Politics: National

It's a scandal. It's an outrage.

On our manhood it's a blot!

Where is the leader who will save us

And be the first man to be shot?
— Rodgers and Hammerstein

The "scandals" of the past week — Benghazi and the IRS — have two purposes: To destroy Hillary Clinton, the presumptive/feared Democratic nominee in 2016 and "to break him," as the secesh former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint said of President Obama on another issue. Whether the tempests can rise out of their right-wing teapot remains to be seen. Ruining Hillary and seeking to impeach Mr. Obama will be the Republican enterprise for the next three-and-a-half years. It's a tired playbook, but it keeps working for the right.

Little of what the right claims about Benghazi is correct. And, as Rogue's Front Page Editor tells me (and he's a man who knows about such things), the truth will never be known because the CIA will never come clean about its part in the mess. It is interesting that we've been spending more on the military than during the Cold War and yet we couldn't get help to the consulate/CIA safe house during the attack. I know there's a Marine FAST unit (Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team) based right across the Med in Rota, Spain. FAST is specifically designed for these crises. Why has the press never raised the question about why it was not mobilized? The narrative has it that the nearest help was in the Balkans. But I don't blame Hillary for this tragedy. John Boehner's House ensured that funds for State Department security was cut back. 

The conventional wisdom holds that North Korea is mostly bluster, the young dictator trying to solidify his power and distract his starving subjects, gaining negotiating leverage, and about the worst that might happen is the Crazy Aunt in the Asian Attic will have one of her periodic violent outbursts, deadly perhaps but contained. The "saber rattling" might be a sign of a troubled regime in Pyongyang. The United States will project a "show of force," along with a promise to deploy more missile interceptors (of dubious reliability) in the coming months and years. And the situation will cool down.

I'm not sure much of this is true.

David Kang and Victor Cha, writing in Foreign Affairs, are among the few to challenge the view that North Korea isn't that dangerous. A Stalinist state with one of the world's largest armies, and a capable one at that, attains nuclear weapons of a sort and launches a satellite — in other words, achieves at least the beginnings of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Then its leaders make it repeatedly clear they intend to attack South Korea, Japan, Guam and the continental United States. Just the same old-same old, sixty years after the armistice that ended the Korean War? Prepare to be surprised.

What is are these "entitlements" I keep reading about? Just today, Rupert's Wall Street Journal had a headline that stated, "White House targeting entitlement limits." This must be a good thing, because, really, feeling entitled is an unattractive trait. If applied to our tax dollars, a sense of entitlement is downright unpatriotic.

Are they the $1.8 trillion given to defense contractors since 2006, including $400-billion-and-counting for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, intended as as an "affordable" mass-production jet that is now 70 percent over budget? Are they the huge subsidies that the fossil fuel industries receive from American taxpayers? (Worldwide, burning up the planet is being subsidized at a rate of $2 trillion).

Speaking of entitlements, don't forget the $3.4 trillion in corporate profits that are allowed to be parked elsewhere. This allowed these companies to avoid paying taxes that maintain the commons which allowed them flourish in the first place. Public policy tilted to make the rich richer, rather than encouraging them to create companies and jobs? Don't forget carried interest for hedge-fund financiers. And it's not just the rich — our entire society is tilted to heavily subsidize sprawl and single-occupancy vehicles traveling on roads that do not pay for themselves in basic ciphering, much less their costs in climate change. Surely these and more are what is meant when we hear of "entitlements," "cutting entitlements" and "entitlement reform."

By Emil Pulsifer, Guest Rogue

I
recently shared a table with a stranger.  He was mature, educated, and
gets his news from a variety of sources including MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, and
others.  We discussed a variety of topics ranging from the need to address
climate change, to the development of alternative energy sources and campaign
finance reform.  Yet, when it came to budget policy he could do no better
than to repeat the common wisdom that in order to address the "$16
trillion debt" a mix of spending cuts and tax increases are
necessary, and that tax increases could not target the wealthy exclusively
because "even if you confiscated all of the income of the rich it wouldn't
be enough to fix the problem."  Medicare would have to bear the brunt
of the spending cuts, he said.  These claims are all
elements of the meme promoted by "responsible" media organizations, but in many respects they happen to be wrong.

