Monday, December 3, 2012

The case against smartphones: To get one benefit you make a lot of trade-offs

By Marc Jampole

Virtually everyone I know has or is getting a smartphone. I keep resisting the Siren call, however, because as far as I can discern, the smartphone provides only one benefit and in return, the user has to give up a lot that I prefer to keep.
 
The benefit is to have it all here and now, and by all, I mean the Internet, email, games, text-messaging, movies, music, directions and documentation such as airline or event tickets. In short, everything that the user is accustomed to getting on her/his computer, DVD player, landline telephone, stereo system, Gameboy, paper newspaper and MP3 player.
 
The only additional benefit that the smartphone provides over any of these devices is to be able to have it here and now, at this instant, immediately, right now. No matter what the app, you can find an equivalent on at least one and sometimes several other pieces of equipment that do the same thing. The only additional benefit you get from the smartphone is the instantaneous nowness.
 
And here is what you give up to get the smartphone’s immediacy:

·        Civility: Smartphone use spoils interactions with other people, which tends to fill the time people are not at home and in the vicinity of other devices. Checking a batting average, playing a smartphone game in the restaurant or text-messaging while you’re talking all offend the commonly held conventions of etiquette. The scene of a table full of young people, each on his or her own cell phone, replays daily and nightly in every city across America.
·        Size of screen: The smartphone screen is too small to be of any real use, if you ask me. The miniaturization of the smartphone experience offsets the value of immediacy—I would rather see a larger screen for a movie or TV show, to play a game or even to surf the web.  Scrolling, and especially horizontal scrolling, slows down the search for information. The eyes can quickly review a lot of detail at one time, but there is only so much detail that can fit on a small screen.  Whatever you’re doing thus takes longer on the smartphone than when using a computer or reading a book or Kindle. It’s funny, though, whenever I raise the size issue with smartphone owners, they brag about how much bigger their screen is than those of other smartphone brands.
·        Sound quality: The sound on a smartphone is terrible—and it’s always breaking up. I understand that with headphones, you get a pretty good sound from the MP3s and movies you play, but the sound is only as good as the headphone, and the best headphone never compares to the warmth that the room environment provides to sound that comes from speakers.  Call me an effete audiophile, and why not: there’s nothing I like more than putting my e-width feet up and listening to some Beethoven or Kate Bush from a beautiful sound system.

At this point, I imagine that smartphone defenders are eager to point out that there is another benefit of the smartphone—having everything in one place. And by everything,  I don’t mean all the experiences that devices with larger screens or better sound systems give us better, but stuff for which size (and sound) doesn’t matter, like tickets and other documentation  I travel a lot by Megabus and last time amazed me: half the passengers showed their smartphones to the ticket-taker. I see more and more people presenting the smartphone at concerts, plays, airports, restaurants and sporting events.
 
But having all your documents in one small place has its drawbacks: What if you lose your phone? Or if some super freaky hacker steals it or buys it hot? For anyone using the smartphone to manage all documents, when you lose it, you lose everything.
 
Paper tickets are also so easy to deal with: You show it and then you throw it in a shoebox or file or wherever you keep your receipts for reconciliation, tax or expense account purposes.  When you’re done, you throw it out. If you need to have an electronic copy, you just scan it.
 
Occasionally when I’m with a smartphoner, it’s helpful that she/he can punch out the directions to someplace we’re headed (obviously none of my friends and family are “Applers”).  Other information, e.g., where is the closest Chinese restaurant, can also be useful. 
 
But these small conveniences aren’t worth the cost.  Smartphones are expensive to buy and expensive to operate, especially if you go app-shit crazy. There’s no such thing as unlimited use on smartphones, which is why Internet service providers love them so much. The more you use the smartphone instead of a computer, the more money the corporate leviathans make.
 
Many tech writers and social critics believe that we have entered the age of the portable device, and that pretty soon all of us will be managing our lives on that little square of plastic and wires in pocket or purse.  If that’s so, I’ll be the last person that still prints his ticket on the computer or waits for them to come in the mail. I’ll be the last one to present the paper to the ticket-taker. And I’ll be the last one to ask complete strangers coming out of the subway at Union Square where Irving Place is instead of accidentally ramming into a wheelchaired individual because I was looking it up on my smartphone while hurtling up the subway steps.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Editorial: Stop the Grand Con


The deficit scolds, as Paul Krugman rightly calls them, have been dominating fiscal policy discussions for the past three years, calling upon the federal government to cut services to the poor and elderly to free up more money to pay for more tax breaks for the rich and corporations.

They are frauds. When Bill Clinton in 2001 turned over to George W. Bush a federal budget that was in the black and on track to wipe out the national debt in a decade, these same “conservatives” proclaimed that deficits didn’t matter. Bush enacted two tax cuts and pursued two wars without bothering to pay for them, which increased the national debt upwards of $5 trillion.

