from the political system than we're getting right now? 
ROBERT KUTTNER: I think there are periods of American history when the political system rises to the occasion. It certainly did with the civil rights movement. It certainly did in the 1930s. But there's no guarantee that it's going to come out the way it needs their come out. So I wouldn't give up on the political system. I mean, you have to keep fighting and working to rebuild democracy. Democracy is the only possible counterweight to concentrated financial power. And ideally, that takes a great president rendezvousing with a social movement. One way or another, there is going to be a social movement. Because so many people are hurting, and so many people are feeling correctly that Wall Street is getting too much and Main Street is getting too little. And if it's not a progressive social movement that articulates the frustration and the reform program, you know that the right wing is going to do it. And that, I think, is what ought to be scaring us silly. 
MATT TAIBBI: We are starting to see signs of a little bit of a grassroots movement. I mean, the stuff, you know, people who are refusing to leave their homes after they've been foreclosed upon. There are little pockets of movements you know, groups that are organizing against foreclosures all across the country. And this is one small slice of the economic picture that where it's quite clear what's going on, and people can really understand the relationship that they have with the financial services industry. And I think if, you know, there it's possible to imagine a movement coalescing around something like that. 
BILL MOYERS: Matt Taibbi, Robert Kuttner, thank you for being with me on the Journal. 
MATT TAIBBI: Thank you. 
ROBERT KUTTNER: Thanks, Bill. 

Hightower: Congress Ethics Rules Undermined by Weasels
By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Posted on December 17, 2009, Printed on December 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144604/
Scientifically speaking, the weasel is in the mustelidae family, but it is not the only burrowing rodent of its genus. There's also the mustela congressa lobbyista, which is that mischievous grouping of Washington lobbyists who habitually team up with certain congress-critters to burrow loopholes in our country's ethics laws.
You might recall the big ethics reform push of 2007. In January of that year, in response to public outrage over breathtakingly flagrant scandals involving Uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and several Republican members of Congress, the new Democratic majority in the U.S. House pushed through a widely ballyhooed set of reforms. Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that the changes would deliver "the most honest, ethical and open Congress in history.
How'd that work out?
Well, the new rules certainly have been an improvement over the anything-goes, corporate lobbyfest of the George W. Bush years. But even as the reforms were being written,mustela congressa lobbyista was busily burrowing its way into the new majority, inserting weaselly language that lets lobbyists continue slipping corporate money to lawmakers. Both ingenious and insidious, the loopholes allow business-as-usual collusion between influence-peddlers and those members of Congress who seem to be incurably allergic to ethics.
One of the major reforms, for example, was an outright ban on lobbyist-financed congressional junkets. Flying influential lawmakers to luxury resorts had been an Abramoff speciality, so reformers declared that these corrupt schmooze flights were to be an absolute no-no.
In Washington, however, even the clearest rules can go bonkers, perverting "no" into "yes." Take the glaring case of the appropriately named Don Bonker.
He's a powerhouse lobbyist with the firm of APCO Worldwide, whose clients include foreign corporations and governments that seek favors from our Congress.
One veteran lawmaker who can be very helpful to Bonker's clients is Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the right-wing Republican who is a key member of several committees and an eager servant of corporate interests.
In February of this year, Bonker picked up the $14,708 tab for Sensenbrenner and his wife to enjoy a lovely weeklong jaunt to Liechtenstein. The stated purpose of the trip was to hold meetings with European bankers and business honchos, but it was hardly all business -- the Sensenbrenners were treated to luxurious accommodations, time at a ski resort in the Alps and a neat tour of the prince of Liechtenstein's castle and vineyard.
But, wait -- Bonker-the-lobbyist is banned from financing such junkets, isn't he? Yes. But. A loophole in the 2007 reform rules allows nonprofit groups to pay for congressional trips. So, the Sensenbrenner's outing was covered by a nonprofit outfit called the International Management and Development Institute.
And who is president of the Institute? Why, none other than our man Bonker! And who funds the Institute? Such European firms as Deutsche Bank and Lufthansa Airlines, which have lobbying interests in Washington. In return for ponying up the bucks for the institute's junkets, top corporate executives get private tete-a-tetes with our lawmakers.
Through the nonprofit loophole, Bonker and foreign corporations can do indirectly what they are prohibited from doing directly. Clever, huh? So clever that "Air Bonker" has paid for five of Sensenbrenner's trips to France, Germany, Liechtenstein and Norway.
The high-flying congressman sees nothing amiss in this obvious circumvention of Congress' ethics rules. His office spokeswoman told the New York Times that the nonprofit dodge is merely a way for "a variety of sources" to "educate congressional leaders on a range of topics."
Hmmm. His "variety" of sources seems to be decidedly corporate. But, hey, Sensenbrenner would say that he's open to meeting with workaday folks like you, too. All you have to do to educate him on your "range of topics" is to create a nonprofit front group and fly him to a ski resort in Liechtenstein.
As he and Bonker show, not all weasels are in the woods.

