Wyoming Senator John Barrasso perfects the art of lying while telling the truth

Although he has heavy competition from Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, Donald Trump has recently established himself the king of the Big Lie.

 

Saying that he saw thousands of people in New Jersey cheering the toppling of the twin towers on 9/11 serves as the American epitome of the “Big Lie.” Like Hitler’s big lies about the Jews, Trump’s false statement serves to support a virulent and odious racist position and also plays into the beliefs of Nativists and what some pundits are calling the “undereducated voters.”  After historians and news bureaus proved beyond the doubt that there was no such occurrence of a group of thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, Trump dug his heels in and said many people had tweeted they saw the same thing on TV—surely what Trump and his peeps saw were crowds of Arabs in a Middle Eastern country cheering. But it never happened in the United States, and Trump knows it!

 

The crescendo of disapproval of Trump’s incendiary 9/11 lie coincided with a report in the New York Times that Trump placed an historical marker on a golf course he bought noting that a bloody Civil War battle had taken place on the spot. Of course nothing happened there. After historians corrected the Donald, he dug his heels in again with some medieval thinking: “So if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot—a lot of them.” Note he’s arguing from general principles, which is called deductive reasoning. Popular among scholastics in the European Middle Ages, deductive reasoning can be a powerful tool, except when its conclusions contradict the facts on the ground, which are determined through inductive reasoning. 

 

Trump’s logic is full of holes. Moreover, the fact that he believes deductive logic over empirical fact-gathering should be truly disturbing to everyone. Unfortunately, these lies comfort those predisposed to mistrust immigrants and hate religions not their own.

 

But Trump’s Big Lies and those of the other Republican candidates are blunt instruments compared to the surgical precision that Wyoming Republic Senator John Barrasso uses in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “Congress Can Cool off Obama’s Climate Plans.”  Barrasso manages to build lies based on accurate statistics.

 

The headline tells us all we need to know about Barrasso’s stand on human-induced global warming, which is now euphemistically called “climate change” in polite circles. He tries to stonewall all actions to address climate change for the short-term business interests of the coal companies and other energy corporations which he serves.

 

His call to arms to Congress to block the President’s likely actions at the upcoming Paris climate change conference begins with his assertion that there is already too much regulation of emissions in the United States. His proof is the fact that we are responsible for a mere 13% of world-wide greenhouse gas emissions, down from 24% since 2000. China by contrast pumps out 24% of the world’s carbon-based pollution.  His implication, of course, is that China should cut back, but that United States has already done its part.

 

What Barrasso neglects to say is that per capita Americans burn more fossil fuels than any other nation. We Americans pumps so much pollution into the atmosphere that we are responsible for 13% of all greenhouse gases with only 5% of the world’s population. China has 4.35 times the population of the United States, which means that on average each American is responsible for 2.37 times more greenhouses gasses than each Chinese.  Certainly China, India (another country given an apples-to-orange comparison by Barrasso) need to install additional pollution controls and switch as much as possible to non-fossil fuels, but that does not absolve the United States of its responsibility to continue reducing green-house gas emissions.

 

Later in the article Barrasso notes that the United States is negotiating away our economy, because recent deals give developing nations more slack than the United States in terms of when emissions regulations are phased in. He notes that developing countries have been growing recently by 7%-9%, whereas the United States has seen 2% growth. He blusters that by imposing environmental regulations on us 15 years before they go into effect elsewhere we are subsidizing these other economies. The facts about growth rates are true, but the premise is as leaky as a straw roof in a hurricane. First of all, 2% growth is more than twice as high as the historic growth rate of the economy through centuries. More significantly, our growth does not depend on the energy we use, nor on the energy that we sell to other countries.  Recent studies have delinked the growth of greenhouse emissions with economic growth because the problems caused by global warming will cost the United States and the world, so much money to solve and natural disasters will lead to so much lost productivity.

 

Barrasso performs a rhetorical feat of distraction similar to a magician’s. While we are watching the facts in one hand, Barrasso slips us a mickey of false premises and illogical reasoning, proving once again that Samuel Butler was right when he said that while figures never lie, liars figure.

 

Of course, for many people, the annoying part of Barrasso’s article is not that he lies, but that he doesn’t tell entertaining lies such as the ones uttered by Trump, Carson and Cruz.

Americans around tables with friends/families in warm homes should give thanks they aren’t refugees

By Marc Jampole

As hundreds of millions of Americans gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we should give thanks that we aren’t refugees.

Whether praying to a deity or expressing our humanity, we should give thanks that our homes have not been destroyed, that we have not seen friends and family killed or injured by bombs and bullets.

We should give thanks that we have never been raped, nor lived with the knowledge that our daughters and women have been.

We should give thanks that we have not had to huddle in camps, low on food or not knowing where to find the next meal, or crowded onto trains, our children crying, our elderly groaning in pain, often smelling the stench of human excrement.

We should be thankful we don’t live in a no-win situation, caught between two, three, and in the case of Syria, four armies, all shooting, bombing, rounding up, vandalizing and marauding.

We should give thanks that our country has been bombed only once and that was 74 years ago. We should be thankful that our country hasn’t been invaded since a slave-owning break-away confederacy attacked the territory of those loyal to the Constitution more than 150 years ago.

We should be thankful that we live in a land of relative abundance and low crime. 

We should be thankful that we were born or have immigrated to this country and remember that we didn’t make the United States, the United States made us—its freedom of expression, religion and action, its relative abundance, its consistent rule of law and its openness to immigrants. We have our problems, specifically our mistreatment of minorities; a wide gap between the wealthy and everyone else; a lack of cradle-to-grave healthcare and education for all; and our dependence on fossil fuels. But we at least have the possibility of fixing those problems without resorting to violence.

In particular, Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina should be thankful for being born rich. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz should be thankful for being born with high intelligence, a gift of god or chance that no one works to get. Jeb Bush should be thankful he was born the scion of a political dynasty.

All these individuals and everyone else about to take a knife and fork to a large succulent piece of white turkey meat slathered with gravy could have just as easily been born in Aleppo or Palmyra.

And being thankful that we are not refugees, we should open our hearts—and our shores—to those unfortunates who are. Otherwise, we lose our humanity and our country loses the reason it exists.

The worst way to react to the Paris bloodbath is to escalate the war against ISIS

By Marc Jampole

First we react with horror and sympathy. Then anger takes over, perhaps too quickly, and we focus on how we are going to revenge the deaths of innocents and destroy the barbaric enemy who planned and initiated the terrorism. Of course we hunt down the perpetrators who did not die, but we also start inflicting damage on the greater government to which they hold allegiance by all means at our disposal.

But what if we don’t have bombers that can fly thousands of miles? We likely resort to sneak attacks by suicide soldiers and other acts of guerilla warfare. We bring the war home to the other side.

That essentially would be the argument justifying the ISIS attacks on Paris that killed about 130 people, from the ISIS point of view. It’s an argument that all should reject, except those who are in favor of committing acts of violence for political and economic reasons. Which pretty much means every Western government and many of their citizens.

Those whose knowledge of ISIS begins with its blitzkrieg land grab and YouTube beheadings should consider this scenario: A foreign country topples your stable government, bringing anarchy to the land. Hundreds of thousands of your people have been slaughtered, plus many more injured or displaced. You are a patriot who is also devoutly religious, so religious that you are willing to follow the extreme form of it that demands that you inflict your views on others, such as evangelicals frequently do in the United States. These religious views help you engage in savagery when you fight both the external and internal enemies, because these are infidels, or worse yet, nonbelievers dedicated to controlling you and your country and imposing their customs. This last part kind of sounds like the motivation for a lot of Israel’s brutal actions through the years, but the scenario as a whole is what happened in Iraq.