Conservatives who supported Bush’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout in 2008 didn’t “come to their senses” until after Barack Obama took office in 2009 and started trying to save the American auto industry and stimulate the economy, which, in addition to the health reform and other discretionary spending, cost about $1.44 trillion. Republicans resisted him at every step. Now that the economy has stabilized and corporations are banking profits, the unemployment rate is still hanging around 8% and there is still plenty of work to be done rebuilding our roads and bridges and other critically needed infrastructure to 21st century standards. But “conservatives” say we can’t put those people back to work because it would increase the deficit — even though the Treasury is able to borrow at near-record low interest rates.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell’s David Cote get extra gall points for making the case to cut the deficit by severely scaling back social safety-net programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Goldman Sachs got $10 billion in federal bailout cash. Now that it is back in the black, Goldman Sachs is looking for a tax break on offshore profits that could save it $3.3 billion when it brings the profits home. Honeywell had $2.3 billion in federal contracts in 2011 alone and it is not interested in giving discounts for government work.

Blankfein called for cuts in Social Security and other “entitlements” in an interview with CBS News Nov. 19. He said Social Security “wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career.” That surprised many of us who figure to work more than 40 years before getting to retire. But the key to cutting Social Security, Blankfein said, was simply a matter of teaching people to expect less.

“You’re going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people’s expectations of what they’re going to get,” Blankfein told CBS, “the entitlements, and what people think they’re going to get, because you’re not going to get it.” Blankfein made $16.1 million in 2011 and, like all millionaires, gets dinged by the Social Security payroll tax only on the first $110,100. Seniors might not need to expect less if we just lifted the cap on taxable income and multimillionaires like Blankfein paid their fair share.

Cote, whose compensation in 2011 was more than $55 million, suggested in a CBS interview Nov. 20 that the government raise revenue by ending individual tax credits and deductions, including mortgage and charitable deductions that the middle class uses. Cote added, “The big nut is going to have to be [cuts to] Medicare/Medicaid … especially with the baby boomer generation retiring. It’s going to literally crush the system.” (Particularly if we let multimillionaires bank their dividends at bargain tax rates.)

But what Cote really wants is a corporate tax rate of zero. In May he said in an interview in May, the only reason his desired rate won’t happen is because “from a fairness perspective, nobody would be able to stand it.”

Cote’s belief that a low corporate tax rate will spur job creation stands at odds with the country’s current experience, Pat Garofalo noted at ThinkProgress.org. After all, US corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40-year-low in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. However, job creation has been stubbornly slow.

In a New York Times op-ed column (Nov. 25), billionaire investor Warren Buffett noted that higher tax rates are not likely to deter investors. During the early 1950s, when the capital gains rate was 25% and marginal rates on dividends were as high as 91%, he did well as a securities broker. “In the years from 1956 to 1969, the top marginal rate fell modestly, but was still a lofty 70% — and the tax rate on capital gains inched up to 27.5%. I was managing funds for investors then. Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity that I offered.”

In 1992, the tax paid by the 400 highest incomes in the US averaged 26.4% of adjusted gross income. In 2009, the most recent year reported, that rate was 19.9%, he noted. “It’s nice to have friends in high places,” he added.

That top 400’s average income in 2009 was $202 million, he noted. Yet more than a quarter of these ultrawealthy paid less than 15% of their tax in combined federal income and payroll taxes. A few actually paid nothing.

Buffett supports President Obama’s proposal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers, although he prefers a cutoff at $500,000 instead of $250,000. But he also suggests a minimum tax on high incomes of 30% on taxable income between $1 million and $10 million and 35% on amounts above that. “A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultrarich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours,” Buffett wrote. “Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy.”

Democrats don’t need a deal at any cost in the lame duck session. Wall Street bet on Romney and the Republicans in the election and now the Democrats don’t owe them anything but “good government” and Elizabeth Warren on the Senate Banking Committee. They shouldn’t go along with any “Grand Bargain” that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.

America’s plutocrats have tried to scare the middle class with the specter of China threatening to foreclose on our burgeoning national debt. In fact, China owns about $1.15 trillion in US Treasury notes, or 7% of the US national debt, according to the Treasury Department — and that is good for us. Instead of cutting domestic spending to marginally reduce the federal deficit, as the Republicans are calling for, we should be proud to sell China more Treasury bills to help us pay the $2.2 trillion the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates it would take to rebuild our infrastructure and put 12 million jobless Americans back to work.

