Frum’s right again — Dems despise their base

Posted on March 15, 2011 by oddmanout215

This on Monday from Glenn Greenwald, also quoted in Crooks and Liars:

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention as “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid,” forcing President Obama to address those comments in a press conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports, Crowley has “abruptly resigned” under “pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case.” In other words, he was forced to “resign” — i.e., fired… As David Frum [wrote]: “Crowley firing: one more demonstration of my rule: Republican pols fear their base, Dem pols despise it.”

If there’s one thing stirs me up more than than Barack Obama’s shifty approach to governing, it’s mistreatment of prisoners by uniformed goons. That goes for common criminals and political prisoners; for those who’ve been convicted and those such as Manning, who remains in solitary confinement, awaiting trial for dozens of charges involving the passing of classified information to WikiLeaks.

And how discouraging is it that David Frum, Iraq war hawk and ex-speechwriter for George W. Bush, proudly tweets his all-purpose “rule,” which seems truer every week. Back in the summer, he tweeted the same message when the Obama administration attacked the “professional left” for complaining Obama hadn’t lived up to his campaign promise to pursue real change.

Obama apparently has an agenda he didn’t mention on the campaign trail. We can see where it’s leading us.

From Daniel Ellsberg:

…If President Obama really doesn’t yet know the actual conditions of Manning’s detention… then he’s being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration. If he does know, and agrees that it’s appropriate or even legal, that doesn’t speak well for his memory of the courses he taught on constitutional law.

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Know your enemy. Keep the Brawny boys in the news.

Posted on March 14, 2011 by oddmanout215

Interesting reader’s comment on a Crooks and Liars story about the Saturday rally in Madison, WI, that drew 100,000 protesters:

I think that the Koch brothers may finally have unwittingly jumped the shark. While it may be a bit premature to sharpen the guillotines, oiling up the tumbrels seems quite in order.

Damn. I guess he was using the guillotine as a metaphor, but the fact that he knows what the tumbrels were used for is unsettling.

It’s fun to fantasize about snuffing out the let-them-eat-cake crowd, but not productive. You might end up like Jean-Paul Marat, who wrote article after article calling for the execution of more and more French aristocrats. Finally, the sensible Charlotte Corday used a sharp knife to shut him up.

There’s rhetoric, and there’s reality. The billionaire exploiters of the working class exist in a realm far more remote from the poor than that of the French monarchists who stirred up the bloodlust of starving Parisians. Our fat cats spend multimillions buying politicians, creating think tanks and hiring ad agencies to do their dirty work. They’re untouchable except, possibly, in the areas where their money is generated.

It makes more sense to look into cutting into their profits, not chopping off their heads, even though boycotts alone won’t bring down the the Koch brothers and their ilk, whose holdings are “vertically integrated” into the economy.

I’m thinking of Jane Mayer’s quick sketch of the Kochtopus:

With his brother Charles… David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

We should stop buying Brawny, etc., and boycott banks and other businesses that aid Koch Industries and other corporations trying to re-establish the asset-grabbing Gilded Age-style of doing business — the status quo before Robert La Follette and other progressives began cleaning up Wisconsin politics in the early 20th century.

But we also should remember we have a long way to go. Wisconsin is an encouraging sign, but will workers fight back in states with puppet governors who aren’t as heavy-handed and ruthless as Scott Walker? Not unless we keep all aspects of the story in the news until it sinks in.

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Obama is mum on Wall St. & oil prices

Posted on March 12, 2011 by oddmanout215

… Barack Obama‘s number one private campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs, which is one of the two major companies that is engaged in commodity index speculation. Morgan Stanley, which is another major contributor of his, was the other. You know, both the Democrats and the Republicans receive an enormous amount of money from the industries that benefit from commodity speculation. But the flip side of it is that the public doesn‘t understand this issue, so there is really no political downside to doing the wrong thing here. There‘s a lot of political risk to reform, because they‘re going to take that hit from their campaign contributors. But there is no up-side politically because the public doesn‘t get it.

— Matt Taibbi on CSNBC, March 10

Taibbi noted that speculative activity on commodities markets — you know, where little things like food and oil are priced — was limited by government regulations until the 1990s, when Wall Street speculators began worming their way into the markets in a big way. Now the markets are like poker games. Speculation makes commodities more and more costly, driving up prices we pay at supermarkets and gas stations.

On the same program with Taibbi was Michael Greenberger, the former director of trading and markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that’s supposed to oversee these matters. Greenberger, who appeared in the Academy Award-winning Inside Job, voiced a faint hope that President Obama would address the problem of excessive speculation at his press conference scheduled for the next day:

Since January 26th, oil prices have gone up almost 25 percent. There has not been a word from the White House about the input that Wall Street, the banks we saved with our tax dollars after they wrecked the economy—their influence on inflating these prices. The additional money doesn‘t go to production… It goes right into the pockets of Wall Street. No new production. I hope the president recalls his statement of June, 2008, and calls Wall Street out on this.