The other scenario to consider is a country whose rebels are being supplied by other countries, thereby weakening the legitimate government so much that different rebel groups control different parts of the country. Both the weak legitimate government and other rebel forces are attacking your rebel group, using weapons supplied by governments in other continents.

These scenarios are not meant to justify ISIS or its actions, but to react to the broadly held notion that it is somehow more barbaric and more evil than the Western governments that have been terrorizing the Middle East for decades and filling the barracks of all sides with sophisticated weaponry. All sides have behaved immorally.

In considering what to do now, there are two basic issues to consider, and we need to keep them separate: One, stop terrorism that destroys innocent lives. Two, bring order to the bloody anarchy that is Iraq and Syria. We must keep in mind that while these objectives are related, the means to obtain them are different.

Let’s first take a look at ending terrorism. The West, and especially the United States, has done a great job in reducing terrorist episodes. Let’s compare the number of people who collectively died in the Russian airplane crash, the Charlie Hebdo and Synagogue massacres and the coordinated attacks on Paris this past week. Counting the Paris attacks as one, we have four separate acts of terrorism and we haven’t reached 500 dead yet. Fourteen years ago, a single act of terror (or four coordinated acts) on 9/11 killed 2,977 (excluding the 19 hijackers). Remember, Al-Qaida was a shadowy group with few adherents, whereas ISIS controls territories and has thousands of soldiers. A more powerful group has inflicted less damage in more attacks. Going further back, there were far more terrorist attacks in the United States in the 1970s than since the turn of the century, although collectively none cost as many lives as 9/11.

Why are acts of terror down? Because all the Western countries, and especially the United States, do a much better job of identifying potential terrorists, weeding out terrorist plots, securing our borders and protecting our airports. In fact, much of the enhanced security instituted after 9/11 has gone over or close to the line of what is appropriate in a free and civil society. What I’m suggesting is that we’re doing enough to prevent terrorism right now, both here and in Europe.

The threat of terrorism will exist as long as a country has enemies which it engages in a shooting war, internal dissidents who feel a special allegiance to the enemy or mentally ill people—ideologically motivated or not—with ready access to guns. In other words, we won’t end terrorism perpetrated by Muslim extremists until the Middle East is stabilized.

And that won’t happen as long as anyone in the Western world is bombing, giving or selling weapons, providing advisors or putting troops on the ground. The lesson of the Paris bloodbath should not be to bomb ISIS and trample on civil liberties. The answer should be to continue to be vigilant domestically, but get the hell out of the business of selling weapons to foreign governments or directly fighting ISIS or Assad or any other side in Syria and Iraq. It’s not a matter of cutting-and-running. It’s a matter of stopping the decades of foolishly messing around in the business of other countries.

Those who want to use the Paris bloodbath as an excuse to deny refugees entrance into France, the United States, Germany or other countries or to persecute Muslim immigrants are blaming millions of innocent hard-working people for the sins of a very few.

The territory that defines Iraq and Syria will eventually grow tired of war, sooner if the main sources of weaponry and financial support dries up. As I have written before, at that point we should be ready to do business with any government dedicated to peace and ready to renounce terrorism moving forward. If that includes ISIS, so be it. We made terms with terrorists such as Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. How is a beheading or taking hostages at a concert venue any different from bombing a business hotel? 

I want to close with a comparison between the calls to action raised by most politicians and media outlets in the wake of the Paris bombing and the proposals that routinely surface after a domestic act of terrorism by a lone gunman born and raised in United States, at a school, church or Pilates class, AKA, a mass murder. Since Paris we have had calls to bomb ISIS, put more boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, end asylum for Syrian refugees (except Christians) and have the National Security Agency begin crossing the line into illegality again. Yet after the mass murders, the same people wanting to strike out at ISIS, often illegally, routinely reject all the known anecdotes for reducing gun violence in America, including waiting periods, stricter standards for ownership, more effective gun registries, laws preventing concealed or unconcealed carrying of firearms and limits to the types of weapons and ammunition that may be purchased.  In the United States, at least, we have far more to fear from the collective body of gun owners than the collective body on ISIS jihadists. The equation is a little different in Europe, but then again, the total number of people killed by guns is far, far lower on a per capita basis there than in the United States.

The paradox of wanting to strike out at ISIS but not restrict gun rights is easily explained by the underlying principle that motivates most action by the American governments on all levels—making more money for the ruling elite. By having loose gun laws, we sell more guns. We also sell more guns by reacting to terrorism with an irrational war or military support of one or more factions—be it in the former Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, or the current ISIS-controlled land. Often the same companies are involved in both private and military armament manufacturing and sales.

Thus, we are completely consistent. We always do what’s best for the domestic and international weapons industry. 

Editorial: Say No to Trade Deal

The Obama administration finally released the text of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, and President Obama’s assurances that the deal protects American workers and consumers and opens new markets in the Pacific Rim has provided little comfort to organized labor, environmentalists, public health advocates and consumer activists.

President Obama views the trade deal among 12 Pacific nations, including the United States, as an important part of his trade legacy. But it was hammered out by industry lobbyists and government bureaucrats behind closed doors over seven years and critics see the TPP as a replay of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, which relaxed trade barriers and empowered multinational corporations without putting in place enforceable regulations to protect labor, the environment and local government sovereignty. Instead those deals have resulted in the loss of manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries in the Third World. And progressives are understandably suspicious because the “free trade” deal is practically the only policy initiative of Obama’s that Republicans support, as the Republican Congress in May greased the skids for an up-or-down vote under special rules that do not allow filibusters or amendments.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. said the TPP is a giveaway to big agribusiness and food companies that want to use trade deals to attack sensible food safety rules, weaken the inspection of imported food and block efforts to strengthen US food safety standards.

“The TPP gives the food industry a powerful new weapon to wield against the nationwide movement to label GMO foods,” said Hauter. “The language in the TPP is more powerful and expansive than other trade deals that have already been used to weaken or eliminate dolphin safe tuna and country of origin labels.”

The National Farmers Union said the deal will fail family farmers and ranchers. “After years of negotiating in secret for an enormous agreement guarded from the public under lock and key, the text of the TPP has at last been made public. Unfortunately, it appears to be as bad for America’s family farmers and ranchers as we had feared,” NFU President Roger Johnson said.

There are several questions about the constitutionality of the pact. Many critics say it should be considered a treaty among nations, which would require approval of two-thirds of the Senate.

Others question the TPP’s authority to bypass US courts and overrule state and local laws in trade disputes. For example, the pact allows foreign investors to bring claims for money damages when governments violate the TPP’s investor protection provisions. The claims are decided by a private arbitration tribunal that operates outside the challenged government’s court system. The tribunal could order the government to compensate corporations for lost “expected profits” and the tribunal’s decision could not be appealed to US courts.

The TPP also creates extreme monopoly rights for global pharmaceutical companies and gives them more power to drive up costs for Medicare and public health programs in all TPP countries, Celeste Drake, trade & globalization policy specialist at the AFL-CIO, wrote at aflcio.org/Blog (Nov. 10). “These rules are far worse for working families than comparable rules in the Peru, Colombia and Panama deals negotiated by then-President George W. Bush. The TPP will raise drug prices for families across the region. That’s regressive—not progressive,” Drake wrote.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not a good deal for Main Street America, it’s not good for American workers, or farmers, or ranchers, and it won’t stop the erosion of our middle class. It is a good deal for bankers, financial services and multinational corporations who are constantly scanning the horizons to find cheaper places to manufacture their goods that they can import back to the US to sell at Walmart.