There
is certainly room for spending cuts in the current budget, in
particular the bloated Defense Department.  In 2011,
"national defense" spending totaled 4.7 percent of the U.S.
economy. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Clinton era "peace
dividends" reached their peak, national defense spending was just 3.0
percent of GDP.  See Table 8.4 of this report.

The
Cold War is over: The Soviet Union no longer exists, and China has irrevocably
converted to gung-ho capitalism. There is simply no excuse for this level
of "defense" spending. In 2011, U.S. GDP was $15 trillion
dollars. If national defense spending had been at Clinton era levels as a
percentage of GDP, the savings in that year alone would have been 1.7 percent
of GDP or roughly $250 billion dollars. Extend this over 10 years and the
savings would total $2.5 trillion, or slightly more than the $2.4 trillion
total savings touted by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles in
their new debt reduction plan. And because we're talking about
defense spending as a percentage of GDP, and GDP is expected to grow, this
actually underestimates the dollar savings by about a third. Sure, there
is already supposed to be some savings in coming years from the military
drawdown in Afghanistan, but Congress may not allow this: Already there is a
bipartisan movement afoot to restore the much smaller $43 billion in military
sequestration cuts due to take effect this year. 

I knew a young woman in the early 1980s who was a Trotskyite, or so she said. Even then, at the dawn of the Age of Reagan, a real political spectrum existed in America. The remains of the New Left were there. Both parties had conservatives, centrists and liberals. Compromise and rationality still produced legislation that got the people's business done. The quiet coup of the oligarchy was in its infancy.

Where we stand today? I had finished my regular stint on the local public radio station and heard the NPR program To The Point begin. It was all about the budget deficit and federal debt. And not really about that, but concern over whether President Obama's "charm offensive" to reach out to Republicans would succeed. That the GOP has been captured entirely by extremists was never mentioned, nor that the House members in safe seats would never compromise no matter how much Mr. Obama tried to "meet them halfway," the holy grail of our opinion makers and elites. That the deficit and debt are far from our most pressing issues was never debated. Didn't we just have an election that supposedly settled this matter? And this is the intelligent media.

I can understand most Americans tuning out. The nation is asleep, being date-raped after imbibing a cocktail of plutocratic-engineered ignorance, reactionary dogma, economic hard times, media malpractice and electronic distractions. The "center" is far to the right. "Progressives" are largely trying to conserve the basic social compact from the 20th century, once embraced by the mainstream of both parties. Few of them are seeking real change. The Occupy "movement" — who? Totskyites are all gone, too, but reality is sneaking into our national Arizona Room carrying an ice axe much more potent than the one that did in Leon Davidovich.

Whatever his other "out there" political views, Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster was thrilling. It was thrilling merely as a civics lesson: This is how filibusters were done before the 1980s, where a senator had to take and hold the floor, maybe with the help of other senators, maybe alone. Sometimes it was in the service of an immoral cause, as with Strom Thurmond's epic 24 hour and 18 minute stand against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Others acted in the interests of republican govenment, as with Bernie Sanders' filibuster opposing extension of the Bush tax cuts. Even if you think Paul's was a stunt, it showed how we should insist that senators actually take the floor and defend their position, rather than telling the Majority Leader they will deny him the 60 votes for cloture and calling it a filibuster.

It was thrilling because, if only for a few hours and largely on social media, it broke out national spell of stupid. President Obama, our constitutional-law professor, has taken as casual an approach to civil liberties as his predecessor, perhaps even more so. Paul wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him about the drone program and whether it could be used by the president, without due process, to kill American citizens on American soil. Instead of a simple "no," Holder, who has refused to extend the rule of law to the big banks, implied that the president indeed held this power. This is an outrage. It is fundamentally unconstitutional. Where the hell were the supposed "liberal Democrats"? It was left to the usually kooky Rand Paul to actually act like an American senator in the best tradition of the office.

Finally, it was interesting in the way it scrambled the usual hard partisan lines and momentarily forced open some minds, revealed character. Paul's support and criticism came from across the spectrum. Chief among his critics were wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III and his cocker spaniel Lindsey Graham. Why do these men have any standing on any topic, especially national security? Both remain unapologetic supporters of the war in Iraq, apparently still believing those "weapons of mass destruction" are still there, somewhere. John McCain is the best the Republican Party has as a senior statesman? It's a sick joke.