China is buying our debt not because they’re good guys, but because they need to invest their profits somewhere, and the US Treasury is the safest investment in the world (at least until Republicans start threatening the faith and credit of the Treasury). As of Nov. 26, the 30-year Treasury bond rate was 2.8%. Investing in the US also helps keep down the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan. That keeps Chinese exports less expensive and more attractive to western consumers. Chinese leaders need American workers to be prosperous enough to buy the consumer goods that are made in Chinese sweatshops.

Consequently, the Chinese economy would suffer as much, if not more than the US if China stopped buying our debt. And, contrary to popular opinion, China can’t demand that we give them San Francisco in return for their T-bills. Instead, they can dump that paper on the world market. That might cause Treasury prices to fall, but that not only would reduce the value of China’s remaining Treasury holdings; it also might slow down the US economy, so we might not be able to buy as many Chinese goods as we used to. And with 1.3 billion Chinese consumers having greater expectations of a higher living standard, driven by trade with a healthy United States, the Chinese leadership is not likely to start a war with their best customer. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2012

Populist.com
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us
Copyright © 2012 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the December 15, 2012 issue











Thursday, November 29, 2012

Behind surveys with ideological subtext lies an attempt to subtly shape the views of the audience.

By Marc Jampole

The number of surveys that news media are placing on their websites for their online followers seems to multiply daily. Most of the surveys reflect only the views of the respondents. Since the respondents self-select to take the survey, the validity of these surveys for the nation as a whole or even for the universe comprising the audience for the media outlet is virtually always suspect. 
 
Take for example the Yahoo! survey of which presidential candidate would receive their vote featured on its web page the day before the election: 53% of the respondents said they would vote for Romney and only 47% for President Obama. Of course the actual results were flipped, with Obama winning 51% of the vote and Romney a mere 47%. Clearly either Yahoo! users or those who answer Yahoo! surveys are more Republican than the voters.
 
These quick-and-dirty surveys usually ask one or at the most a few questions.  But even with one question, they often seem to be making a point as opposed to gathering information. These media surveys often reduce to attempts to convince the public of something rather than to gather information.  The persuasion comes in how the question and the answers are phrased.
 
Here are a few recent examples of advocating an ideology in the one-question Yahoo! survey, which changes every day or two on its home page:
 
Survey Question: Are you planning to shop on Cyber Monday?

            Yes, I don’t like crowds

            No, I prefer to shop in person

The assumption is made that, no matter what, you’re going to shop for Christmas/Hanukkah/Holiday presents. But what if you’re not shopping on Cyber Monday because you don’t celebrate holidays, don’t celebrate by exchanging gifts, are boycotting the holiday, make your own presents or have already shopped online for the holidays? By giving one and only one reason only for not shopping on Cyber Monday, the question assumes that the only possible reason not to shop on the Monday after Thanksgiving is that you are participating in another way in the great American potlatch of materialism  called the Holiday Shopping Season. The subtext of the question supports the basic American ideology of consumerism.
 
The next example, also from Yahoo!, is even more manipulative:

Survey Question: Do you support a tax hike for the wealthiest Americans?

            Yes, it’s needed to fix the deficit

            No, it will hinder economic growth  

We see in the characterization of the “no” answer one of the great hoaxes that conservative economic writers and pundits have been perpetrating on the American public for decades: that raising taxes on the wealthy will hurt economic growth. It’s just not so. The further up the economic scale you go, the more money you take out of the economy. The wealthy invest most of their money without investing in new jobs or the economy—for example, by buying stocks and bonds on the secondary market (where the money doesn’t go to a company that’s hiring, but to another investor). Every bit of the money that the government takes in is spent (except what’s used to pay down the debt, which is owned primarily by rich folk and foreign governments). World economic history has shown that higher taxes on the wealthy almost always lead to economic growth and virtually never hinder growth.

The “yes” answer also serves as an ideological shill. There are a great many progressives, including myself, who think the deficit is not such as critical problem, but propose raising taxes on the wealthy to improve our infrastructure of roads, bridges, mass transit, public spaces and education; support the development of new technologies; or help the people hurt by the last six years of deep recession followed by slow growth.  The survey question leaves out these option, just as most mainstream and rightwing media and right-wing politicians do: they want to take the ideas of taxing to grow the economy or create a more equitable society off the table because they go against their own mostly false economic notions.

Yahoo! is not the only one that’s trying to freeze the debate about taxes in right-wing terms. Here is a recent Washington Post online survey:

Survey Question: Would you be willing to pay more in taxes to help shore up the deficit?

            Yes

            No

In this case, the only reason given to raise taxes is to pay down the deficit (which is what I think the imprecise “shore up” means). And again, there are many people who would be delighted to see their taxes raised to kick-start the economy or help people in need, but would not want to pay more in taxes to pay down the deficit at this time. It’s something that the Washington Post  doesn’t even want us to bring up, let alone consider.