Published on Sunday, December 13, 2009 by The Kansas City Star
Despite US Laws, Thousands Still Virtual Slaves in America
by Mike McGraw and Laura Bauer
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." - 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified Dec. 6, 1865
Sebastian Pereria told a friend last year about his life in America.
How he wanted to see his wife and children in India, but his boss kept his identification papers and wouldn't let him go.
Other waiters who worked with him at a Topeka restaurant told of how they were forced to work 13-hour days, six days a week. They talked of how the boss underpaid them and pocketed their tips.
In the end, Pereria, 46, got his wish. He finally arrived home last year.
In a coffin.
The U.S. government could not help Pereria, even though they said he fit the criteria for being a human trafficking victim. Other waiters he worked with got help and were rescued from the Globe Indian Restaurant. But for Pereria, even in death, a judge remained unconvinced.
America declared war on human trafficking nearly a decade ago. With a new law and much fanfare, the government pledged to end such human rights abuses at home and prodded the rest of the world to follow its example.
But an investigation by The Kansas City Star found that, in spite of all the rhetoric from the Bush and Obama administrations, the United States is failing to find and help tens of thousands of human trafficking victims in America.
The Star also found that the government is doing little to stop the flow of trafficking along the porous U.S.-Mexico border and that when victims are identified, many are denied assistance.
The United States also has violated its own policies by deporting countless victims who should be offered sanctuary, but sometimes end up back in the hands of traffickers.
After spending millions of taxpayer dollars, America appears to be losing the war in its own backyard.
Even some top federal anti-trafficking authorities in the Bush and Obama administrations acknowledged serious problems.
"The current system is not yet picking up all the victims of human trafficking crimes," Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told The Star two weeks ago. "It has been a growing problem and in a world of growing problems, it's time for the nations of the world to take it on."
America's failure to live up to its own high standards isn't for lack of will or good intentions or even money. The Star's investigation pointed to problems that are more systemic: an uncoordinated, inconsistent approach to finding victims; politically charged arguments over how to define trafficking; and a continuing disbelief among some in local law enforcement that it even exists.
The issue is further complicated by the heated debate over illegal immigration. The willing participation initially of some victims is blurring the lines and testing the law.
"People feel if you come in illegally, anything that happens to you is your fault," said Lisette Arsuaga, with the Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking. "Slavery is not an immigration issue. It's a civil rights issue. There's no justification for making someone a slave."
It may be hard to imagine that slavery exists in America, but trafficking victims are all around us. The Midwest, in particular, seems to be an emerging hub.
Although trafficking usually is considered a coastal phenomenon, more alleged traffickers - 36 in the past three years - have been prosecuted by federal authorities in western Missouri than anywhere in the nation.
One Kansas City case, involving Giant Labor Solutions, is believed to be the largest labor trafficking ring uncovered in U.S. history.
Around the country, some victims exemplify the more exotic definitions of trafficking - those sold into the sex trade or into forced labor. But many, like Pereria, find themselves in mundane jobs. Incurring heavy debts while trying to find a better life, they become financially chained to their traffickers and work for low pay or in dangerous conditions.
They toil in factories and massage parlors, on fruit and vegetable farms, and inside homes, hotels and restaurants from California to Maine. Stripped of their humanity, they're often threatened with their lives, or their families' lives, if they don't submit to the traffickers' demands.
The victims are not unlike Dareyam, a 42-year-old Indonesian woman held captive for 18 years, half of those in the United States.
Kept as a housekeeper on the West Coast, she was forced to clean house naked and to sleep on the floor. She could not use the indoor bathroom, forced to go in a plastic bag outside.
"My lady, she was mean, evil, crazy, you know," Dareyam told The Star.
Another Indonesian woman, Ima, 29, worked long hours caring for two children, cleaning a home on the West Coast and never making a dime. Verbally abusive, the woman who enslaved her once hit Ima so hard she needed stitches.
After three years, she wrote a note to a housekeeper next door. Please help me, I can't take it anymore. It took Ima hours to find the courage to write those eight words.
The physical and psychological toll on trafficking victims can trap them in a life of slavery for years.
"I trusted nobody," said Flor, a 37-year-old survivor living in California, who came to the United States to earn money to start a sewing business.
She'd already lost one child to starvation in Mexico. She swore none of her children would go hungry again. "But when I got here, everything went wrong," Flor said.
Her boss started abusing her, forcing Flor, who was in the United States illegally, to work 17 to 19 hours a day for no pay. After other workers went home, she labored through the night, toiling under a dim sewing machine bulb no bigger than a matchbook.
"I thought slaves were only in the past, just in history," Flor said. "It happens every day."
She still can't forget the words of her trafficker, a woman who told her she could kill her and no one would care. "If I kill a dog, I will get in trouble," Flor's trafficker told her. "If I kill you, I won't get in any trouble. No one knows you are here. You don't exist."
Finding victims
Six months after President Barack Obama was sworn in, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared human trafficking a top foreign policy priority. "Trafficking is a crime that involves every nation on earth and that includes our own," Clinton said in June as she presented the U.S. government's ninth annual global report on human trafficking.
But so far, little progress has been made in changing ineffective policies, The Star found.
Obama's incoming anti-trafficking czar, former federal prosecutor Luis CdeBaca, said many obstacles remain, including a lack of money, coordination and training. "We are doing a lot ... but continue to have a lot of learning to do," CdeBaca said.
America's human trafficking law requires the government to rate other nations every year and report on their efforts to rescue victims and punish traffickers.