At the press conference, Obama said nothing about speculators driving up oil prices. To my knowledge, no one in the mainstream press asked him about the issue in the Q&A that followed. It seemed the unspoken assumption of everyone present that rising prices are, exclusively, a supply and demand problem triggered by Mideast unrest.

The president did indicate in his blase fashion that he’d be willing to tap into the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in emergencies, as we work toward energy independence. One can only imagine James Kunstler’s apoplectic reaction to our big chief’s back-up plan.

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Round 2: Boycott the union buster’s bank

Posted on March 12, 2011 by oddmanout215

Jimmy Stewart would be on the other side this time, trying to shut down the bank. Nice hat.

As the protesting spirit spreads in Wisconsin, one tactic that union members are now adopting is to take aim at institutions that have donated heavily to Governor Scott Walker.

Members of the Wisconsin firefighters union set out for a local branch of the M & I Bank on Thursday to withdraw their personal savings. The UpTake, which describes itself as “a citizen-fueled, online video news gathering organization,” reports that “on Thursday members of the union withdrew close to $200,000 from the bank.”

A website titled “Keep on eye on Marshall & Ilsley Bank” had been targeting the M & I Bank since last month. “After working families gave Marshall and Ilsley Bank (M&I) a $1.7 billion bailout in 2008,” the site explains, “their executives did an about face and funded Governor Scott Walker’s attack on our right to collectively bargain. In fact, their financial help combined was more than what the Koch Brothers contributed. And while Governor Walker was demanding austerity from working people, M&I CEO Mark Furlong got an $18 million golden parachute. Even after the bank was having difficulty paying back its TARP loan.”

— The Raw Story, March 11

Good idea. Don’t launch costly strikes that might alienate nonunion workers. Go after entities that channeled funds to the creep behind the bill that crushed your collective bargaining rights. It’s the sort of tactic that might force the fickle mainstream press to keep the issue in the news and make a big difference in efforts to recall Walker and state senators who thumbed their noses not only at organized labor but at the democratic process.

The story began when Walker, not content to cripple the unions, decided to kill them. Arguably, he forced people to pay attention and realize Republicans were attacking unions not because of budgetary concerns but rather to scuttle the main funding source of Democratic candidates.

Union leaders are saying the boycott will target all businesses perceived as being Walker allies. Susie Madrak in Crooks & Liars noted the bank boycott was supposed to start March 17 if the bank — which claims it didn’t contribute to Walker’s campaign — refused to publicly withdraw its support of Walker’s attack on collective bargaining. But things got off to an early start Thursday after the bill was sneaked through and angry workers converged to close their accounts.

Maybe Walker’s power grab will turn out to be not only a gift to Wisconsin’s labor movement but a wake-up call for working people all over the country. Does anyone reading this think PA Gov. Tom Corbett or NJ Gov. Chris Christie aren’t as beholden to corporate anti-unionists as Walker?

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Very politely, NYT calls Christie a liar

Posted on March 11, 2011 by oddmanout215

Mr. Christie, a Republican who took office in January 2010, would hardly be the first politician to indulge in hyperbole or gloss over facts. But his misstatements, exaggerations and carefully constructed claims belie the national image he has built as a blunt talker who gives straight answers to hard questions, especially about budgets and labor relations.

— Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times, March 9

This is the polite way of saying that Chris Christie tends to lie in public about policy matters. I was surprised to see NYT call attention to this fact in an analysis piece that, for a change, actually did analyze available facts and draw conclusions from them. This is something mainstream newspapers seem increasingly reluctant to do.

Maybe the article was to make up for Matt Bai’s lengthy profile of Christie in the NYT magazine, which was not a puff piece but was less than rigorous — I feel so polite today — in its investigation of Christie’s allegiances, and of his motives for demanding sacrifices from public-sector workers but none from the wealthy in his efforts to balance New Jersey’s budget.

For example, Christie vetoed renewal of a “millionaire tax” that would have raised about $800 million and made up for cutbacks in aid to schools and seniors. He apparently wasn’t asked to explain this decision for Bai’s article.

Perez-Pena’s piece is worth reading not because it makes startling revelations — it doesn’t — but rather because it documents misstatements that show Christie’s preference for winning over audiences with showmanship, and to hell with the facts. He’s a ham and a cut-up, like Rush Limbaugh, or like Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden. The difference, of course, is that Christie is in a place where he can ruin many thousands of lives in his pursuit of fame and power.

If The Times connected the dots between Christie’s politics, family, friends and campaign contributors, readers and voters might see his hypocrisy more clearly. But don’t bet your house on this happening anytime soon.

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Anti-unions bill OK’d. (Don’t sit still for it, Tom.)

