22 February 2011

image via rocknetroots

Robert Reich advocates raising the top tax bracket to 70 percent
[via Avedon ]

Ian Welsh discusses events in Wisconsin and advocates a top tax bracket of 90 percent.

Yahoo/AP:At CIA, grave mistakes, then promotions via Detroit Free Press, but I have a feeling this link will eventually be no good.

In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched German citizen Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan for interrogation. But he was the wrong guy.

Paul Craig Roberts, "From Brunei to Washington: Kleptocrats at Work"

'Upper-Class People Have Trouble Recognizing Others’ Emotions''

and (speaking of perception) Rob Payne, "The Gaddafi Mirror"


Mother Jones, "South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers"


Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics

Two via the redoubtable BDR:

1. Hosni Mubarak used last 18 days in power to secure his fortune
and
2: Corporate scavengers

More on the French strike: Ian Welsh

In "Praying for the French" Ian Welsh writes:

Notice something here: the protesters are doing economically damaging things. They aren’t just showing up in the mall, waving some flags, making some speeches and wandering off. Notice also, that Sarkozy is still going to pass his bill.

The key point will be whether the opposition keeps up the pressure. AFTER the bill passes, they must continue rolling strikes and occupations until the elite gives in.

RULE #1 Of Post-Modern Elite Thinking: Elites think in terms of costs. If the cost of something is less than the benefit of doing it, assuming the return is also high enough they will almost certainly do it.

The strikes and shutdowns are a COST. The benefit of raising the pension age is that it pays for bailouts, bonuses and high salaries for the elites (since it helps pay to continue the financial casino.) Unless the cost is clearly going to be higher than the gain, they will do it. The strikes and other actions must continue until the elites who run Sarkozy realize the cost is higher than the benefit to them. Or, of course, they can be made to fear something more existential. It may be time for a new French Republic, for example, which takes power out of their hands entirely and bankrupts them by forcing them to pay back all their ill-gotten gains.

At this point in time, France is the only nation in the first world where there is meaningful resistance to the rush of Austerity (aka. Hooverism) and the attempt by elites to permanently break the power and wealth of the middle and working class.

Pray for France. Because if they fall, no one is even trying, and if they fall the elites will know they can take anything away from any first world’s nation’s population.

One of his commenters:

the way the fund the retirement system is dynamic – money paid to beneficiaries depends on the amount of money collected. Pay-as-you-go. It is not an unfunded mandate. Here is a pretty good synopsis.


2 from the BBC:

"French Senate passes pension bill"

And, "Pension reform vote: Views from France"
(No comment forum, just three people interviewed, two of them against the strikers. From a link that says "your views." As the Brits say, rubbish.)

the real news: US military enforces attacks on Haitian unions

TheRealNews — May 01, 2010 — Didier Dominique : Haitian elite want to go back to cheap textile labor and destroying national food production

I will admit I haven't been following the situation in Haiti very much, so I don't know how to intelligently comment on what Dominique says. Having said that, I don't doubt that Haiti's so-called elite want to hold on to a corrupt status quo, and that historically the US has had a pretty messed-up relationship with Haiti. Dominique's organization is at www.batayouvriye.org.

part one is directly above (1/3)

and here's part 2/3:



and part 3:

Q: Why does UPS need a bailout?

A:They don't, and they're not seeking one.

Q: Then why does Brownbailout dot com make it sound like they are?

A: Well! Therein lies a tale:

I realize most of you have already browsed through the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009(which, apparently, is still pending in '10.). But if you are a dunderheaded sort like me and haven't heard, Fedex discusses it at their site, brownbailout.com.

If you go there and give it a cursory once-over, you'll come away with the idea that UPS is lobbying for a government bailout. (see below)



But if you poke around a bit, you'll get to a page on the site, "buried bailout" in which they (sort of) admit that what they're calling a bailout is actually legislation that would make the regulations governing Fedex and UPS more uniform, although this is expressed in deliberately deceptive verbiage that suggests that UPS is less-efficient, suffering the presumptive ill-effects of being "a 100 year old trucking company"(this phrase, along with "bailout," is used several times throughout the site.):

The bailout bottom-line is this: What’s the difference between a 100-year-old trucking company and a modern airline that flies packages around the world every night? Answer: everything. Yes, both carry parcels and packages, but how they do it is obviously and vastly different.


UPS’ bailout would shoehorn FedEx Express – an airline created in 1971 focused on next-day delivery of essential goods and documents around the world – into the same operating rules as a 100-year-old trucking company. FedEx Express and other airlines operate just fine under airline regulations, but UPS doesn’t like competition. Keep in mind, UPS chose to form as a separate trucking company for its pickup and delivery operations.

So “Big Brown” is throwing around its political weight and seeking a bailout from Congress, so that it can saddle its only remaining U.S. competitor with the effects of its own decisions. And at the end of the day, all of us who rely on overnight-deliveries – medicines, paychecks, critical replacement parts, essential inventory, and the like – pay the cost.