The accumulation of little nuggets of propaganda—in these silly surveys, in the details and assumptions of news stories, in the experts quoted in articles—allows many false notions to parade around in the marketplace of ideas as truth. The news media accepts these false notions and wants us to do the same.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Some gifts you can give our society and economy on Black Friday.

By Marc Jampole

With the great American holiday of Black Friday in two short days, I wanted to suggest some gifts that my cherished readers can get for American society to celebrate the holiday season. Note that I wrote “get,” and not “buy,” since these gifts do not involve commercial transactions.

Gift Idea #1: Boycott Wal-Mart until it stops its anti-union activity, and email the company to tell it that you’re not shopping at Wal-Mart until its store and warehouse employees are covered by certified unions. If enough people boycott Wal-Mart, it will be forced to unionize, just as grape farmers were forced to accept a union for farm workers after the successful boycott of grapes led by Cesar Chavez in the 1970’s.

You may be wondering how unionizing Wal-Mart will help our society. It’s simple: The more unionized workers there are, the higher the wages of everyone else. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the country, one known for giving very low salaries to their employees (except the executives!).  If Wal-Mart were unionized, wages would increase across the board across the country.

If history can serve as a guide, with higher wages will come some increase is prices, but employers will have to swallow a good part of their increased costs. Those that don’t adjust will lose market share to the entrepreneurs and innovators who are willing to take a lower profit margin.

The net effect of unionizing Wal-Mart will therefore be to rebalance the distribution of wealth, with less income and wealth in the hands of those on top and more in the hands of the middle class and the poor. One of the lessons of economic history is that nations with a relatively equitable distribution of wealth thrive; examples include the United States in the 50’s and 60’s and Europe in the 14th century after the Black Plague drove up the cost of labor. And yes, nations in which the distribution of wealth becomes increasingly less equitable suffer precipitous economic declines; examples include the Roman Empire after about 200 CE, Spain in the 16th century, several of the Chinese dynasties and the contemporary United States.

Right now the U.S. government provides billions of dollars of subsidies to Wal-Mart because so many of its employees qualify for food stamps. Another effect of unionizing Wal-Mart will be to make a big dent in the costs of the food stamp program, thus lowering government costs.

Those who want to give the precious gift of a just society and a growing economy to the United States can email Wal-Mart about your boycott at https://corporate.walmart.com/contact-us/store-corporate-feedback, check the “Financial Information” box, click “Next” and then leave your message on the page that appears. And instead of buying at Wal-Mart, go to your local merchants and to national companies that treat their workers with the dignity of a fair wage.

Gift Idea #2: Write your Republican Senators and Congressmen and tell them that you will not vote for them if they take the Norquist Pledge not to raise taxes or do not recant the pledge if they have taken it in the past.  The pledge, first proposed years ago by right-wing political operative Grover Norquist, has become part of contemporary Republican ideology. Before the most recent election, 238 of 242 Republican Congressional representatives and 41 out of 47 Republican Senators had signed Norquist’s pledge, promising to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”

The problem is that the federal government has been starved for revenues since the Bush II temporary tax cuts went into effect about 10 years ago, during which time we have fought two purposeless wars that have drained the federal treasury. We have to pay our debts, but just as importantly, we have to have the funds to keep investing in the economy by rebuilding our infrastructure. And we need money to respond to natural disasters like Sandy and man-made ones like the bursting of the real estate bubble that sent the country into an economic nosedive in 2007 and 2008.

But since they control the House of Representatives, the Republicans stand in the way of raising taxes. (In my heart, I believe that they would be delighted to raise taxes on anyone making less than $1.0 million or so a year. I base this belief on the Republican tax policies of the last 30 some-odd years, which have shifted the burden of paying for everything the government does from the wealthy to the middle class.)

Right now the Republicans are particularly vulnerable to reason, as they see that they have lost the election and surveys show that most Americans want to raise taxes on the wealthy. Telling Republican Representatives and Senators that getting your vote depends on their voting “Yea” on tax increases could prove to be particularly effective at the current moment, when President Obama is negotiating with Congress about new taxes.

So give some gifts that can keep on giving for years. Tell Wal-Mart and the Republicans that we won’t put up with their policies that are creating a nation of rich and poor.

Possible Twinkies demise gives journalists another chance to equate bad food with good times.