President Obama should have walked away from this deal. None of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates for president support it. We don’t anticipate that many of the 13 Senate Dems who sided with 48 Republicans to “fast-track” consideration of the trade deal in May will advertise their support of the deal when they run for re-election. Democrats as well as Republicans who claim to stand up for working people, the Constitution and American sovereignty should vote it down.

GOP Tax Fraud

Republican presidential candidates who are proposing tax plans that generate revenue much less than 19% of the gross domestic product are perpetrating fraud upon the electorate.

Ben Carson has called for a flat tax of 10 to 15%. Ted Cruz proposes a 10% flat tax for income above $36,000 and a 16% tax for corporations. Ron Paul proposes a 14.5% tax on everything above $50,000. Carly Fiorina proposes a simplified tax plan that would allow three-page tax return but otherwise provides few details. Donald Trump proposes to reduce taxes for individuals, with a 25% top rate, and 15% for corporations. He would make up the lost revenue by taxing multinational corporations. Rick Santorum proposes a 20% flat tax. Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich offer more conventional tax cuts, but all would let the wealthy keep more of their money and increase the national debt.

When Bill Clinton became president in 1993, at the tail end of a recession, US Treasury receipts were 17% of the GDP and the deficit was 4.7% of GDP. After the Democratic Congress increased taxes, with no Republican support and dire predictions that the tax increase would push the economy into a depression, the economy boomed instead. The budget was balanced in fiscal years 1998 through 2000, when federal revenue was 19.2% to 20% of the GDP, and again in 2001, although federal revenue dropped to 18.8%. The US national debt as a percentage of GDP declined from about 64% when Clinton took office to about 54% in 2001 when Clinton handed George W. Bush a budget that was generating a surplus and was on track to pay off the national debt in 10 years.

Instead, Bush pursued Republican voodoo economic policies that gave tax cuts to the rich and deregulated Wall Street. Federal revenue dropped to 15.6% of GDP in 2004 and recovered to 17.9% in 2007 before the economic bubble burst and revenues dropped to 14.6% of GDP in 2009, when Barack Obama took over the economy in free-fall and two wars being fought off the books. By that time, the national debt was more than 80% of GDP.

The debt load topped out at 103.6% of GDP in the first quarter of 2014. That’s near the record debt level of 106% of GDP in 1946. The US grew its way out of debt in the 1950s by investing in the education and occupational training of returning war veterans while industrial unions helped establish the middle class that was the envy of the rest of the world.

Since then, unions have been crippled but taxes on middle-income Americans are near historic lows. A family of four in the middle of the income spectrum, earning $75,845 in 2014, paid 5.34% of their income in federal income taxes (not including Social Security/Medicare payroll taxes), the Tax Policy Center reported. Average income tax rates for median incomes have ranged from 5.64% in 1955 up to 11.79% in 1981, then dropped to 3.54% in 2008, helped by the Earned Income Tax Credit, child tax credit expansion and rebate credit in the Economic Stimulus of 2008, before creeping back up to 5.34%.

So when Republicans tell you that a flat tax of 10 to 15% would cut your taxes, they are lying. Or they are contemplating either slashing military spending, which they won’t do, or slashing Social Security, Medicare and other domestic spending, which they’d like to do but can only do under false pretenses.

A flat tax that does away with exemptions and keeps approximately the same spending levels, including Social Security and Medicare, would have to take about 20% of your income. That flat tax would only be a good deal for the highest income levels. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2015

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Selections from the December 1, 2015 issue

COVER/Lou Dubose
The GOP is a Neo-Confederate party now

EDITORIAL
Say no to the TPP; GOP tax fraud

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Bobby Kennedy and the politics of timeliness

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen 
Stem the epidemic of bad behavior

DISPATCHES
Republicans strengthen hand in Southern races;
Maine, Seattle voters reject ‘Citizens United’;
Questions about Ky. governor results;
Trump recalls ‘Operation Wetback’;
Poll clarifies challenge for Dems;
Green energy can reduce costs, create 2M jobs;
Duke Energy seeks $120,000 fine against solar generator;
Chomsky: World facesc 'deep trouble' with GOP president;
Comcast imposes usage caps;
Voices of resistance ...

JOEL JOSEPH
Resurrect the export import bank

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet 
On elections, think local

MARK ANDERSON
House berates Obama Fed appointment
ISAIAH POOLE & DAVE JOHNSON
Trans-Pac Partnership worse than we thought

SAM URETSKY
Hard-working ‘wonk’ can do a lot of damage

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Nostalgia for a make-believe past

WAYNE O’LEARY
The flim flam candidate

JOHN BUELL
The blimp and other near misses

JOHN YOUNG
Remarkable turn for incarceration nation

BOOKS/Seth Sandronsky
Prioritizing our developments

ART CULLEN
Cuba: A new, independent identity

DONALD KAUL
Please don’t shoot the moderators


and more ...

The immigration argument that Rubio ducked shows what’s wrong with presidential debate structure

By Marc Jampole

Both the Associated Press and The New York Times did a solid job of reporting the factual mistakes made by the various Republican candidates for president in the fourth debate. Between the two media outlets, they picked up on the fact that:

·         Ben Carson was wrong when he said that raising the minimum wage always increases the number of jobless.

·         Donald Trump was wrong when he claimed China designed the Trans-Pacific Partnership; in fact China had nothing to do with the agreements.

·         Marco Rubio was wrong when he said welders make more money than philosophy majors; philosophy majors make more than three times what welders do.

·         Ted Cruz was lying when he said he was proposing a simple 10% flat tax, when his plan also calls for a 16% added value tax; added value taxes, FYI, are typically passed along to end users—meaning the general public.

But as usual, the media outlets went after small fry errors, the policy equivalent of nitpicking gotcha’s. On the larger issue of conceptual lies, the media was silent. To a person, the eight candidates at the “big kids” debate all advocate that lowering taxes will lead to economic growth. Analyzing each of their tax proposals in detail reveals that all want to give the lion’s share of reduced taxes to the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. None of the media points out that the bulk of the research by economists demonstrates that lowering taxes on the wealthy does not lead to increased jobs, but raising taxes on them does.

Likewise with government regulation, immigration and the minimum wage: The media is happy to correct an error—or lie—of number or fact, but not of concept.

Speaking of the minimum wage, the way the debate moderators handled that issue at the fourth debate exemplifies what’s wrong with the basic debate structure. At the very beginning of the debate, a moderator asked Trump and Carson whether they thought the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour. We did not get an opportunity to hear what any of the other candidates thought about the minimum wage, because the moderators changed the question for Marco Rubio, who decided to answer the minimum wage question despite the change of subject. All three were against raising the minimum wage, but we never found out what the other five thought.

The moderators insisted on flitting from question to question, afraid that viewers would get too bored with eight people pontificating/obfuscating/expatiating the same basic thoughts on the same issue, essentially saying the same thing, because it seems as if on every issue, at least six of the eight hold isomorphic views. The show biz aspects of the debate compel the moderators to keep the subject fresh.

The changing of topics before all had their say worked in Marco Rubio’s favor when the topic turned to immigration. First Trump gave his poisonous views on immigration and then both Kasich and Jeb pointed out the impossibility of deporting 11 million people. Jeb added a compassionate note about the American way. It was probably his finest moment in the campaign so far, and was rightfully the highlight of much of the mainstream news media’s coverage.