According to Business Week, which isn't generally regarded as a hotbed of radicalism, Fedex objects to the legislation in question because it would make it easier for their employees to unionize. They also note that Obama has gone out of his way to praise Fedex's CEO, Frederick "Winkie" Smith for bold, innovative, blah blah blah. Actually, I don't remember what Obama praised him for, because after a certain point, even in print, Obama's I-never-met-a-Reaganite-I-didn't-like blather gets to be too much for me. But then again, maybe I just don't fully appreciate how bold and forward-thinking our president and his jet-setting friends are.

Bob's response to comments for "In case you missed it"

My comment was too long to stick in the comments section, so here it is as a post:

I spent most of my working life in a union and so I view political parties in large part through a class analysis. What does each party, or more accurately, what does each candidate do for the working class? In the San Francisco Bay Area that has meant voting for a Democrat. (I think I might have voted for the liberal Republican Milton Marks at some point in the late 70s or early 80s. Or maybe I thought about voting for him.)

What an individual candidate stands for and how a political party functions at a national level are two different things. I suspect that, say, Barbara Boxer, will support whatever the final healthcare bill is and not agitate too loudly for a public option, not because she opposes one, but because the bill the best that the party leaders will allow. Not get, mind you, but allow.

I say that I view things through a class analysis. But that doesn't mean that I view my union as a crystaline prism. In January 2008 the national president of our union came to our branch meeting to pitch for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for President because of her position on healthcare. But knowing our national, which makes oodles of money on the healthcare plan that it offers, I more than suspect that Hillary wasn't telling our president the virtues of single-payer.

Differences between the two major parties were clearer in my youth. The drifting of both the Democratic and Republican parties to the right is not a function of what the citizenry generally feels. The drift is a reflection of the increased power that wealth has. I think a better, clearer scale than left-right is top-bottom. Ben Nelson doesn't represent his voters. He represents money. Granted, many in Nebraska believe the scary myths generated by reactionaries, but again, those myths were created and funded by the wealthy to scare people into voting their fears. (German corporatist Fritz Thyssen's money helped scare Germans about Jews and get Hitler elected as much as Rupert Murdoch's money helps Republicans through its fear propaganda.)

One might point to the DLC back in the 80s as the turning point for the Democratic Party's shift. If I stopped drinking for a few days I'm sure I could remember plenty of pro-corporate Democrats earlier than that but the DLC is a good place to start analyzing the recent historical drift in the Democratic Party.

My reason in linking to the article was to point out both the process of "regulatory capture" and how the Democratic Party has essentially used that process in the healthcare debate to elbow out Republicans as the best friends of capitalists. But more than that, I hoped to point out that all Democratic candidates, because they nominally are the party of the people, will suffer from the damage this bill may very well do to its constituency. A good equivalent would be how the Democratic Party suffered from Bill Clinton (another DLCer) and his trade deals which served corporate interests and killed manufacturing jobs for the middle class.

This is an admission by me, as Rob seems to point out, that I think that there is a difference between the two parties and that the Democrats are superior. And I do, relatively. I see the Republican Party as the equivalent to Mussolini's Fascist Party in the 1920s and 30s. I've already discussed how I see the Democratic Party and the difference between Party and individual politician.

However, I think that any analysis that only sees continuity (that is, no difference between the two parties) fails because it doesn't explicate the dilemma, even if both parties end up in the same place. And if we don't better understand how we got here, and we don't let others know, then we're doomed.

Got that? I'm an optimist.

That doesn't mean that I'm at all happy with the current political situation.

Charles, I find some of Ron Paul's positions intriguing but others completely wrong-headed. Small government is a sitting duck for corporatism. I am reminded of a quote by (I think it was) Vernon Parrington back in the 1800s or early 1900s that said the government needed to be big enough to control corporations but what power prevents the government's power from being taken over by those corporations? Thus the dilemma for small government types. Unless you can eliminate big corporations you've only given Big Money license to eat up the little folk.

As for independent movements and candidates, the US electoral system is rigged in so many ways (and that's a richer topic to be pursued)that it's hard for any group to win at a statewide or national level. I held that Matt Gonzalez would have done better running against Pelosi as San Francisco's representative for the House than tagging along with Ralph Nader on the campaign trail. San Francisco is one of the few places where Pelosi could have been defeated from the left.

I'm not saying that I'm so enamored with the Democratic Party that I would never vote for an independent. When Moscone was murdered, I voted for Jello Biafra (twice) because the alternative was Feinstein. I voted for Dr. Spock in 1980 because when I got off work in California Jimmy Carter had already conceded the election. But I would have voted for Carter because there was a difference, a BIG difference, between Carter and Reagan. I would much rather a Bernie Sanders be California's Senator than Dianne Feinstein. But when November rolls around, do you want a Feinstein or do you want a used car salesman from Orange County who believes in killing gays? Still, if Feinstein has a comfortable lead from the guy from Orange County I'll vote for whoever the Greens are running. As bad as Feinstein is, there is a difference.

But like I've said, analysis of how the Democratic Party got the way it did is more constructive than just wringing hands.

Labor day on 'the real news'

The Real News on Youtube.