By Marc Jampole

When I look back in fond nostalgia to childhood foods, I often remember the Syrian and Eastern European delicacies that my mother made for us at holidays. I can often almost taste the sweet fresh corn on the cob in the summer and the tangy mussels that would come in a bucket. I sometimes conjure steaming images of oversized potato knishes and hot pastrami sandwiches we used to get at the neighborhood deli. Perhaps my most sentimental memories are reserved for the turkey, stuffing and sweet potatoes we had at Thanksgiving.
My food nostalgia never includes packaged baked goods like Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread: They never were very good, and certainly not as good as the corn rye we got at the bakery or the various cakes and cookies my mother would make, sometimes without a package mix, or we would occasionally buy in the bakery. I stopped eating Hostess-type packaged junk sometime in my teens and never returned to them.
When I’m reminiscing about childhood foods with friends and family, no one ever mentions these Hostess products either, even though, regardless of their age, almost everyone I know ate them at one time or another.
Nevertheless, it didn’t surprise me that the news that Hostess may close down and that these baked concoctions of white flower, sugar or corn syrup, food coloring and lots of preservatives instigated collective moaning and hand-wringing by the mass media. Reporter after reporter have mourned the loss of these products (and they are more product than food) as if we had suddenly lost a part of our collective cultural heritage, akin to all the monuments in Washington crumbling or misplacing all the episodes of “The Andy Griffin Show” and “You Bet Your Life.”
Writer after writer has come forward with his or her own defense of Twinkies and dirge for their possible demise. Here are some examples:
“Except that Twinkies aren’t merely a snack cake, nor just junk food. They are iconic in ways that transcend how Americans typically fetishize food. But ultimately, they fell victim to the very fervor that created them.” (Associated Press)
“When news broke Monday that beloved treat-maker Hostess would not be forced to shut down after all, Americans breathed a joint sigh of relief .” (Business Insider)
“If my insides are particularly well-preserved, it’s not because of the steamed broccoli crowding my dinner plate. No, it was the Twinkies. My longtime habit of consuming the famously imperishable cakes — with a preservative no doubt passed down from King Tut’s mummifiers — surely must have infused me with their elixir….Perhaps, it’s for the best that I wouldn’t have one last bite. They couldn’t live up to my gauzy memories of them. And maybe the Twinkie hoarders will pass them down like heirlooms to their children.” (Chicago Tribune)
“I don’t want to live in a world without Twinkies… The Austrians have their Strudel, the Italians their tiramisu, the French created crepes. But the Twinkie is an American original.” (Fox News)
“A world without Twinkies! How can it be?! I haven’t eaten a Twinkie since the third grade. But, when the demise of Hostess was announced last Friday, I, along with most of America, got swept up in Twinkiestalgia. Watching the six o’clock news, it dawned on me that my kids had never had and might never have a Twinkie in their young lives. What kind of life is that? What kind of mother would I be if one of those infinite-shelf-life treats never passed their lips?!” (The “Today Show” website)
“The Twinkie is an institution and a distinctly American one at that. It was the dessert that Edith packed in Archie’s lunchbox. It became part of legal nomenclature (the “Twinkies defense”). And its supposedly eternal shelf life only added to its stature as a pop-culture icon…No one, it seemed, had eaten a Twinkie (or Sno Ball) in years. Their affection for the brand was largely an exercise in nostalgia. The Twinkie took them back to their childhood – and knowing it was still there (and could be had at any time) meant there was always a comfortable (and cheap) portal to a time when life was safer, simpler and more innocent. It’s the Twinkie as, yes, Proust’s madeleine.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“Consider the Zen of the moment when you take a bite, that taste of something so simple yet decadent, Godiva for the everyman, and, for many, the savory hint of childhood and innocence. Can that small pleasure be had any longer without fear of diet-busting self-loathing?” (Baltimore Sun)
The common themes running through the commentaries are 1) nostalgia for what are imagined were simpler, better times and 2) defiance of what the reporters postulate are the food police who want to take away our every culinary pleasure and replace them with good food.
The nostalgia aspect is just weird: there are so many good things we can remember about the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and every other decade of the last century that it seems absurd for pundits to give bad-tasting food that was also bad for you a second thought. We all have individual memories and we also share in collective memories, both happy and sad. For example, people my age can reminisce about where we were when the first men landed on the moon (I am proud to write that I watched the first moon walk sitting next to my uncle, who led the team that engineered the fuel that propelled the rockets) or about the first time we heard the Beatles. But Twinkies?
When the mass media tries to create a collective memory for all of us, there is usually some ideological or business reason behind it, and that brings us to the second common theme in the encomiums to Twinkies: the assertion that there is a dichotomy between food that tastes good and food that’s good for you. The mass media often asserts this dichotomy: when discussing fast food, balanced diets, foods you can buy at state fairs, what to make at holidays or for Superbowl parties and what to feed your children. It’s a false dichotomy, but every time a writer makes it or assumes it, it helps to sell more of the crap. It also undercuts efforts to address our growing epidemic of unhealthy lifestyles.
I can see why someone might grab a package of Twinkies from the food vending machine for a late afternoon snack, even though I wouldn’t do it. And I can understand why parents might find it easy to slip a package of Ding Dongs into their kids’ lunch bag, although I never did. And certainly there are a number of people around who can’t distinguish between a Twinkie and a piece of fruit, some home-made cookies or even cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on a piece of buttered whole wheat toast.
But these instances do not make a case for elevating Twinkies, Ho Ho’s and the other edible dreck from Hostess into the pantheon of American culture. The very fact that these brands are threatened by poor sales suggests that they brands do not hold any special place in our collective hearts, at least not until the mass media starts to brainwash us with phrases about “pop-culture icons” and “savory hints of childhood innocence and innocence.”