Jon Stewart has so degraded the usefulness of profanity with his unending use of partly bleeped F-words that I am forced to fall back on the oaths of my parents' generation: Let the goddamn sequester happen. I am so sick of the crazy fanatics called Republicans and their willingness to inflict great damage on the country, really do anything, only to hurt a man they see as an illegitimate president, a man who represents everything they loathe: Intellectual, cosmopolitan, urban, open-minded, tolerant, black and doesn't know his place. I am as sick of the president, who is squandering his mandate, doesn't know how to use it. He continues the Bush assault on our civil liberties, extends the drone war, won't tell the American people the truth and won't bring the banksters to justice. He named one to be Treasury Secretary. And is Chuck Hagel the only Republican he can find to be Defense Secretary? Let the goddamn sequester happen.

Speaking of the Defense Department, why don't we call it by its historic name: The War Department (and, yes, dear careful reader, I know there was also a Department of the Navy and where would the Air Force fit…hang with me)? This would at least be straightforward about its purpose, using serious language that might give us pause. Aside from the damage of the Great Recession, one reason we face the dreaded deficit and debt is two unfunded wars. Mr. Obama is prosecuting imperial ass-whippings around the globe even now, creating more new terrorists than we kill. We are "pivoting" to the Pacific, to pick a fight with our Chinese banker. We spend more on war than the next 13 powers combined. The F-35 fighter will cost at least $396 billion — that alone would expand our passenger rail system by 300 times — and the thing is still not airworthy. Our new $13.5-billion-a-pop Gerald R. Ford class carriers will be target practice for some Chinese kid guiding a missile. We have too many flag officers and too many mooching, corrupt contractors. Even if not a single blade of grass on an officers' golf course goes untended, let the goddamn sequester happen.

Let the sequester happen and keep it going. Ever since Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency, politicians have gotten ahead by claiming "government is the problem." And voters accept this as they accept their Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, safe food and drugs, freeways and roads to drive on, in vehicles powered by gasoline kept artificially cheap by federal subsidies, armies and fleets, live in a Sun Belt made habitable by federal initiatives from the TVA to the SRP, survive airplane flights thanks to government air traffic control…and they think government is the problem. A people this stupid and corrupt deserves the real-life experiment of seeing whether they really are rugged individualists who don't need no gub'ment. Bring it on. I especially look forward to letting the net-taker red states actually live the Ayn Rand fantasy they rave about. I can imagine how LBJ, whatever the statues say, would ensure that all the military cuts befell states that voted against him and especially the districts of members of Congress who defied him.

Do you ever wonder about the acts committed in our name and the blowback that will be inevitable? After all, Osama bin Laden didn't spring fully formed as a madman from the head of Jove, nor did the terrorist organizations that continue his work. While their roots are complex, one big cause is that America has spent decades meddling around the world in conflicts it ill understands and whose consequences we rarely think through. Bin Laden was one of "our S.O.B.s" in Afghanistan when we were trying to bleed the Soviets. So were Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Hosni Mubarak, Noriega of Panama and the House of Saud, the latter's extreme Islam helping radicalize the Middle East. What did we want? "Stability." Cheap oil. Anything Israel wants. No matter the long-term dangers or injustices inflicted on millions. When 9/11 happened, we were shocked, shocked. Aren't we always a force for good?

One feels compelled to quote John Quincy Adams at length about what America's role should be in the world: "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of
monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…She well knows that by once
enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…. Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind."

Now our march is the worldwide drone war of Mr. Obama. We kill whom we want, where we want, without due process, in violation of international law. Maybe we get a terrorist. We certainly kill women and children, too. Just another day as global hegemon. We could be leading the global effort to stop the worst of climate change. Instead, we're just bumbling imperialists. Someday this will come back on us.

A reader writes, "I'd like your take on the enduring value of MLK's contributions because
I don't think they're fully understood or appreciated. Falling on
inauguration day is (to me) poetic."