Published on Monday, December 14, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
As War Bleeds Central Africa, Obama Denounces Rape But Washington Has Yet to Do Much About It

Scene on the Ground: Some Hopeful Signs Amidst Pain and Misery

by Danny Schechter
GOMA, KIVU, EASTERN CONGO -  After a week in Kinshasa talking about war in Congo, it was time to see it, or at least visit its epicenter in the East. This is where rape is used as a weapon of war, where rebel groups challenge government forces militarily and occupy territory. 1.8 million people have been displaced causing a major humanitarian crisis; territory seems to change hands regularly and, as they say, tension is high.  
Will peace break out or should we expect a country in pieces?  
It wasn't surprising that President Obama cited rape in the Congo as part of his Nobel rationalization for just wars. But the US is not planning a humanitarian intervention here anytime soon, nor did the President elaborate on the causes of a war that's been underway for at least 15 years. Many argue that US policy contributed to the problem, while its aid program here is anemic.   
Hillary Clinton announced a gift of $17 million for a new hospital for rape victims -- that is the cost of 17 US soldiers in Afghanistan -- but local bloggers noted that the US is not supporting HEAL AFRICA, a respected hospital that has provided services to victims for years, but is instead giving the money to a US NGO, the neo-con International Rescue Committee, which does not specialize in medical services.  
The South African based Pamazuka news service reports Washington is expanding its military presence in Africa with aid to African countries including Congo: 
"... all the available evidence demonstrates that he is determined to continue the expansion of US military activity on the continent initiated by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and dramatically escalated by President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. While many expected the Obama administration to adopt a security policy toward Africa that would be far less militaristic and unilateral than that pursued by his predecessor, the facts show that he is in fact essentially following the same policy that has guided US military involvement in Africa for more than a decade. 
The State Department budget request -- which includes funding for all US arms sales, military training, and other security assistance programs -- proposes major increases in funding for US arms sales to a number of African countries through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program....  
The same trend is evident in the Obama administration's request for funding for the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. With 350,000 committed. There is also $21 million to continue operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to reform the military (including the creation of rapid reaction force for the eastern Congo and the rehabilitation of the military base at Kisangani)."
The efforts here for peace, and even for the alleviation of the massive rape crisis, has not been a major US priority. While the US helps fund the UN peacekeeping mission MANUC -- which has just been renewed for six months -- Americans are not part of it and Washington does not use its influence to insure its effectiveness. A UN expert's report recently found that the UN itself has helped support some of the very armed groups accused of human rights abuses. The Washington Post reported during the summer that the US-supported military operations also perpetuated the problem; MANUC spends $4 billion a year trying to ease the situation and protect the people.   
Last year, the Congo initiated a joint military operation called UMOJA WETU to neutralize a particularly murderous "rebel" force organized by the folks that brought us the Rwandan genocide and who later fled across the border into Congo. It is thought they are being funded by those who profit from the country's instability and chaos.  
The FDLR also seemed to benefit Rwanda's strategy vis-a-vis Congo. The Rwandans denied it and finally sent troops to battle against it alongside the Congolese government. There were initial successes in the one-month campaign in which Congo's President Joseph Kabila reached out to his counterpart in Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, in the belief that both sides had an investment in making peace. (Kagame's Rwanda gets more US help than its much larger neighbor, perhaps because of Bill Clinton's guilt about not stopping the genocide.)   
Kabila took a risk, a big political risk, because if it failed, he would be accused of collaborating with an enemy.   
Many Congolese blame the Rwandans for starting this chaos in the aftermath of the Genocide where a largely Hutu army took refuge in Congo. In those days the war seemed straightforward -- Rwanda's surviving Tutsis pursuing the Hutu that murdered them en masse, but the battles were taking place not in Rwanda, but across the border where Congolese civilians were caught in the crossfire and all sides began plundering Congo's wealthy resources. Slowly this was not just an ethnic conflict, but an economic war fought by militias and armies funded by outside, or with funds stolen from the Congolese.   