Monday, November 19, 2012

Of Petraeus the betrayer and DesJarlais the anti-choice abortion counselor.


By Marc Jampole

The news media is still wringing its hands in torment over the loss of their military darling, General David Petraeus, to the vagaries of carnal affection.  While some have wondered why an affair should force a resignation since it’s a private matter, most editors, writers and pundits have bereaved the inevitability of resignation. 

The thought process that leads to automatic resignation starts with the idea that a CIA Director could be blackmailed into acting in the worst interest of the country to avoid being found out.  Few seem to remember that Petraeus is an old hand at doing what’s not right for the country. He was, after all, architect of the “surge strategy” in the Iraq War that postponed the inevitable withdrawal of U.S. troops from the morass of anarchy created by the U.S. invasion. The surge did give the U.S. a flimsy justification for claiming success, so in a sense, Petraeus constructed one of the most costly fig leaves in recorded history, the cost unfortunately computed in both human lives and wasted money.

Petraeus probably “cooked the books” in reporting progress during the Iraq War surge, as reported by MoveOn, most notoriously in a 2007 full-page ad in the New York Times. The same mainstream media that are now surgically investigating the Petraeus affair raised a collective voice back then to defend Petraeus and condemn MoveOn for its clever headline, Petraeus betray us.”  Funny, isn’t it:  The mainstream media pretty much accepted the Bush II Administrations lies about weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi support of Al Qaida, torture as a mere aberration in the lower ranks and the success of the surge. Yet they are digging deep to uncover every tawdry nugget of the Petraeus scandal.

In other words, the mass media that botched the investigation of an important public issue show a great deal of competence and professionalism going after all the details of an extramarital affair. 

My own view is that Petraeus should never have been given the job of CIA Director. Once confirmed, however, engaging in extramarital sexual congress should not have warranted dismissal. Now if Petraeus was in some way going to benefit from any deals that ”family friend” Jill Kelley was trying to broker for exorbitant sums, then he should not have been given the face-saving option to resign, but instead been summarily dismissed.  (Petraeus’ paramour instigated the investigation that “caught” Petraeus when she suspected that the general was servicing Kelley and so sent her, imagined or real, rival some threatening emails, which the well-connected Kelly turned over to an FBI friend).

Petraeus’ private affairs should never have become front page news. Not so for Tennessee Republican Congressman Scott DesJarlais, formerly a physician. Unsealing his divorce records of a decade ago has revealed that DesJarlais’ former wife had two abortions on his advice and that he urged a patient whom he had impregnated to get an abortion.

Certainly DesJarlais behaved unethically to sleep with a patient, although they were both consenting adults. But as far as the abortions go, who cares? Abortion was legal then and is legal now. 

Except that DesJarlais says he’s pro-life.  It’s the hypocrisy of wanting to prevent other people from doing what you yourself have recommended multiple times that makes DesJarlais’ private matters fair game for the media.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Growing Democrats in Texas


(From Dispatches)

Republican leaders are trying to walk back the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the past campaign and explore the possibility of reviving something like the DREAM Act, but they might find it hard to stop the teabaggers from immigrant bashing. A generation of Latino citizens are coming of age and Republicans can’t afford to have them voting 70% Democratic — particularly in Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994 — but a growing Hispanic electorate could change that. (Obama got 41% in Texas — and Mexican Americans weren’t fooled into thinking new Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, a Cuban American, has much to do with their interests. Democrat Paul Sadler got 40% and carried many of the same South Texas counties as Obama.)

Democrats would be glad to let the racist attitudes of Republican leaders mold a new generation of Latino Democrats. After all, Democrats harvested votes from Irish Americans for 150 years based on the memories of Republican hostility to Irish immigrants dating back before the Civil War.
News media exit polls were not conducted in Texas, but Latino Decisions polled in Texas and found that 70% of Texas Latinos supported Obama, 71% supported the Democratic congressional candidate and 65% of Texas Latinos voted for Democrat Sadler over Republican Cruz.