Yes, the second inauguration of our first African-American president is falling on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Most Americans, even black Americans, know little of King or the civil rights era. A better understanding can be gained by reading all three volumes of Taylor Branch's magisterial examination of America in the King years. And reading King's collected speeches and writings. Otherwise, this holiday remains a proxy for feel-good idiocy based on a few lines of the "dream speech," a magnificent piece of rhetoric but one that barely grazes the surface of the man and his message.

King was not alone in killing Jim Crow and achieving basic rights for all Americans in the 1960s. Students and sharecroppers seeking to register blacks or integrate buses and lunch counters were bludgeoned and sometimes killed by racist Southern cops and white mobs. Among the survivors is Rep. John Lewis, who was a young organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and one of the Freedom Riders. Every American should know the names of such giants as Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Fred Shuttlesworth, A. Phillip Randolph, Ralph Abernathy and Whitney Young. The little girls who died in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. Lyndon Johnson, willing to lose the South to the Democratic Party (for a generation, he thought) in order to push through civil-rights legislation. All of these and more are the shoulders on which President Obama stands. But King, probably rightly, looms largest in the collective memory. Or at least a version of King.

Humans are cooking the planet into a nightmare out of a science-fiction movie. Nearly four years after the end of the Great Recession, America faces a permanent unemployment crisis, declining middle class, backward infrastructure and the prospect of years of anemic growth. The rich are more powerful than ever, with a historic share of national wealth; the same is true for the multinational corporations — but the wealth is not trickling down. Amidst these self-inflicted troubles, the Republican-controlled House is refusing to pay bills it has already approved. This is the essence of the debt-ceiling standoff. The House appears willing to flirt with, or even bring on default to get its way.

That way would be major steps to repeal the New Deal, Great Society and the domestic programs of the "Commie Dick" Nixon administration. Especially in their NRA-approved gun sights are Social Security and Medicare.

Such is the hostage-taking before which President Obama always bends. This time he claims he won't…blah, blah, blah. But a powerful block of Congress even discussing default is serious; this political dysfunction helped bring on the credit downgrades in 2011. Enjoy this relative stock rally while you've got it. As the debt-ceiling date draws closer, in February, markets will be turbulent. An actual default, which by its very nature would be disorderly, means worldwide chaos and potential depression. It would take the world's leading economy, and a government whose currency and Treasury bonds are the safest in the world, and flush it down the toilet.

Have you taken the Pew Research Center's "political typology" quiz? It's fascinating and frightening.

Among the twenty questions, I answered in the affirmative such ones as "Government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest"; "The growing number of newcomers from other countries strengthens American society"; "Relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism," and "Hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people."

In answering yes to questions about too much power being concentrated in in the hands of a few large companies and corporations making too much profit, I am simply responding to well-known facts about consolidation, concentration and record profits as a percent of GDP while per-capita GDP remains below pre-crash levels. How else should one respond? A few of the questions are too simplistic, forcing answers about highly complex issues. Faced with one, I picked a strong military as the best way to ensure peace. Religion is a very important part of my life; I said so.

My results: I'm a "solid liberal" — along with 14 percent of the public.

I have been hesitant to write about the so-called fiscal cliff for many reasons. It's an over-covered topic, leaving readers in a zombie trance, even if most of the stories shed little real light. I subscribe to the Abba Eban doctrine: "When all else fails, men turn to reason." And the less elegant: Surely, they couldn't be this stupid. But it looks as if one of two things will happen: Either we're going off the cliff/curb/ramp, or President Obama will sell out the middle class safety net to get a deal.

The Bush tax cuts on the rich need to expire. In that word, "expire," we have the answer. They were sold with an expiration date, once already extended. The cuts did not perform as advertised. The Bush years, even at their best, produced the worst job creation and growth in modern American history. Inequality grew as the rich, following the rentier model, used their money to gamble in the $600 trillion derivatives market and other casinos, rather than investing in productive, job creating enterprises. Frankly, taxes elsewhere need to go up. Americans are the least-taxed among advanced nations. And we need carbon taxes and taxes on transactions, i.e. gambling by the Wall Street Boyz.

The sequester part of the cliff/curb/ramp is an artificial creation that grew out of the 2011 budget standoff, to put a gun to negotiators to reach a debt/deficit reduction deal. It could be repealed by Congress in a day. But it won't, so serious, "automatic" reductions will start on January 1. The Congressional Budget Office has warned this will cause a recession