What happened next is what I would call a deus ex machina for Rubio. A deus ex machina is a god that comes out of a machine at the end of Greek or Roman play who resolves all the plot twists; in modern parlance it refers to any sudden ending, such as the King pardoning Mack the Knife (Brecht) or arresting Tartuffe (Moliere). For Rubio, the deus ex machina was the moderator’s need to change the subject. The next question was to the young lad Marco, but about automation, not immigration. And unlike the first time the moderator changed the subject on Rubio and Rubio said, “Let me answer that, too,” this time Rubio took a pass and gave his standard campaign messages about addressing automation. Rubio avoided the need to confront his disgraceful waffling on the subject, coming out against the immigration bill he helped to develop because he was afraid to lose primary votes.

Much of the news media is calling Rubio the big winner from last night, but I think that’s wishful thinking for those looking for an alternative to Cruz, which means most of the mainstream and rightwing news media. I don’t think any candidate did anything to change anyone’s minds, except Carly Fiorina, who I expect will lose support.

Carly produced the most laughable moment of the debates, and she did it again and again. It’s when she kept calling for “zero-based budgeting” as the answer to our problems. Zero-based budgeting means that when putting together an annual budget, a manager does not start with last year’s number, but determines the department’s needs for the coming year; you start from zero and decide what you really need. It’s a technique of managing corporations that I learned in my first job after graduate school, in 1974! It’s been around for decades. Wikipedia says the federal government has been using it since Jimmy Carter mandated it in 1977. It’s a fundamental tool of all organizations.

Essentially, what she is saying is the equivalent of a chess teacher saying he can teach a kid to be a world champion by learning the “fried liver” offense, which can win you a game or two on the beginner’s level but will lose to any player with even a little experience. I have to believe that many business people noticed that Fiorina is advocating the second day’s lesson in business management 101 for non-majors as the key to most of our problems. Even those without MBAs will likely have been bored by this one-trick pony droning on and on in message points that sometimes didn’t really match the question.

Evangelicals should protest that Starbucks commercializes Christmas by offering special cups to attract sales

By Marc Jampole

Another skirmish on the culture wars broke out this week as right-wing Christians have flooded the social and mainstream media complaining that the specialty coffee cup into which the part-time, low-paid servers working for multinational Starbucks pour its overpriced brew in November and December does not sufficiently represent Christmas. This year’s cup is plain red with the Starbucks’s logo. In past years, Starbucks has embellished its holiday cup with icons of contemporary secular Christmas celebration such as ornaments, carolers and snowflakes.

Evangelicals say the Starbucks’s action is part of a continuing “War on Christmas.” For about 10 years now, religious right-wingers and right-wing media such as Fox News have complained whenever big retailers have used “holiday” in their ads and marketing instead of saying “Christmas.” The motivation of the retailers seems clear: to entice those who don’t celebrate Christmas to participate in the potlatch of conspicuous consumption which defines late December in the United States and most other countries whose population is Christian or has a Christian background. Jews fell into line decades ago, turning a minor holiday—Hanukkah—into an occasion for gift-giving, which of course means gift-buying. But what about Kwanzaa and Chinese New Year? And what do retailers do about Muslims, Buddhists, Hindi, Jains and the myriad of other religions practiced by Americans? An ecumenical “holiday” season certainly has a better chance of attracting sales from all these non-Christian groups than a “Christmas” season. 

But that’s not how the evangelicals see it. To them, everything that does not directly manifest Christianity in the marketplace in November and December is a direct attack on Christianity. If they cared so much about Christianity, however, their concern would not be that the marketplace is too secular, but rather that the marketplace has taken over Christmas and slowly drained it of any religious meaning.

The big complaint should be that Starbucks trots out its special holiday cups as early as the first week of November, the same time that most retailers install their holiday decorations, which mostly draw from Christmas traditions. We have two solid months in which we are bombarded almost 24/7 with attempts to sell us goods and services to celebrate the holidays. Whether “holiday” means Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Chinese New Year or whatever, the marketplace and the mass media exhort us to celebrate by buying stuff. Not by following Christian principles. Not by contemplating what some will call holy mysteries and others will call myths. Not by helping others. No, most of the holiday information overload focuses on conspicuous consumption. As is the American way, we relate to others and the real world on Christmas solely as purchasers.

If they really cared about Christianity, right-wingers would protest the commercialization of Christmas. They would advocate that cashiers and store greeters say “Happy Holidays” or give the normal rest-of-the-year greeting, because reducing their religious holiday to conspicuous consumption dishonors the day’s holiness. They would picket stores with Christmas displays, since those displays are merely exhortations to buy, and not reflections of devotion to their god.

Muddying the Starbucks cup controversy is the ignorance of many of the evangelicals, who don’t realize that certain Christmas practices have nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with social customs, many of which predate Christianity, such as bringing greenery inside the home in winter. For example, one prominent evangelical dunce named Joshua Feuerstein wrote on Facebook, “Do you realize that Starbucks wanted to take Christ and Christmas off of their brand new cups?” Of course, he was wrong. There never was a symbol of Christ on the cups, just symbols of secular Christmas.

Those who believe in the War on Christmas do not understand how ubiquitous and potent the symbols of Christianity are in society during the last two months of the year. The Starbucks cup is exhibit A. While plain, the color combination is red and green, traditional Christmas colors. As far as I know, there are no white and blue cups, which would suggest Hanukkah. No cups add black to the color palette, which would symbolize Kwanzaa. None of the cups are red and gold, colors associated with the Chinese New Year.

No, it’s only red and green, the colors of Christmas. Starbucks may proclaim its dedication to diversity, but its special holiday cup references only one holiday. Even those commercials that talk about the “season” exclusively focus on Christmas in the iconography they present—trees, stockings, Christmas-style decorations.  I’ve yet to see a Menorah or dreidel in a Wal-Mart or Target TV commercial. One sometimes sees Hanukkah themes in store decorations—a little Jewish star in a sea of Santas, reindeer, candy canes, ornaments, trees, angels and carolers. That’s why many Jews and other non-Christians feel that the real war this time of year is against every other religion. I understand that retailers focus on Christmas because most Americans are either Christian or of a Christian background. But that knowledge does little to relieve the oppression and alienation that many non-Christians feel as the holiday is shoved down their throats for two solid months. 

After making a vague suggestion that people should boycott Starbucks because it only used color to symbolize Christmas and Christianity on this year’s special cup, commercial real estate failure and former reality show host Donald Trump—who, BTW, is running for the Republican nomination for president—said “If I become president, we're all going to be saying, ‘Merry Christmas’ again. That I can tell you.” Now that’s a declaration of real war, not against Christmas or Christians, but against basic American values. That a major party candidate should make such a statement should send a chill down all of our spines.

If the series of Republican presidential debates is a reality show, then Ben Carson’s version is alternate reality TV

By Marc Jampole

Every day we’re learning more about the fantasy world in which presidential candidate Ben Carson inhabits. Carson believes in a curious hodgepodge of fantasies, discredited myths, false ideas and inaccuracies, all of which he seems to have determined a priori, that is, before he considered any evidence outside his own longings or those of his constituencies.

These false beliefs—many self-serving because they justify Carson’s political stands—are cancerous, because they can spread quickly among people through the Internet and social media, infecting the innocent with ideas that are not only wrong but can sometimes harm them, like the idea that more guns in public will keep us safer.