In Texas, 48% of US citizens under age 18 are Latino, say researchers at the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of South California. Only two other states have higher percentages of Latinos aging into the voting electorate: California with 51% and New Mexico with 58%. Texas public schools tipped majority Latino last year, according to the Texas Education Agency. When those students become voters, Republicans could find the door to the White House closed to them.

“In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat,” Senator-elect Cruz recently told Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. “If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House. New York and California are for the foreseeable future unalterably Democrat. If Texas turns bright blue, the Electoral College math is simple. We won’t be talking about Ohio, we won’t be talking about Florida or Virginia, because it won’t matter. If Texas is bright blue, you can’t get to two-seventy electoral votes. The Republican Party would cease to exist. We would become like the Whig Party. Our kids and grandkids would study how this used to be a national political party. ‘They had Conventions, they nominated Presidential candidates. They don’t exist anymore.’”

Editorial: Battle is Just Starting


President Obama and the Democrats, with the invaluable help of organized labor, showed it is still possible to beat the billionaires, even in the era of Citizens United.

Secretive billionaires, such as the Koch Brothers and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, took advantage of the plutocrat-empowering Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs run by Karl Rove and other Republican operatives in an attempt to blow away the Democrats with an unprecedented “air war” in the eight or nine battleground states. But more than 400,000 volunteers from the labor movement knocked on doors, called from phone banks and handed out leaflets explaining the candidates’ stands on the issues. As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, “The unprecedented tidal wave of secret corporate cash threatened to dilute and corrupt our democracy, but this election proved again that there is no match for the strength of people power.”

Not only did the unions help re-elect Obama; the Dems also won 25 of the 33 Senate seats that were up, increasing the Democratic majority by two, to 55-45, and they drove a real upgrade in the Senate, which will get a freshman class of eight new Dems, including six solid progressives, starting with populist Elizabeth Warren, who unseated one of Wall Street’s best friends in the Senate, interim Sen. Scott Brown (R), who got more money from Wall Street than any other Senate candidate. Warren reclaimed Ted Kennedy’s old seat for progressives in Massachusetts.

In Wisconsin, progressive Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) beat former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) to succeed Sen. Herb Kohl (D).

In Connecticut, progressive Rep. Chris Murphy (D) overcome professional wrestling impresario Linda McMahon’s millions spent in the race to replace turncoat Sen. Joe Lieberman (I).

In New Mexico, Rep. Martin Heinrich (D) had a center-left populist record as a congressman when he ran for the seat liberal Sen. Jeff Bingaman gave up, defeating Rep. Heather Wilson (R).

In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp (D), a populist former state attorney general, beat the pundits who had consigned retiring Sen. Kent Conrad’s seat to teabag Republican Rep. Rick Berg.

In Hawaii, progressive Rep. Mazie Hirono (D) defeated former Gov. Linda Lingle (R) for the seat vacated by retiring progressive Sen. Daniel Akaka (D).

In Virginia, former Gov. Tim Paine (D) will be more progressive than Sen. Jim Webb (D), and much better than former Sen. George “Macaca” Allen Jr. (R), whom Kaine beat.

In Indiana, Rep. Joe Donnelly is a conservative Blue Dog Democrat but a country mile better than teabagger Richard Mourdock (R). And in Maine, former Gov. Angus King, a centrist independent who won the seat that retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) gave up, is expected to caucus with the Dems.

Democrats also re-elected progressive populist Sen. Sherrod Brown over $30 million pumped in by right-wing super PACs that had targeted him in Ohio.

Only the ruthless gerrymandering of congressional districts by Republican-dominated legislatures in the “red states” prevented the Democrats from retaking the House, as Democratic candidates overall actually got more votes than Republicans but Republicans held a 234-197 majority with four seats still undecided a week after the election.

House Speaker John Boehner (R) still claimed his own mandate to defend tax cuts for the rich, saying “raising taxes is unacceptable — and it couldn’t even pass the House.” But he’s playing his poker hand with a pair of treys, since a tax bill doesn’t need to pass the House. The Bush tax cuts expire in January, reinstating tax rates to the level they were when Bill Clinton balanced the budget in the 1990s, when the economy was booming. So Democrats can give Boehner and the Republican House the option of continuing the tax cuts only for lower and middle-income households — which would raise $1 trillion over a decade from those earning more than $250,000 — or Republicans can take the blame for those higher tax rates for everyone.

In his dealings with House Republicans on resolving the “fiscal cliff,” Obama should, as the physicians say, “First, do no harm.”

Workers need to stay mobilized to pressure Congress to pass a jobs bill to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. Unions also need to take a page from the Tea Party and make it clear to members of Congress that any Democrat who supports reductions in Social Security or Medicare benefits will get a primary challenger.