Posted on March 10, 2011 by oddmanout215

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

— from “Ash Wednesday,” by T.S. Eliot

What’s with the “us,” Tom? Speak for yourself. My wings are working fine, and tonight I might use them to fly to Wisconsin, where David Koch’s Republican lapdogs just sneaked through a new bill that will tear the heart out of collecting bargaining rights in that state.

Republicans had denied that their so-called Budget Reform Bill was to crush labor unions, but 14 Democratic senators knew better and went AWOL three weeks ago to keep the bill from being voted on. So Republicans stripped away parts of the bill in order to present it in a form they could weasel into law without the presence of any Dems. That happened last night. The Assembly is rubber-stamping the bill today.

Said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller, “In 30 minutes, 18 state Senators undid 50 years of civil rights in Wisconsin. Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten.”

This is a national story. The future of organized labor, and decent treatment of workers in general, is on the line. PA Gov. Tom Corbett, who’s only slightly less right-wing than Walker, is watching closely, and so are his opponents. (Where’s Obama on this issue? Still in hiding, I guess.)

Today, pissed-off protesters who understand what’s happening to Wisconsin government are climbing through the windows of the state capitol. The billionaire Koch is probably having a good laugh on the phone with Gov. Scott Walker. (This time it might really be Koch on the line.)

Where’s that leave you, Tom? I know, it’s Lent now and you’re depressed and into your soulless-sounding Catholic conversion bit, and you’re trying to equate spirituality with sitting still and doing nothing, which is how it usually goes with dessicated academics like you. You were dead long before you stopped breathing.

But really — couldn’t you get off your dead ass for once and take a stand with flesh-and-blood humans instead of laying on us your ashes-to-ashes resignation and wishy-washy prayers (Teach us to care and not to care…) to describe your obscure version of enlightenment? I’ve looked through volumes of your work, first time in a long while, but can’t find much that has a pulse.

I prefer Warren Zevon:

So much to do, there’s plenty on the farm
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Saturday night I like to raise a little harm
I’ll sleep when I’m dead

Zevon’s stuff doesn’t need to be annotated, but at least he speaks for the living. You either care or you don’t care.

Update: The modified Budget Reform Bill is more than just anti-unions. As Crooks and Liars put it, “Every public program, worker, and Wisconsin citizen will be at risk as a result of this ‘legislation,’ if that’s even what it is.”

Posted in arts, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, pop music, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A song for Charlie Sheen?

Posted on March 9, 2011 by oddmanout215

Listen all you fools out there
Go on and love me I don’t care
Oh it’s lonely at the top

— Randy Newman, “Lonely At the Top,” 1972

People say it’s lonely at the top, but I sure like the view.

— Charlie Sheen, 2011

“The Sheen machine marches on,” as a Philadelphia Daily News headline put it. Where in the mainstream media are the front-page stories on Wall Street’s manipulation of gasoline prices, or on the Wisconsin 14, who are still holed up in Illinois, waiting for Gov. Walker to give ground in his union-busting crusade? The only real news this week on the latter was when the Wall Street Journal falsely reported that the 14 state senators were ready to give up and come home.

It’s all entertainment all the time, and it’s hard to let go of an entertainer of Charlie’s caliber. If I had a hat, I’d tip it to this man for taking a great lyric and turning it on its head. He ain’t Oscar Wilde, but he’s good for a chuckle.

Newman wrote “Lonely at the Top” with Frank Sinatra in mind, thinking the irony was a good fit for the aging, world-weary crooner. Maybe it was too good — Sinatra turned Newman down, maybe because he saw the double irony in the song’s message. Yes, the narrator is lonely but he’s arrogant, not remorseful or self-pitying. He has great talent and contempt for all who don’t.

I wonder if even Newman, a great ironist, would be capable of doing justice to the phenomenon of Sheen, who has an ego as big as Sinatra’s but whose greatest artistic triumph is a moronic sitcom?

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How wingnut radio really works

Posted on March 9, 2011 by oddmanout215

The company responsible for syndicating big conservative radio names like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity has been using paid actors to call in to their radio shows. According to a recent report in Tablet Magazine, Premiere Radio Networks, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, hired actors to call in as guests.

— David Edwards, The Raw Story, March 7

Driving to New England in the late 1990s, I switched the radio to AM and heard a talk show host calling on Bill Clinton to resign for having had sex in the White House with someone other than his wife. The radio host brayed and thundered, but he sounded smoothly theatrical, like a cross between Robert Preston in The Music Man and the cartoon star Foghorn Leghorn. (“I don’t, I say, I don’t think this boy’s got all his marbles…”) He was reveling in his bravado. He was Rush Limbaugh…

Good job nailing down the story about paid actors, guys, but it should surprise no one that Limbaugh and the dimmer bulbs, Beck and Hannity, might use callers who’ve been vetted and rehearsed before they appear on-air, or that the Clear Channel network lurks behind the scenes to make this happen. Right-wing talk radio is, after all, as much about theater as politics. These people make up facts to fit the stories they want to tell.