The Congo had been weakened by the overthrow of the Mobutu regime, the death of President Laurent Kabila and a difficult process of preparing elections, which Kabila's son Joseph won, although the results were challenged by opposition forces who were given positions but later withdrew.  
Allies of the Congo, armies from Namibia, Zimbabwe and Uganda went to help Congo while helping themselves to the resources they could grab. Congo was under attack by its friends and enemies while trying to reassert control in the Kivu region at a great cost in lives and instability.  On top of everything else, back in 2002 a volcano erupted sending its scalding lava to devastate the city of Goma.   
The issue that has put this war on the front burner for many is rape -- and it goes on and on with impunity with human rights groups denouncing the government and the government saying their statistics are distorted. There have been an estimated 500,000 cases. 
Kinshasa says there have been prosecutions and they have a "zero tolerance" policy, but when you speak to woman in camps for internal refugees as I did, they are not convinced and live in fear. 
The terrorism of grinding poverty is not as big priority for Washington, although I was told by one official here that the US became a superpower because it was Congo's Katanga province that provided the uranium used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.   
It's hard for a first time outsider to understand all the dynamics in what is an incredibly complex mosaic of ethnic groups, ancient hatreds, and the avaricious but covert role of foreign countries and companies.   
One UN official told me the Congo is emblematic of a "resource curse" -- lots of wealth the world covets and schemes to get, no matter the cost in lives. Clearly someone is benefiting from all the instability. There are forces, both inside Congo and abroad, that want this country to remain destabilized.   
It is easy to latch on to a conspiracy theory or many. Many Congolese blame the Rwandans for perpetuating the conflict for the interests of their leaders. Suspicion is rife; rumors are pervasive. People who have spent a lifetime studying the conflict admit to their own confusions about what is going on.   
Keith Harmon Snow writes on Dissident Voice that we are all being snookered, although a lot of his argument is very detailed but based on unnamed "intelligence sources." He reports on a new uprising against Kabila in Equateur Province and says the government has asked that Belgian paratroopers be sent in.  
I tried to check this out with my own "sources" in Kinshasa. The response: little evidence. A Parliamentary source wrote me:  
"There is absolutely nothing about this in the Belgian media (Dutch nor French language). I passed your question on to a reliable journalist on the national flemish radio and to a member of parliament... But your information confirms rumors here in KIN about dead bodies in the streets of villages in the Equateur Province.     And then there are the rumors about a new invasion of Goma by rebels there."
Snow also writes, "The western media broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the western news [sic] consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime."   
Alas, most of the so-called "consuming public" overseas is not informed and what's worse, largely indifferent. (Why wouldn't they be, given the lack of ongoing media coverage?) As for crime, that is likely. The Observer in London reports, "an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks' doors open."   
American politicians have yet to cite a report by Global Witness that showed foreign mining and trading companies that are buying minerals from suppliers linked to the various armies plundering the Central African treasure house.  
"The mineral wealth in eastern Congo is vital to running the modern technological and military machinery of today's world," a friend steeped in African issues writes. "An American University professor named Kenneth Anderson says that the West is attempting to sever Sino-Congolese ties, which means the north to south highway that China is building to give Congo its own lifeline..."   
So here we are in the final days of 2009 with a story that goes back to colonialism. If any country needs a "Surge," this is it, but, like in Afghanistan, more soldiers alone will not necessarily help the people because the crisis is not just a military one. It is as much about aggression as ethnic antagonism.   
MediaChannel's News Dissector Danny Schechter, author of THE CRIME OF OUR TIME, is making a film in Congo (DRC). For more on his work on the financial crisis, see Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com  