The latest “Carsonoma” is the revelation that 17 years ago, Carson told a group of graduating college students that the Egyptians built the pyramids to store grain under the direction of the Biblical character of Joseph. Since Buzzfeed first reported this fantasy, Carson has defended his statement with an even greater stupidity: "Some people believe in the Bible, like I do.” It’s a greater stupidity, because the Bible does not mention storing grain in the pyramids, nor does it say anything about Joseph initiating the pyramid construction program.

Media outlets are furiously looking to find a new Carsonoma that tops the last revelation of Carson’s ignorance. I’m quite certain the Bush and Clinton campaigns, and perhaps others, are aiding journalists as they pore over every piece of video or written comment the benighted Carson has ever uttered.

For those who think I’m exaggerating the extent to which Ben Carson lives in an alternate reality, let’s review some of Ben’s greatest hits. Some of these are quotes, and some paraphrases based on quotes and media reports:

·         Homosexuality is a choice because people go into prison straight and come out of prison gay.

·         The theory of evolution is a fraud promoted by the “forces of evil.” Evolution is a theory from Satan.

·         Obamacare is like slavery.

·         Jews could have defended themselves against Hitler if they had guns.

·         Without Fox News, the United States would be like Cuba.

·         A Muslim shouldn’t be president. 

But wait, there’s more! Carson said that when he visited federal prisons, he was “flabbergasted by the accommodations,” and he worries that we are “creating an environment that is conducive to comfort where a person would want to stay.” Yes, Carson believes that people are committing crimes for the privilege of rotting in a Texas or Alabama prison.

Behind each of these statements is either a political stance or an appeal to Carson’s main constituency, fundamentalist Christians. He is in favor of loosening gun control laws even more than they are now. He doesn’t like it when the government helps the poor or the elderly. He wants to establish Christianity as our state religion.  To prove his point, he either makes stuff up, or believes the half-cocked, already disproven theories of others in the reality-challenged community.

Besides looking for new verbal boners, the media is hot on the trail of Carson lies, and it’s about time.

Like all Republican candidates, he tells the standard lies like you cut taxes to stimulate growth and Social Security is in trouble. And again, like all the other republican candidates with the possible exception of Rand Paul, Carson tells special lies related to his own past and/or present. He has certainly lied about his role in promoting Mannatech, which sells nutritional supplements, skin care products and weight management products, all using multilevel marketing, which essentially builds a pyramid of sales by having sales people recruit other sales people in whose commissions they share.  He claims not to have been tied to Mannatech, yet his name and image have been used extensively in marketing the company’s products. 

The latest allegation of Carson lying comes from CNN-TV, which could find no evidence that Carson was mean, prone to violence or a bully in interviewing people who had gone to school with Carson. None could remember any of the incidents of violence that Carson touts in his book.  As is typical of politicians who try to pretty up their past, Carson had no reason to pretend he started as a bad seed. The very fact that he went to Yale and became a prominent neurosurgeon is admirable in and of itself. Carson gilded the lily, probably because the myth of the reformed sinner plays so well with his constituency. It took years, but he was finally caught in the lie.

And let’s not forget about the inherent lie underlying Carson’s campaign. Although Carson is raising a lot of money, he’s spending a higher percentage of what he takes in every month than every other candidate except Hillary Clinton. A typical campaign spends money on traditional and online, rent, payroll and travel, spending that enables the candidate to build a real campaign infrastructure for the long haul. By contrast, virtually all of Carson’s money is being plowed back into raising more money. In other words, Carson doesn’t really have a campaign, but a fund-raising machine built almost exclusively on direct marketing.

The chance of any future embarrassment leading to Carson’s decline is minimal, since lots of people in his core constituency believe a lot of stuff he says. But his fantastical statements and fibs about his past and present will prevent other Republicans and most independents from supporting him. I don’t think we need fear Carson being elected president, or even being nominated by the Republicans.

It seems as if the United States often flirts with candidates who are living in a dream world and build their campaigns almost entirely on lies, myths and fantastical notions, but we never elect them. That’s right…there was Ronald Reagan and that Bush II fella. Make that almost never. 

In thinking about our troops in Syria, remember Viet Nam and how quickly 50 can become 500,000

By Marc Jampole

I wonder whether the Obama Administration has been watching too many superhero movies. You know, the kind in which a team of three or four superheroes take on armies of the powerful.

How else can we account for the administration’s assertion that embedding 50 specially trained soldiers into Kurdish and certain Syrian rebel forces will make a difference?

These must be 50 very talented individuals.

Especially when you consider that President Obama has predicted that Russian actions in Syria would lead to a quagmire. Russia now has 4,000 troops in the country, or 8,000 boots on the ground, as military pundits like to write. Before Russia began bombing ISIS, and perhaps rebel, positions a month ago, there were only 2,000 Russian troops on the ground.

What difference does it make? 4,000 or 2,000, with or without the air strikes—that’s nothing compared to 50 red-blooded Americans. We’ll get the job done while avoiding both the quag and the mire.

Obama’s initial announcement said the 50 troops would provide strategic and tactical advice. Now it turns out, that they will also go out on raids. But since they’ll be fighting less than 50% of the time, the mission is classified as “non-combat.” It sounds as if some professor of Newspeak left over from the euphemistically inclined Bush-Cheney Administration thought up that logic. I lost some respect for the President for telling this big white lie.

At least these 50 soldiers don’t have as their goal the one thing that U.S. troops have consistently shown they are able to do: Get the local military anywhere from weeks to months away from being ready to go it alone. Wasn’t that the assessment of the situation for months, and sometimes years at a time in Iraq, Afghanistan and Viet Nam? Turns out that our armed forces never were able to complete that job anywhere.

We’re not on a training mission, and we’re not on a combat mission. What then? Some have characterized what our troops are doing in Syria as offering guidance: Let’s hope, then, that we’re talking about group therapy, because one-on-one sessions can get to be expensive. Or will we get into the heat of battle and our guidance be to show the Kurds/rebels how to fire their shiny new American-made weapons? First we load, then we aim, then we push this button. Gee that was fun, let me show you again.

The sarcasm of these comments is meant to hide a large, gnawing fear that Syria is going to become the next Iraq, Afghanistan or Viet Nam. At this point, it structurally resembles Viet Nam in that we are starting with a small contingent of crack troops whose job is to train and advise the locals. Our troops in Viet Nam ballooned from a few hundred advisors to a half a million soldiers in what those who lived through it probably remember as a blink of the eye—but what was really just a few years. The difference of course is that this time we’re supporting two of three rebel forces and not the official government. That’s Russia’s role in this increasingly bloody farce.

Syria is a mess, and for a change, it’s not entirely America’s fault, as the mess in Iraq is. But like Iraq and Afghanistan, there is nothing that we can do to fix the Syrian situation. Four forces are fighting over a territory jerry-rigged between the 20th century’s two world wars and at least two of the forces would be delighted to rule over a part of the whole.  No side has distinguished itself for its humanitarianism or its dedication to free-market democracy.

The only skin we should have in this game are the Syrian people themselves. And there can be little doubt that the Syrian people will suffer from the Administration’s policy of a slow water-torture kind of ratcheting up of our military involvement, and will suffer even more from the Putin and Republican solution of making a major commitment to the fighting.

If we care about the Syrian people, we should withdraw all military aid to all parties involved in the Syrian free-for-all. We should sell no more arms to any of these forces, nor to any other country in the Middle East, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. Instead, we should lead a massive relief effort to get humanitarian aid to the refugees and place them in other countries throughout the world. We should be prepared to take a hundred thousand Syrians ourselves.

