Electronic Pen

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Marvin Olasky, the 'godfather of compassionate conservatism'  claims that Gingrich went soft during President Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings in order to save his own hide.

He was once dubbed the "godfather of compassionate conservatism," which, while heavy on the conservatism, wasn't all that compassionate. Now, instead of dropping Norquistian-type bombs on a tattered social safety net that he helped rip to shreds, Marvin Olasky has decided play hardball with Newt Gingrich's presidential ambitions.

Back in the late 1990's, when then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was making his run for the presidency, he adopted a phrase Team Bush thought would soften his brand and appeal to moderate voters; "compassionate conservatism." Although some in the chatterati have argued over who was responsible for coming up with the term (in 1979, Doug Wead, a former advisor to George H.W. Bush and counselor to Dubya, gave a speech titled "The Compassionate Conservative"), much of the credit has gone to Marvin Olasky.

Olasky, currently the editor of the conservative evangelical weekly magazine World, sealed the deal in 2000 when his book titled Compassionate Conservatism: What it is, What it Does, and How it Can Transform America, was published.

Even at its height, however, "compassionate conservatism" was never really about compassion, especially for the least among us. At the heart of Olasky's argument was an anti-government animus that maintained that the federal government and state governments should play less of a role in supporting a social safety net, and instead, that role should shift to local charities and faith-based institutions.

Well, it's more than a decade later and there's little in the way of "compassion" left in the conservative movement. So little in fact, it has caused Olasky, along with Watergate felon Chuck Colson and others to criticize the Ayn Randian druthers of the Tea Party/Republican Party. For now, however, Olasky has put his old friend Newt Gingrich in the crosshairs.

By now, anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention to the GOP's presidential sweepstakes knows that Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is going nowhere. He may hang in there to sell a few more books and DVDs, but for all practical purposes, it's curtains for Newt.

In the June 18 edition of World magazine, Marvin Olasky piled on -- adding the triple exclamation point to the revolting developments that have surrounded Gingrich's run for the presidency -- by rehashing the story of Gingrich's shrinking role during Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings.

The World article, titled "Has Newt Gingrich changed?" (http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18131), has been largely overlooked by the mainstream media; it was brought to my attention by a recent Esquire column by John H. Richardson. In "Has Newt Gingrich changed?" Olasky claimed that during Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings, the then Speaker of the House met with President Clinton, and Clinton intimated that he knew about Gingrich's indiscretions and would use them if Gingrich got overly involved during the impeachment process.

By way of introducing Olasky's Gingrich story, Richardson pointed to the interview he did last year with Gingrich's former second wife, Marianne -- her first since Gingrich had "dumped her for another woman - the woman [Callista Bisek] who would become his much talked-about third wife and accompany him for his run for 2012" (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/marianne-gingrich-behind-the-scenes-081010).

Richardson pointed to a part of his interview with Marianne where she recounted a conversation she had with Newt about his having received a phone call from Clinton summoning him to the White House. Gingrich went to see Clinton - going in through "the back door to the Oval Office" - Newt recalled. Newt then told Marianne that "during that meeting, Bill Clinton said to me: 'You're a lot like me, and here's why.'" Marianne noted that, "he wasn't talking about another woman. He said he couldn't tell me. That's why he had to walk."

World teases Olasky's Gingrich story with a provocative sub-head: "Questions about the past: Did Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich have secret meetings prior to Clinton's impeachment hearings? How wide was the knowledge of Gingrich's extramarital affairs? Did Clinton know? Did Clinton's knowledge affect Gingrich's actions? The question for the present: What does Gingrich's conduct then, and the way he has dealt with it, tell us about him today?"

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Why did the right wing react with such ferocity to the Newsweek cover that featured a photographic portrait of Michelle Bachmann with "crazy eyes"?

The Republicans have packaged candidates for TV for decades and know the importance that appearance has over substance. Progressives tend to laugh at Bachmann's outrageous inaccuracies (watch this video compilation for examples).

However, in the television age, how a candidate appears on TV in terms of confidence, presence and reassuring personal image is of extreme importance, whatever their factual errors and even ignorance. No television image packaging represented this more than the Reagan campaign and presidencies. Like Bachmann, off script Reagan was often laughably factually inaccurate.

Bachmann, in general, has a positive television presence, even when she is spouting whoppers such as stating that the Revolutionary War began in New Hampshire or mistaking John Wayne Gacy for John Wayne. To the reptilian lizard mind, she is generally emotionally appealing and upbeat in her packaged TV appearances. In fact, she has a much stronger TV presence than Sarah Palin, who makes even some of her followers a little bit nervous with her edgy twang and often fumbling interviews.

So, it's worthy of note that a recent MIT study reaffirmed the importance of appearance and personal chemistry on television:

Frequent TV viewers who don't get any kinds of other political news are the voters most likely to be influenced by a candidate's physical appearance, a new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study shows.