Limbaugh is cynical and mean-spirited, but he’s first of all a showman. Everything he does — the pauses, verbal tics, cruel jokes, rants, indignant asides and so on — is carefully considered. The goal is to keep the ratings high. I’d be astounded if he ever let anything unscripted happen on-air.

I’m wondering about callers to the local wingnut shows in Philadelphia, as opposed to the syndicated shows… Nah, nobody would pay those morons.

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DiCicco drops out, but has DROP to console him

Posted on March 8, 2011 by oddmanout215

Jackpot! DiCicco and several others on City Council love the DROP.

And so it comes to pass that one of Philly’s most consistently [GASPS, GRABS FACE]-inducing City Council members would rather just take the DROP money and run, rather than deal with your broke asses for another cringe-inducing term. And it’s gonna leave a huge gap in this sitcom: Who will play both sides of the casino issue depending on which looks the most politically advantageous at the time?

— Philebrity, March 7

The next First District councilperson who talks out of both sides of his mouth won’t be Frank DiCicco. That, at least, is worth celebrating.

DiCicco is the guy who told constituents early and often he was opposed to construction of casinos in his district. Then he reversed course, maybe after a visit from the corporate gods of gambling, and decided casinos were OK. After he became a true believer, he supported plans to build a Foxwoods casino on the waterfront, and then at Market East, in Center City.

The plans failed, thanks to Casino-Free Philadelphia and others who couldn’t warm up to a casino down the street from Independence Hall. (SugarHouse, the other casino proposed for the First District, wasn’t stopped but it’s not nearly as big as it would have been if casino foes hadn’t fought the good fight.)

It’s hard to tell who will replace DiCicco, but I hope he or she has enough imagination and energy to support business ventures that bring money into the district rather than sucking it out, casino-style.

And don’t feel sad for Frank, he’ll be walking away from Council with $424,000 from DROP, the city’s much-abused Deferred Retirement Option Plan.

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To D.C. Dems, compromise means capitulate

Posted on March 7, 2011 by oddmanout215

Jobs market improves! It will be even brighter when Dems cave on new budget.

Unfortunately, the efficacy of slashing spending and taxes on the wealthy will become conventional wisdom now that Democrats have signed on to the program and the disaster capitalists will have won their war against egalitarianism and redistribution. The Democrats didn’t even put up a fight.

— Digby’s Hullabaloo, March 6

President Obama and most other D.C. Democrats are signaling that they’ll cave to Republican demands rather than risk the possibility of a government shutdown. We’ll see haggling over this or that provision, but Republicans probably will get what they want — huge cuts in taxes and spending that will keep the economy stagnant and dig an even deeper hole for those of us who aren’t wealthy.

In other words, it’s business as usual for the Democrats In Name Only.

Chris Hayes in Daily Kos recently noted that the D.C. area is booming and Democrats there are part of a ruling elite more alienated than ever from the experiences of ordinary Americans. Many of them probably aren’t even aware of how quickly standards of living are eroding outside their bubble of prosperity.

If they were, they wouldn’t be calling the new jobs data mildly encouraging. They’d take a more careful look, as Robert Reich did the other day:

…To get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created… While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour.

The workforce is suffering a severe, ongoing decline in wages, part of a radical redistribution of income to the already wealthy. The mainstream media seem to be pretending that the drop in wages is the inevitable result of a stubborn recession; that it will eventually be reversed by a “recovery.” Most D.C. Democrats are pretending, too. They know Republicans are dead-set on making sure the gulf between rich and poor will never again be narrowed.

Liberal activists seem content to criticize Democrats for not trying to prevent this disaster, but few are seriously exploring what actions might be taken to counter it. We know by now that Obama’s weirdly passive style of governance amounts to a betrayal of voters who hoped he would focus on jobs creation rather than the health of big banks and corporations. We know he’ll be even more passive as 2012 approaches and he grows more wary of offending imaginary “independent” voters.

We should recognize that Obama has no intention of seriously challenging the right-wing agenda. That he would rather compromise to the point of enabling it, if that’s what he thinks it will take to be re-elected.

It’s time to start the search for a third-party candidate, or at least someone who will make a strong run for the nomination and maybe scare Obama into behaving like a Democrat. If you think this search might be counter-productive, remember the old Bob Dylan lyric: When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.

Footnote: Paul Krugman calls what’s happening to the jobs market a “hollowing out.” He does a great job of explaining the correlation between improved technology and the scarcity of decent jobs, but he doesn’t mention the effects of outsourcing, a word you’ll hardly ever hear from Obama.

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