The war will go on, but wars have a way of ending when resources are depleted, and withdrawing our military support from the region will accelerate that depletion process by years. Our withdrawal from an active role in the Syrian melee will, of course, position Iran and Russia to become the major foreign players in Syria—more of a poisoned pawn than an honor, based on the experience of various powerful nations in Viet Nam, Chechnya, Iraq, the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan.

After the smoke clears, we should provide economic but not military aid to the two or three governments that will control parts of the former Syria. That aid should be conditioned on those governments having free elections and refraining from the worst sorts of human rights violations now practiced by Assad and ISIS. We forgave Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for their terrorist pasts and consider the only countries to attack our shores—Great Britain and Japan—as best of friends. I don’t believe it’s inconceivable that we will be doing business with ISIS if and when they mature into a legitimate government.

Or not.

What isn’t conceivable is getting into another war in which American soldiers are lost and tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents are killed, injured or displaced. I fear going from 50 to 5,000 or 500,000 troops on the ground much more than I fear a few beheadings.

EHarmony resurrects TV ads that proposes having a threesome with a Christian authority figure

By Marc Jampole

Do Americans want a “Big Brother” figure involved in their intimate relationships?

That’s what eharmony.com, one of the largest dating sites in the world, seems to be saying in a commercial that it aired two years ago and recently resurrected with some fresh vignettes.

Underlying the imagery is a sleazy subtext that suggests the possibility of a wholesome threesome involving a man and a woman and a sage-looking elderly gentleman, who happens to be EHarmony founder, Neil Clark Warren.

Here are the vignettes that visually dominate the current versions of the ad:

•  A man and a woman take a romantic ride in a horse carriage. As the carriage moves past the screen, we see that Warren is sitting with them in the open cab.
• A man and woman are getting cozy on a couch, about ready to watch TV when Warren sits down between and the woman offers him a large bowl of popcorn and starts munching.
•  At the beach, a woman gives a man a drink with a little hat or umbrella in it and turns to her other side and gives a drink to Warren.
• My favorite because it is so overtly sexual: An African-American man gives his African-American girlfriend a ring at a fancy restaurant, then she reaches across the table to show the ring to Warren, who comments about his role in the selection. At the end of this vignette, the black man and Warren bump fists, much as they might after cackling about conquests.

In all of these vignettes, Warren has intruded on a romantic moment that typically leads to a sexual experience, turning the scene into symbolic ménage a trois. In all cases, Warren enjoys the romantic activity with the couple, which of course, implies that he will also enjoy what comes later. It’s pretty smarmy, whether you conceive of Warren as participating or merely watching.

Meanwhile, the voice over makes a completely grandiose and mendacious claim: “Chances are behind every great relationship is eharmony.com.” “Chances are” means probably or almost definitely. The explicit statement here is that eHarmony.com is responsible for a large part of all great relationships (at least between men and women). Even if we believe the eHarmony website that 438 members get married every day, plus the implication that they marry other eHarmony members, that’s not a lot of marriages. Experts predict that there will be about 2.2 million marriages in the United States in 2015. An average of 438 members married a day makes eHarmony responsible for about 80,000 marriages a year at the very most, or about 3.6% of the total.  That’s a long way from “every great relationship.” It’s also worth pointing out that not every marriage involves a great relationship. The claim in the TV ad goes far beyond exaggeration. It’s an outright lie.

More disturbing than this false claim, which most will easily see as self-serving puffery, is the hidden message that eHarmony makes by injecting its founder—a white male dressed in a traditional formal suit—into the happy relationships it shows in the ad. The elderly well-dressed white male has been a symbol of authority since humans began conjuring symbols. EHarmony could have just as easily built put a computer or another representation of its survey questionnaire into the ad as the “third party” (of “secret sauce,” as eHarmony says on its website!).  As a sort mechanism, the eHarmony questionnaire  probably works as well as joining other dating services or singles clubs, bar-hopping, attending singles dances, asking friends for fix-ups, taking cruises, or going to adult activities such as Scrabble clubs and singles nights at the symphony.  

But the ad is not saying, use us as a tool. It’s saying: interject us—as represented by our white male Christian founder—into your life and your relationship. Let our “key dimensions” of compatibility be your guide, your guru, your teacher, an integral part of the relationship with your significant other. Put us directly into the world you build with your significant other.

Here’s where it gets creepy! Warren is a Christian theologian who first marketed the eHarmony dating site on Christian websites and in other Christian media, touting eHarmony as “based on the Christian principles of Focus on the Family author Dr. Neil Clark Warren.”  EHarmony now claims to be secular and advertises everywhere, plus it has affiliate websites for Asian, black, Christian, senior, Jewish and Hispanic dating. 

The hidden message in the ad, however, reflects an authoritarian Christian outlook. One of the main principles of many right-wing Christian denominations and Catholicism is that god is part of the marriage, almost a third person in the relationship. Whether taken on a literal or figurative level, “god in the marriage” represents both the person of god and the principles of action that supposedly lead us to god.

One traditional image of god is as a wise old man. Moreover, a genial grandfatherly man has served as an image for pastors, rectors, priests and other human figures of religious authority for centuries. The hidden message of the ad then is that eHarmony will bring god (or the religious and ethical values god represents) into the relationship.  It’s easy to make the assumption that the god in question is Christian. Moreover, Warren has made the round of mainstream and religious talk shows in the past, and so many will recognize him as an authority figure who promotes Christian values in relationships. So men needn’t fear—that other guy in bed with you and your woman is not another guy—it’s the kindly (and fun-loving) white male god who rules over and protects all of us.

The commercial unfolds so slickly—a few story lines, a voice over delivering the uplifting message and feel-good gospel pop music in the background. Like all TV commercials, it goes by so quickly that we are unaware or only vaguely aware of the subliminal messages. But make no mistake about it—the ad is meant to appeal to those who want someone to tell them what to do, whom to love, how to get it right. Warren and his key dimensions of compatibility are a stand-in for an authoritarian, right-wing church.

Boehner Finally Does His Job

While he was packing up after he announced plans to quit in frustration with the far-right obstructionist Republicans, lame duck House Speaker John Boehner reached the very deal with the White House that the Freedom Caucus, a.k.a. the Tealiban, feared he would, to increase the debt limit so the US Treasury can pay the government’s bills until March 2017 and to approve the federal budget for two years.

The deal also relaxes the sequester, as military and domestic programs would get $25 billion each above current budget caps in this fiscal year and $15 billion each above budget caps in fiscal 2017.

So Democrats got $40 billion in additional domestic spending over two years and Republicans got $40 billion in additional military spending. Democrats also got a solution to a glitch in cost-of-living calculations that threatened to hike premiums 52% for 30% of Medicare Part B recipients and Democrats got a reallocation of Social Security funds to keep disability insurance solvent. Republicans had proposed to cut disability benefits by 20%.

Republicans got cuts to Medicare health care providers, a tightening of eligibility requirements to the Social Security Disability Insurance program and more resources to investigate purported Social Security fraud.

The compromise — that word the Tealiban detests — would get Congress through next year’s election without the threat of another right-wing-manufactured government shutdown. But it still depends on Congress approving the appropriations bills — which will fill in the broad budget outlines — by Dec. 11. That could give the Tealiban another swing at controversial issues such as Planned Parenthood and environmental regulations.

The deal gained the approval of AARP, which claims to represent 38 million seniors, and Social
Security Works, a group that advocates for retirement benefits.