A poll conducted for Democracy Corps and the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) shows that voters strongly reject proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare. When asked, 70% of respondents said that protecting education, Medicare and Social Security was more important than broad cuts to reduce the deficit. More than half — 58% — said that they felt strongly about opposing such cuts. Only 17% felt strongly that across-the-board cuts were important enough to cut the popular programs.

If Obama were to agree to any such cuts, Senate Democrats should “just say no.” And it looks like the Senate leadership is coming around to that position, as Majority Leader Harry Reid has agreed with Social Security defenders that the program is self funding and has no role in increasing the national debt. If anything, Social Security is financing the debt.

The Supreme Court has announced that it will review the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states with a history of interfering with minority voting rights — mainly in the South — to preclear changes in voting procedures and redistricting plans with the US Justice Department. After the unconscionable attempts by Republican officials in Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere to make it more difficult for working-class and elderly people to vote, and the radical gerrymandering in those states, President Obama should propose expansion of the Voting Rights Act to cover every state. It should set up a uniform system of non-partisan redistricting, similar to the plan used in Iowa, which has resulted in competitive races instead of safe seats. It should require early voting periods, including the weekend before federal elections. It should set standards for voting machine access, so that partisan election officials can’t put plenty of machines in one area of town and skimp in other areas, resulting in waits of several hours or more in unfortunate precincts. Some states have lost the nation’s confidence that they can conduct fair and competent elections and the feds need to step in to ensure voting rights for all.

Voters struck a blow for fact-cased campaigns when they rejected the most prolific liar in American political history — whose pollster bragged that the campaign would not be called to account by fact checkers — would be laid low by his most outrageous lie — that Chrysler was planning to move Jeep production to China.

Romney first floated that lie on Oct. 26, at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, where GM has a powertrain plant. “I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China,” he said. “I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.”

Chrysler executives explained that the company intends to build Jeeps in China to be sold in China, but it isn’t moving American jobs abroad (unlike Sensata, a manufacturing firm in Illinois, owned by Bain Capital, which Romney founded and still has investments in, and which was preparing to move hundreds of manufacturing jobs to China. And unlike Delphi Automotive, the parts supplier to GM and Chrysler which was taken over by vulture capitalist friends of Romney, with investments by Romney’s wife, and which resulted in moving 25,000 formerly union jobs to China).

Romney doubled down on the lie about Chrysler moving jobs to China, even as industry executives called him on it. But the Ohio media also called Romney on his deceptions. The Toledo Blade chastised Romney for “conducting an exercise in deception about auto industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign.” Ohio voters were not fooled and Obama was re-elected.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2012

Populist.com
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us
Copyright © 2012 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the December 1, 2012 issue












Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Money Machines


Click on images to enlarge. See larger unified image. Graphics by Kevin Kreneck.
Click on images to enlarge. Graphics by Kevin Kreneck.

Click on images to enlarge. Graphics by Kevin Kreneck.

Click on images to enlarge. See larger unified image. Graphics by Kevin Kreneck.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Mitt Tops 900 Lies

In the 41st installment of "Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity," Steve Benen reported that Mitt Romney uttered 33 falsehoods in the week ending Friday Nov. 2. 

 Benen started documenting Romney's false claims the first week of January. "Little did I know at the time that Romney would become an ambitious prevaricator, whose rhetoric would come to define post-truth politics. Nearly 11 months after Greg Sargent's harmless suggestion, I've published 40 installments in this series, which, before today, featured 884 falsehoods. (If you include today's edition, the new total is 917 falsehoods for the year.)"

 According to our count, Benen has documented 893 lies through the first 40 installments and 926 through Nov. 2. 

 The biggest lie this past week was in his ad that suggested that Jeep production is moving "to China." Romney first floated the lie on Oct. 26,  at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," he said. "I will fight for every good job in America, I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair, America will win."

 But Benen noted that, as Chrysler itself explained, the company intends to build Jeeps in China to be sold in China, but isn't moving American jobs abroad.  But Romney then doubled and tripled down on, even as industry executives called him out for lying. Unfortunately for the Republican, the story isn't going away.

 The New York Times editorialized today, "It's bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it." What's more, the Toledo Blade chastised Romney for "conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign."

 But that was only the biggest whopper Romney told. Benen listed 32 more, in what he said 

 As I said earlier, there is a discrepancy in the total number of lies, though we both agree there are more than 900 and Romney is unlikely to reach 1,000 lies before Tuesday. But Benen said the 41st probably will be the final installment of his weekly series chronicling Mitt's mendacity.

 Count them yourselves from previous editions of Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL

 And note new lies between Friday and Election Day in the comments.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)