Published on Friday, December 11, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Populism: Democrats Ignore at Our Peril
by Burt Cohen
As we approach 2010, populism appears to be the exclusive province of the passionate right wingers. But it remains an opportunity for Democrats in the coming election.

Democratic Party insiders consider me somewhat of a boat rocker (untitled is unmuzzled). I've always been a populist, a Jeffersonian. This may upset a few, but now more than ever, Democrats need to renew our call for decentralization of power and democratization of the economy.

Which is what the tea partyists clamor for. Those Democrats who ignore the populist revolt do so at their own peril. When Democrats are strong on these pocketbook issues, we do well. But if we yield the populist ground to the Republican Party, the results of 2010 will not be in our favor.

The middle class feels abandoned by both parties, the American Dream is more out of reach than ever. When it comes to outrage at the bipartisan march toward centralization of power and wealth, it's in our nature for Democrats to lead the charge.

In the Wall Street bailout, who among us didn't share the feeling that: Hey, the big money is getting a bailout, what about me? What is this Too Big To Fail nonsense? Some Republicans have tried to co-opt the mood on Main Street, but where have Democrats been?

If we are portrayed as the party of a central government owned and controlled by big money, we lose and we deserve to.

For much of our history, Democrats have been recognized as the party of working people. But with the Clintonians and the DLC there was a shift. The race for money took over. Many leading Democrats became eager lapdogs to the big-bucks campaign funders. The finance and insurance industry took charge of government. We now need to reverse that order.