Social Security Work’s president, Nancy Altman, said the Republican leadership had released its hostages: the need to raise the debt limit, the need to keep the government operating, and the need to ensure that all Social Security benefits can continue to be paid in full and on time beyond 2016. “When hostage takers release their hostages, we are, of course, relieved that the hostages are no longer in harm’s way, but this is nothing to celebrate. That the ransom isn’t steeper is also not something to celebrate,” Altman said in a prepared statement.

Part of the ransom, she said, is a diversion of Social Security resources towards virtually nonexistent fraud. “Those provisions will likely require workers with disabilities to wait longer to receive their earned benefits and may prevent some from receiving their earned benefits completely. That is wrong. The legislation has some good provisions, along with the ransom. It does ensure that Medicare beneficiaries will not experience drastically large premium increases. It also closes a loophole that was introduced in the law relatively recently that allows wealthier Americans to game the system by claiming extra benefits inconsistent with the goals of the program. …

Eventually, she said, Social Security should be expanded. “As the overwhelming majority of Americans recognize, Social Security’s one shortcoming is that its benefits are too low. Congress should follow the will of the people by expanding those modest but vital benefits and restore the program to long range actuarial balance by requiring the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share.”

The House “Freedom Caucus,” a group of about 40 right-wing Congress members who led the fight to unseat Speaker Boehner, wanted the next speaker to commit to tie any increase in the debt ceiling to real cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The Freedom Caucus wanted the next speaker to commit to not funding the government unless President Obama agreed to defund Obamacare, Planned Parenthood and other priorities. They didn’t want an omnibus bill that would keep the government running. Instead, they wanted separate bills to finance the military while leaving behind domestic programs. They were looking for a repeat of the 16-day shutdown in 2013, hoping that this time Obama and congressional Democrats would capitulate.

As a lame duck, Boehner was able to strike a deal that could rely on a minority of Republicans joining Democrats to pass it, without worrying about the unofficial “Hastert rule” that requires a majority of Republicans to approve any House action. The deal was approved 266-167 Oct. 28, with 79 Republicans joining 187 Democrats for the bipartisan majority, and 167 Republicans voting no.

Ways & Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the likely successor to Boehner, tried to distance himself from the distasteful compromise since he didn’t participate in the negotiations and he said the process “stinks,” although his Ways & Means staff worked on it and he voted for it. However, Ryan is a right-winger who agrees with the Tealiban on forcing cuts and/or privatization to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He has earned the nickname “zombie-eyed granny starver” bestowed by Charles Pierce of Esquire.

But suspicions that Ryan is a latent compromiser complicated his race for speaker. The Republican caucus nominated Ryan for speaker on Oct. 28, before the vote on the deal, but he only got 200 votes in the caucus, 18 short of a majority, as Tealiban Rep. Dan Webster (R-Fla.) got 43. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), whose hopes to become speaker were dashed after he spilled the beans that the special Benghazi committee was set up to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers, got 1 vote. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the chair of the new House PAC to probe Planned Parenthood, also got 1 vote.

Republicans had set up the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) fund to hit a cash crunch that was expected to force a 20% reduction in disability benefits for 11 million beneficiaries in January. The new budget deal will allow 100% of promised SSDI benefits to continue to be paid through 2022.

Expand Social Security

The agreement does not address the long-term needs of the Social Security Trust Funds. The Social Security retirement fund is projected to run out of money in 2034, but incoming revenues would still be able to fund an estimated 79% of scheduled benefits, according to the Social Security trustees’ most recent report in July. There is a simple fix to keep full promised benefits coming for the foreseeable future: Congress should do away with the ceiling on taxable income, so that a person earning $1 million no longer pays the same amount of payroll tax as a person earning $118,500 (the current ceiling on taxable income). That would raise about $100 billion a year from the wealthy and close the funding gap. In 2010, the Congressional Research Service said removing the cap would make the Social Security Trust Funds solvent for at least the next 75 years.

This is a fix that you don’t see or hear much about in the corporate media. Their correspondents are more likely to advise people approaching retirement to prepare for cuts in their expected benefits. They even tell young people entering the workforce not to expect Social Security to survive until they retire. And the oligarchs’ propaganda has been successful: A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that 50% of Gen Xers and 51% of Millennials said they believed they would receive no Social Security benefits at all by the time they retire. (Republican presidential candidates debating in Boulder Oct. 28 reinforced this myth.) But in January 2015, 66% of Americans told Pew that taking steps to make Social Security financially sound should be a top priority for Obama and Congress, placing it fifth among 23 issues, and 67% said benefits should not be reduced.

Improving and expanding Social Security won’t happen under a Republican administration, or with Ryan in the Speaker’s Office. On the Democratic side, the issue distinguishes Bernie Sanders from Hillary Clinton. At the first Democratic presidential debate Sanders supported removing the cap on taxable income, while Clinton said she supports Social Security and would defend against Republican efforts to privatize it, but she would not commit to supporting Sanders’ plan to expand it. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2015

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Selections from the November 15, 2015 issue

Selections from the November 15, 2015 issue

COVER/Heather Digby Parton
Chaos theory of Donald Trump

EDITORIAL
Boehner does his job; Expand Social Security
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Liberals can’t afford to forget 2014

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Farmers need to hold onto their topsoil

DISPATCHES
Budget deal releases Social Security hostages;
Jeb sees Rubio as threat;
Probe clears IRS in Tea Party reviews;
House votes to reopen Export-Import Bank;
Notorious pill profiteer undercut;
Not just Trump: Latinos down on Bush, Rubio, Cruz, too;
Trump is selective in journos that cover him;
Obama tops Brownback in Kansas popularity
Texas cuts Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood ...

MANUEL PEREZ-ROCHA
Obama’s unholy trade policy
JOHN YOUNG
That voodoo that GOP does so well

JASON STANFORD
Meet GOP’s newest conspiracy, ‘Rangerghazi’ 

BILL SCHER
Trudeau did what FDR couldn’t: win with Keynes

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Inequality in the age of affluence

SAM URETSKY
Star Trek didn’t rely on a congressional vote

WAYNE O’LEARY
The Fed’s great flattening

JOHN BUELL
Campaign finance and the future of democracy

BOB BURNETT
The end of the Republican Party
SETH SANDRONSKY
Uber drivers mount nationwide protest

DONALD KAUL
Oddballs make Hillary’s odds look good

and more ...

Anyone wondering how much Seattle football coach who prayed at a game will make to be test case for religious right?

Why is it so hard for those who want to defend the rights of Christians to infringe on others to understand that when someone acts as an employee or representative of a public organization, he or she absolutely cannot wear their religion on the sleeve?

The latest attempt to assert a new religious right based not on the freedom to practice but the freedom to make a public display involves an assistant high school football coach for a public school district who was suspended from his job for praying at a game. He had done it before and been warned of the consequences of continuing to promote one religion while in the employ of a public school district.

But don’t feel sorry that Joe Kennedy has lost his job. He has a new one—as the latest poster boy for the religious right. He defiantly has told the news media that he is prepared to take his fight to manifest his Christianity while on the clock all the way to the Supreme Court. With a little help from his friends, who include the lawyers of the Liberty Institute, a pro bono law firm that specializes in helping Christian individuals and groups (and occasionally Orthodox Jews) use the First Amendment to assert their rights to encroach on secular institutions. I couldn’t find anything online yet, but it’s only a matter of time before we learn that donations for Kennedy are pouring in from a crowdsourcing website or that the religious right is taking care of Kennedy’s economic needs in some other way.

An enormous photograph of Kennedy already dominates the Liberty Institute home page less than two days after the suspension. Either they move quickly or they had already coordinated Kennedy’s defiance of the school district’s direct order not to continue praying on the sidelines. I’m thinking the latter. 