"Voters who watch a lot of television but don't really know much about the candidates besides how they look are particularly susceptible," Chappell Lawson, coauthor of the study, told MIT News.

In fact, among uninformed viewers, the study estimates that "there was a 5 percent increase in support for that [high television chemistry] candidate from uninformed voters who said they watch a lot of television." That's a significant advantage in any election.

That is why the radical supporters of Bachmann were upset that the Newsweek cover, which she posed for, took a chip out of her visual brand image. The MIT study "suggests that the effect of television remains present but diminishes as voter-information levels rise."

In short, ignorance is bliss for a Republican candidate when it comes to modern-day television campaigns. And Michele Bachmann is counting on a lot of that know-nothingness in Republican primary voters.

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

With a big question mark hanging over the health of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, many in Washington may see opportunity.  Though Chávez initially claimed that he was merely suffering from a "pelvic abscess," the firebrand leader subsequently conceded that he had cancer.  In a shock to the nation, Chávez announced that he had a tumor removed during a sojourn in Cuba, and that he would "continue battling."

Reporting over the past several weeks suggests that Chávez might be in worse shape than has been commonly let on.  Though he returned to Venezuela after his operation in Cuba, Chávez recently announced that he would pay yet another visit to Cuba in order to undergo chemotherapy.  The firebrand leader, however, still refuses to reveal what kind of cancer he has or its severity.  Ominously, one medical source reported to Reuters that Chávez's cancer had spread to the rest of his body and was in an advanced stage.

It's unclear how the president's shaky health might factor in the nation's upcoming 2012 election.  The populist leader, who has closely identified himself with the so-called "Bolivarian Revolution," has never shown much interest in grooming a successor within his own United Socialist Party of Venezuela or PSUV, and so if Chávez should falter it is easy to imagine a scenario in which much of his political project could unravel or be derailed by the right.

The Caracas Cables

Judging from U.S. State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks, many American diplomats, including former ambassador in Caracas Charles Shapiro, would view this outcome as highly desirable.  In 2004, two years after the Bush administration aided the rightist opposition in its short-lived coup attempt against Chávez, Shapiro sat down with Alí Rodríguez, the head of Venezuela's state-run oil company PdVSA.

In light of Washington's meddling, Rodríguez might have assumed a bellicose attitude but according to correspondence the Venezuelan was courteous and unassuming.  Seeking to calm tensions, he urged a "dose of pragmatism."  Shapiro, however, shot back and complained of Chávez's alleged authoritarian streak as well as the president's verbal attacks against Bush and threats to suspend oil shipments to the U.S. Two months later, a "troubled" Shapiro warned his superiors that PdVSA, which had been involved in Chávez social programs, was in danger of becoming a "social welfare agency."

If another 2006 cable is any indication, there was no love lost between the U.S. embassy and Chávez.  In a lengthy rant, one diplomat noted "We have to maintain our careful restraint to the rhetorical provocations as well as a steady public diplomacy effort to offset Chávez' insidious effort to teach Venezuelans to hate us."

A full three years later, by now in the Obama era, U.S. officials openly complained of harassment.  The Venezuelans, claimed one diplomat, had called for new procedures which compromised the ability of embassy staff to receive classified escorted diplomatic pouches.  Things got so bad that at one point Venezuelan officials denied an embassy officer access to a classified diplomatic pouch at the airport.

The Americans responded hotly that "we were no longer in the 18th century and diplomatic correspondence required machines such as computers that would be compromised if they were at any time out of the control of our diplomatic personnel."  The Venezuelans countered that "the US did not extend privileges such as planeside access to foreign diplomatic couriers in the U.S." After a tense "standoff," the Venezuelans finally agreed to return the pouch uninspected.

The Kirchner Connection

Elsewhere in South America, U.S. diplomats monitored Venezuelan influence with relentless zeal.  "Chávez's outsized ambition," noted one official, "backed by petrodollars makes Venezuela an active and intractable U.S. competitor in the region."  In 2007, the Americans openly fretted that Chávez might upstage an upcoming Bush visit to Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia.  The Venezuelan, it was feared, could stir up anti-American sentiment by flying to Buenos Aires where he could count on sympathetic allies.

"Venezuela's embassies abroad actively promote, fund, and guide left-wing Bolivarian circles of persons sympathetic to Chávez' anti-American foreign policy," noted one diplomat, adding that "Chávez has almost certainly asked Venezuelan embassies in the region to generate protests against the President's visit, just as his government organizes such protests at home." According to "sensitive reporting," the Caracas embassy believed that Chávez was "providing direct support to organize anti-American protests in Buenos Aires."