As an Obama enthusiast, it saddens me that President Obama¹s economic policy appears to be back in the hands of those responsible for the economic meltdown. It looks as if the banks are reining in politicians when it should be the other way around.

Administrations may have changed, but who's in charge has not. As taxpayers underwrite the grievous mistakes made on Wall Street, as a recent bonus gift to those money titans, any future bailouts will be unfettered by burdensome congressional oversight, institutionalizing taking from the many and giving to the few.

Franklin Roosevelt, a great Democrat, said, "Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob." At a rally a week before the election of 1936 when FDR bellowed "I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it those forces met their master." It was met with wild cheering.

Roosevelt also pointed out that "No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it."

FDR won with nearly 61%. Of course, in 1937 those he sought to rein in got their vengeance. It appears that in 2010, that won¹t be necessary. Wall Street called the shots under Bush and Clinton, and now Obama¹s economic table is owned by the same Wall St. Rubinites.

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) is one who gets it. He says, "the people at the top of the party don't comprehend the power of that [populist] message," and worries that the party may miss the best chance in a generation to connect with the middle class. "Congress must bring fairness back to economic life." May I say, amen!

Here in New Hampshire, Mark Connolly, Director of Securities Regulation also gets it: "The interests of Main Street investors need to be placed at the head of the line--this means greater disclosure, increased shareholder rights, and an end to financial products that benefit Wall Street but are not suitable for average investors."

The anger on the streets is because we've had quite enough of government of, by, and for the very richest. Populism can be taken over by dangerous demagogues like Father Coughlin, George Wallace, and lately Glenn Beck. It is crucial that Democrats take back populism and directly address the issue of economic fairness and put forth an agenda that serves the middle class as it tilts away from the too-big-to-fail corporate finance and insurance interests and the elite richest one percent.

We must take on the concentration of wealth and power, and give decision making and governance back to we, the people.
Burt Cohen served as NH State Senator from 1990 to 2004. He hosts a twice weekly talk show: Portside and a once weekly Fine Aged Rock music show. His columns appear regularly on Blue Hampshire and in the New Hampshire Business Review.