Call me cynical, but I’m wondering whether Kennedy has already negotiated his remuneration for serving as the test case. It would be no different from the hoard of PhDs taking money from right-wing think tanks to write claptrap against the minimum wage and public unions.

The self-proclaimed mission of the Liberty Institute is “to defend and restore religious liberty across America—in our schools, for our churches, inside the military, and throughout the public arena.” In the past, the Liberty Institute has defended the right of a student to distribute candy canes with a religious story attached at his school’s holiday party; filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veteran Affairs alleging it had censored prayers and the use of the words “God and Jesus”; and established the “Don't Tear Me Down” campaign to fight challenges against veterans memorials with Christian symbolism.

The Liberty Institute and other Kennedy defenders assert that his public prayer is protected by the First Amendment, forgetting that the First Amendment also protects against the establishment of one religion over the others. As a football coach, Kennedy is paid to be a figure of authority. His prayers can make the students who aren’t the same religion feel very uncomfortable, very left out.  Believe me, I know. I was on the football team of one of the five high schools I attended. (I’d like to say I “played football,” but I never entered any game for even one play!)  We always had a prayer session conducted by a member of the local clergy before every game, always ecumenical, with no prayer specific to one religion read nor any particular rite mentioned. We had about 80 kids on the team, all of whom were Christians of various sorts, except for three Jews, myself and two boys who were all-city. One time, the religious figure talked about Christ in the pre-game prayer. All three of us felt humiliated, bullied and unwanted. We told the coach how angry we were, and our parents probably did as well. The coach apologized immediately and assured us that it would never happen again. And it didn’t, at least as long as I went to that high school.

That was 1966 in Miami, Florida, long before evangelical groups decided that it wasn’t enough to have the right to practice one’s own religion in peace, but that they had to make sure that America was branded as a Christian nation that abided by Christian laws.

Even then I questioned the need to have any sort of prayer before football games, ecumenical or not. I understand that football and religion tend to go hand-in-hand in many places. It makes sense, because the same kind of belief in a higher order that helps if one is trying to follow the many rites and beliefs of an organized religion also can serve as the personal justification for putting oneself through painful practices and risking life-threatening injuries on every play. For similar reasons, military organizations often promote religiosity as a stabilizing and motivating element.  No one stops to think that perhaps one or more deities are rooting for the opponent, be it an athletic competition or a war.

Religion is an integral part of the football mentality. The ideal, of course, would be if everyone on the team were fighting for the same religion, so that the individual team members would feel even more bonded to each other and more ready to make sacrifices for victory. Unfortunately, professional teams, those affiliated with public schools and organizations and the armed forces are unable to enjoy the benefits of religious unity. There are just too many different religions around. Plus we have all those atheists.

The grand openings of both World Series and GOP debates overhype events as grandiose & historic battles of titans

By Marc Jampole

Channel surfers exercise their itchy thumbs for three reasons: 1) To see what’s on TV; 2) To avoid commercials; or 3) To watch two things at one time.

It was to this last group I belonged last night when I clicked between the musical openings of the World Series and the third Republican debate, televised on CNBC. I must have flipped between the two montages to music eight times during the thirty or so seconds these grandiose introductions simultaneously unfolded.

Suddenly I had an epiphany—not the kind of epiphany when you see something new for the first time, but the epiphany is which something you already understand in an intellectual way reveals itself personally to you with raw emotional power.

The epiphany came as I pondered how similar the two openings were: The producers of both the World Series and the debate were saying practically the same thing using precisely the same visual, narrative and rhetorical techniques:

·         Heroic and uplifting music that crescendos at the end.

·         Montage of the people involved, in close-ups mostly taken at a low angle up to make the figure seem more daunting and powerful—a typical photo technique used to photograph rulers of authoritarian nations.

·         Quick cutting between shots, with an acceleration of the pace of new shots as the piece progresses.

·         Short, provocative statements from the people shown.

·         Special effects that I would call “techno-corporate” in style, with rows of columns and architectural allusions, blocks of video and straight lines running across the frame.

·         A ponderously stiff and stately attitude, as if the viewers are about to see history being made.

Aficionados of televised professional football games will recognize this approach to trying to get the audience excited about what they are about to see. It’s been used to introduce every televised professional football game for decades.

The epiphany then was the realization of how much the news media presents our political debates as an entertainment spectacle.  To the mass media, a political debate is no different from a baseball or football game or a reality show based on a competition. The issues don’t matter, only the battle of wills between two, or in the case of the Republican debates, nine larger than life figures.

These nine candidates, however, are not titans, but little minds dedicated to enriching their larders and those of their sponsors. The debate itself was a dreary affair, except for those who like to see moderators or event leaders lose control, which happened a few times. The moderators once again tried to pit one candidate against another, and for the most part the candidates refrained from taking the debate bait. Two candidates did go after their peers. At the beginning, Kasich begged voters not to support the crazy amateurs, by whom he meant Trump and Carson. Jeb Bush lectured Marco Rubio like a stern high school teacher on Rubio’s poor Senate attendance. Rubio’s answer was evasively punky and pissy—that Jeb never went after McCain for his poor attendance—what you’d expect from a teenaged boy. But the media and the audience liked it. 

The dreariest part of the debate was the tedious comparisons of the various tax plans.  In every case, the candidate went out of his way to assure us that the rich were going to pay their fair share. An analysis of each plan, however reveals that all the candidates want the rich and the ultra-rich to pay significantly less in taxes than they do now.

Besides telling the same bold-faced lie that the wealthy will pay their fair share under their plans, the candidates make the same two conceptual mistakes. First, they assume that people who earn a million pay their fair share when they pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as do the middle class and poor. They forget that the government is providing the wealthy with more goods and services. Some examples: The middle class and poor don’t need the government to protect and assure the safe operation of financial markets and they don’t need the court system for commercial litigation. When the police protect property, they are protecting more of the property of the wealthy. Intellectual property law enforcement actually hurts the poor, while securing the rental rights of the wealthy.

The second fallacy is one of the fundamental principles of right-wing economics: If we lower taxes, the economy will grow. At this point, there have been so many studies disproving this false theory you’d think the Republicans would stop trying to present it.  What’s so irritating about the Republican insistence that lowering taxes helps the economy is that it goes against common sense. To agree with the Republicans you have to believe that rich folk grow the economy more by investing in stocks, real estate and art than the government does when it spends all the tax dollars it collects on needed goods and services or gives it to organizations with employees for various other goods and services. The wealthy remove money from the economy, government pumps it in.  Higher taxes for spending always help to grow the economy.

Carly Fiorina was the only one not to offer a plan to cut taxes, preferring to say that all the plans had merit, but what was needed was someone who could actually push a plan through. Carly implied that she was the gal to do it. After all, Fiorina was able to sell a very savvy board of directors on making one of the worst corporate acquisitions in American business history, so it should be a walk in the park for her to convince both houses of Congress to create a taxation system that is simpler and results in the wealthy and ultra-wealthy paying even less than the historically low amounts they now pay.

Unlike the World Series game, in which the Royals trounced the Mets, I’m not sure if there was a clear winner among Republicans in the third debate. I am suspicious of media speculation that Rubio or Cruz won. The mainstream media like Rubio and Cruz because they can’t like Jeb Bush anymore. Jeb almost disappeared from the proceedings, leaving these two first-term Senators from Southern states as the most prominent and highest ranking contenders not named Carson or Trump. But “highest ranking” doesn’t mean either is popular with voters.