Argentina, under the stewardship of President Néstor Kirchner, was of particular concern to the Americans.  Though Kirchner had sought out a "more independent line," the peronist politician nevertheless followed an economic strategy that envisioned closer commercial and financial ties to Chávez.  Also worrying was Kirchner's growing military collaboration with Chávez, with Venezuelan officers having a "presence" in the Argentine Army and Air War Colleges.  What is more, the Venezuelans even briefed the Argentines on the concept of "asymmetric warfare."

Southern Cone Conundrum

Over in neighboring Brazil, the Americans were also paranoid about Chávez's rising influence.  In response to a detailed questionnaire sent by the State Department, U.S. ambassador to Brazil John Danilovich warned his superiors that Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva's Workers' Party had organized a "Simon Bolívar Action Group" in solidarity with Venezuela.  Moreover, members of Brazil's landless movement, known by the Portuguese acronym MST, traveled to Venezuela where they reportedly met with Chávez personally.

In addition, Danilovich and his associates were concerned about the Venezuelan ambassador in Brazil, a diplomat who was involved in drumming up support for Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution.  In 2003, Danilovich devoted considerable time in tracking the Venezuelan's movements and activities in and around Brasilia.  The paranoia over Chávez was so pronounced that Danilovich even saw fit to draw his superiors' attention to a University of São Paulo conference which discussed the Bolivarian Revolution.

Chávez however faced a very different political reception elsewhere in the Southern Cone.  In theory, noted U.S. diplomats, Chilean socialist president Michele Bachelet had "a certain ideological sympathy" for Chávez, but on the other hand she was "also a pragmatist who recognizes that Chile's successful free market economic policies and stable democratic political model is preferable to what Chávez offers."  In 2007, U.S. diplomats reported that Chilean Army Intelligence was actively monitoring the Venezuelan Embassy in Santiago and keeping tabs on Chávez's funding of Bolivarian and leftist groups.

In Chile, however, the Americans were worried about Venezuelan influence.  They were in fact so concerned that they followed the arrival in Santiago of one Aram Aharonian, the executive vice president of TV channel Telesur.  In 2005 Aharonian [who I discuss in more detail in my book] traveled to Chile to promote his station, which had received funding from the Venezuelan government.  In other cables, U.S. officials clearly saw themselves in a media and propaganda war with Chávez who they viewed as an ideological threat.

Even in tiny Uruguay, U.S. diplomats intently monitored what Chávez was up to.  Though Venezuela's influence was "not yet great," officials fretted that Chávez "shouldn't be underestimated.  Money talks [and] democratic institutions in the region are still weak and free market economics have yet to provide consistent solutions to the Southern Cones social and political ills."  In a paranoid aside designed no doubt to raise the red flag in Washington, the Americans noted that President Tabaré Vázquez's security detail was run by his brother Jorge, himself a former guerrilla fighter who allegedly recruited leftists from a local labor union.  The service agents were then trained in Caracas or Havana.

Diplomats added that "it is clear we need more (and more flexible) resources and tools to counter Chávez's efforts to assume greater dominion over Latin America at the expense of U.S. leadership and interests."  Though Uruguayan president Tabaré Vázquez was a centrist, Chávez was poised to make political inroads in the country because Uruguay had a heavy debt burden and no known hydrocarbon deposits.  "As such," diplomats explained, "Venezuelan oil and money could prove tempting as part of a bid to boost the economy."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

BuzzFlash at Truthout proposed the other day that corporations should have their taxes increased to the highest possible level. But they could reduce those taxes dramatically: by proving that they have created jobs in any tax year and getting a tax credit for each new position.

There's only one very significant catch: the jobs must be created in the US, not overseas. If employers maintain their current workforce in America, they would also receive a tax credit. If businesses move jobs overseas, their taxes get raised higher depending upon the percentage of their workforce that is offshored.

Sounds like a sensible proposal. Create jobs in America and pay fewer taxes; move jobs overseas and pay higher taxes. Now this is where the rubber meets the road in determining who is really a domestic "job creator."

There is ample evidence that increased tax breaks for large corporations lead to two primary things: 1) expanding their workforce overseas, and 2) reducing their employees in the US and sitting on the profits. The stagnating unemployment crisis in the US is a testament to that.

An article in the Atlantic magazine from earlier this year provided ample evidence of this. Entitled "The Rise of the New Global Elite," it included the real "job creator" outlooks of the American global corporations. It noted the perspective of a US-based CEO:

The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world's largest hedge funds told me that his firm's investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today's economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn't really matter. "His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade," the CEO recalled.

Similar sentiments abound in the article. Thomas Wilson, the CEO of Allstate put it bluntly: "I can get [workers] anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business ... American businesses will adapt."

No, large American corporations are not creating jobs in the United States to any great extent, nor will they in the future.

They should be taxed to the fullest extent possible until they start producing employment here in the USA.