Published on Saturday, December 12, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
'Just War' Is Just Words
by Ralph Nader
President Obama, the Afghan war escalator, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and proceeded to deliver his acceptance speech outlining the three criteria for a "just war" which he himself is violating.
The criteria are in this words: "If it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence."
After 9/11, warmonger George W. Bush could have used the international law doctrine of hot pursuit with a multilateral force of commandoes, linguists and bribers to pursue the backers of the attackers. Instead, he blew the country of Afghanistan apart and started occupying it, joined forces with a rump regime and launched a divide-and-rule tribal strategy that set the stage for a low-tiered civil war.
Eight years later, Obama is expanding the war within a graft-ridden government in Kabul, fraudulent elections, an Afghan army of northern tribesmen loathed by the southern and south-eastern tribes of 40 million Pashtuns, an impoverished economy whose largest crop by far is a narcotic, and a devastated population embittered by foreign occupiers and non-existent government services.
President Obama's national security adviser, former Marine General James Jones, said two months ago: "The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."
Since Mr. Obama repeats George W. Bush's reason for going into Afghanistan-to destroy al-Qaeda-why is he sending 30,000 soldiers plus an even greater number of corporate contractors there in the near future at a cost stated by the White House of one million dollars per solider per year? Is this "proportional force"?
Always small in number, al-Qaeda has moved over the border into Pakistan and anywhere its supporters can in the world-east Africa, north Africa, Indonesia. The gang is a migrant traveler.
Is Obama pouring soldiers into Afghanistan so that they and our inaccurate, civilian-destroying drones can start fighting across the border in Pakistan, as indicated by The New York Times? Beyond the violations of international law and absence of constitutional authorization involved, this could so roil Pakistanis as to make the U.S. experience next door look like a modest struggle.
Obama has emphasized weakening the Taliban as the other objective of our military buildup with its horrible consequence in casualties and other costs. Who are the Taliban? They include people with different causes, such as protecting their valleys, drug trafficking to live on, fighters against foreign occupiers or, being mostly Pashtuns, protecting their tribal turf against the northern Tajiks and Uzbecks.
How many Taliban fighters are there? The Pentagon estimates around 25,000. Their methods make them unpopular with the villagers. They have no air force, navy, artillery, tanks, missiles, no bases, no central command. They have rifles, grenade launchers, bombs and suiciders. Unlike al-Qaeda, they have only domestic ambitions counteracted by their adversarial tribesmen who make up most of the Afghan army.
Robert Baer, former CIA officer with experience in that part of Asia, asserted: "The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we're foreigners, and they're rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters."
To say as Obama inferred in his Oslo speech that the greater plunge into Afghanistan is self-defense, with proportional force and sparing civilians from violence is a scale of self-delusion or political cowardliness that is dejecting his liberal base.
For as President Eisenhower stated so eloquently in his 1953 "cross of iron" speech, every dollar spent on munitions and saber-rattling takes away from building schools, clinics, roads and other necessities of the American people.
The Afghan War and the Iraq war-occupation-already directly costing a trillion dollars-are costing the American people every time Washington says there is not enough money for neonatal care, occupational disease prevention, cleaner drinking water systems, safer hospitals, prosecution of corporate criminals, cleaner air or upgrading and repairing key public facilities.
Even the hardiest and earliest supporters of his presidential campaign in 2008 are speaking out. Senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus, such as John Conyers (D-MI) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) have recently criticized the President for not doing enough to help African-Americans weather the hard times.
In a stinging ironic rebuke to the first African-American President, Rep. Waters declared "We can no longer afford for our public policy to be defined by the worldview of Wall Street."
According to Congressman Conyers, an upset Barack Obama called to ask why the Michigan lawmaker was "demeaning" him. Conyers has been increasingly turned off by the President's policies-among them health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, slippage on Guantanamo and the extension of the Patriot Act's invasive provisions.
The 80-year old Congressman spent most weekends in 2007 and 2008 tirelessly on the campaign trail trying to get Obama elected.
White House aides are not troubled by the rumblings from the moderate Left. They said they have all of 2010 to bring them back into the fold by the November Congressional elections. Besides, where else are they going to go?
Well, they could stay home. Remember 1994 and the Gingrich takeover.

Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
Posted on December 11, 2009, Printed on December 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144529/

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?
Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?
What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?
Can anything be done to turn this around?
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them?
Yes. It is called the "abuse syndrome." How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims' faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker. So the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.
Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?
No. For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing; it can feel shameful -- and there is nothing more painful than shame. When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one's humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions.
Has such a demoralization happened in the U.S.?
In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal.
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested these circumstances.
Remember the 2000 U.S. presidential election? That's the one in which Al Gore received 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. That's also the one that the Florida Supreme Court's order for a recount of the disputed Florida vote was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a politicized 5-4 decision, of which dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens remarked: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Yet, even this provoked few demonstrators.
When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more way we become even more psychologically broken.
U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don't act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shut-down mode and use escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.
Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?
Maybe.
Shortly before the 2000 U.S. presidential election, millions of Americans saw a clip of George W. Bush joking to a wealthy group of people, "What a crowd tonight: the haves and the haves-more. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base." Yet, even with these kind of inflammatory remarks, the tens of millions of U.S. citizens who had come to despise Bush and his arrogance remained passive in the face of the 2000 non-democratic presidential elections.
Perhaps the "political genius" of the Bush-Cheney regime was in their full realization that Americans were so broken that the regime could get away with damn near anything. And the more people did nothing about the boot slamming on their faces, the weaker people became.
What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?
The U.S. government-corporate partnership has used its share of guns and terror to break Native Americans, labor union organizers, and other dissidents and activists. But today, most U.S. citizens are broken by financial fears. There is potential legal debt if we speak out against a powerful authority, and all kinds of other debt if we do not comply on the job. Young people are broken by college-loan debts and fear of having no health insurance.
The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.) Sociologist Robert Putnam, in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, describes how social connectedness is disappearing in virtually every aspect of U.S. life. For example, there has been a significant decrease in face-to-face contact with neighbors and friends due to suburbanization, commuting, electronic entertainment, time and money pressures and other variables created by governmental-corporate policies. And union activities and other formal or informal ways that people give each other the support necessary to resist oppression have also decreased.
We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanity. A few examples:
Schools and Universities: Do most schools teach young people to be action-oriented -- or to be passive? Do most schools teach young people that they can affect their surroundings -- or not to bother? Do schools provide examples of democratic institutions -- or examples of authoritarian ones?
A long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.
Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials -- badges of compliance for corporate employers -- in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.
Mental Health Institutions: Aldous Huxley predicted today's pharmaceutical societyl "[I]t seems to me perfectly in the cards," he said, "that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude."
Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric drugs that make them less pained about their boredom, resentments, and other negative emotions, thus rendering them more compliant and manageable.
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers. The official symptoms of ODD include, "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules," and "often argues with adults." An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than the overt defiance of ODD is some type of passive defiance -- for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all children diagnosed with ADHD will pay attention to activities that they actually enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.
When human beings feel too terrified and broken to actively protest, they may stage a "passive-aggressive revolution" by simply getting depressed, staying drunk, and not doing anything -- this is one reason why the Soviet empire crumbled. However, the diseasing/medicalizing of rebellion and drug "treatments" have weakened the power of even this passive-aggressive revolution.
Television: In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Jerry Mander (after reviewing totalitarian critics such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich) compiled a list of the "Eight Ideal Conditions for the Flowering of Autocracy."
Mander claimed that television helps create all eight conditions for breaking a population. Television, he explained, (1) occupies people so that they don't know themselves -- and what a human being is; (2) separates people from one another; (3) creates sensory deprivation; (4) occupies the mind and fills the brain with prearranged experience and thought; (5) encourages drug use to dampen dissatisfaction (while TV itself produces a drug-like effect, this was compounded in 1997 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxing the rules of prescription-drug advertising); (6) centralizes knowledge and information; (7) eliminates or "museumize" other cultures to eliminate comparisons; and (8) redefines happiness and the meaning of life.
Commericalism of Damn Near Everything: While spirituality, music, and cinema can be revolutionary forces, the gross commercialization of all of these has deadened their capacity to energize rebellion. So now, damn near everything – not just organized religion -- has become "opiates of the masses."
The primary societal role of U.S. citizens is no longer that of "citizen" but that of "consumer." While citizens know that buying and selling within community strengthens that community and that this strengthens democracy, consumers care only about the best deal. While citizens understand that dependency on an impersonal creditor is a kind of slavery, consumers get excited with credit cards that offer a temporarily low APR.
Consumerism breaks people by devaluing human connectedness, socializing self-absorption, obliterating self-reliance, alienating people from normal human emotional reactions, and by selling the idea that purchased products -- not themselves and their community -- are their salvation.
Can anything be done to turn this around?
When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale.
What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.
The last people I would turn to for help in remobilizing a demoralized population are mental health professionals -- at least those who have not rebelled against their professional socialization. Much of the craft of relighting the pilot light requires talents that mental health professionals simply are not selected for nor are they trained in. Specifically, the talents required are a fearlessness around image, spontaneity, and definitely anti-authoritarianism. But these are not the traits that medical schools or graduate schools select for or encourage.
Mental health professionals' focus on symptoms and feelings often create patients who take themselves and their moods f