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ROBERT CREAMER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Standard and Poors' downgrading of the US treasury bills - and its sanctimonious lecture about its "concerns" that the U.S. won't get its fiscal house in order - are like a reckless, drag-racing teenager teaching a safe driving class.

Wall Street in general - and Standard and Poors in particular - have done more to contribute to America's budget deficit than anyone else in America.

This is the same firm that maintained their AAA rating of the mortgage-backed securities that were being used to gamble on Wall Street right up until the time that Lehman Brothers collapsed and set off the global market meltdown.

Their reckless disregard for any modicum of due diligence in determining the soundness of the financial instruments traded by Wall Street allowed the speculative bubble that caused the Great Recession to grow and ultimately explode.  The US Gross Domestic Product has yet to recover to pre-meltdown levels.   That is the single greatest contributor to the all of the increases in the budget deficit that have happened since.

And of course it is directly responsible for the jobs deficit that is the real underlying disease afflicting the American economy - directly costing eight million Americans their jobs.

But that's not all.  The big Wall Street banks lobbied for years to deregulate their operations.  That lack of oversight - including lax regulations of rating agencies like Standard and Poors -- led directly to the meltdown. And, of course, the big Wall Street banks did everything that they could to stop the Wall Street Reform bill that passed last year.  They continue to work hard to undermine the regulations intended to implement it.

And when it comes time to pay their fair share to reduce the deficit, Wall Street has done everything it can to lower tax rates on the rich to the lowest levels since before the Great Depression. Let's remember that the people with the highest incomes in America - hedge fund managers - pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries do - just 15%.

All the while as they pontificate about the need to get America's fiscal house in order, they twist arms to make sure that people like hedge fund manager John Paulson - who made $5 billion in income last year (that's $2.4 million an hour) - don't have to pay higher taxes.   Paulson had more income last year than the Gross Domestic Product of five nations.

Just a little over ten years ago, America had budget surpluses into the foreseeable future.  That was largely because President Clinton and the Democrats voted in 1993 to modestly increase taxes on wealthy Americans. Wall Street worked hard to roll back those modest tax increases on the rich by passing the Bush tax cuts ten years later.  Those Bush tax cuts,  together with two unpaid-for wars and an unpaid-for Republican Medicare pharmaceutical bill - tipped the Federal budget into huge deficits.

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RICHARD STITT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Forget all the details of what went wrong with the dysfunctional debt ceiling debate and how we got to where we are today. The fact is, Republicans, as Boehner was quick to say, got everything they wanted -- or at least 98%.

Now, instead of focusing on the immediate concerns of unemployment and a diving economy, Republicans will spend countless hours on passing a balanced budget amendment which, even if it is passed by two-thirds of the congress, will take months or even years to get three-fourths of the states to ratify.

The chances of getting unemployment down to 8% or less is considered impossible by most economic gurus. The accepted orthodox thinking by pundits like Chris Matthews is that no president has been reelected with unemployment at 8% or more. In order for that to happen (at least hypothetically) a minimum of 275,000 jobs must be added each month between now and the next general election.

So, if that's a slam-dunk truism then it should follow that Barack Obama will not be reelected and whomever the Republicans choose for their presidential nominee will enter the White House by default.

We can understand then why Republican/Tea Partyers are so euphoric over their chances. Given the "slam dunk" unemployment scenario, anyone, even a Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and who knows, even crackpots like Sharron Angle, Carl Paladino and Christine O'Donnell will see an opening since it has become axiomatic that ANY Republican will win the White House.

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Just when you thought things couldn't get any more dismal we had the inmates' version  of democracy in the congressional dustup over raising the debt ceiling. And in a follow-up distraction Republicans cost the government millions of dollars and left huge numbers of employees jobless at the FAA until a weekend band-aid provided a temporary solution.

In both cases conservative ideologues held up the decision-making process and made the rest of us listen to more lame pontificating about how serious our deficit problem is even as they drove us deeper into debt with an unnecessary and costly delay in voting to continue standard procedures that ensure airline preparedness and pay structure. One of the more ludicrous aspects of partisan-caused stalemates are conservatives attempts to assert they have been reasonable debate partners and have in fact offered to compromise.

On Sunday's Meet The Press Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, made the rather odd claim that putting 'Cut, Cap and Balance' on the table alongside Democratic proposals to address entitlement outlays was a compromise of sorts when it was of course just a reiteration of his party's original position. His twisted reordering of facts was a typical device conservatives use to thwart any sensible approach to problem solving. Perhaps in Tea Party circles his brand of illogic meets with approving nods but among people who know something about the issues at hand he is met with a kind of numbed silence.

It should be obvious by now that tax cuts and spending restraint alone haven't provided an answer to our fiscal .miasma. In fact economists in large numbers have warned against cutting spending too soon and continue to suggest that government needs to play a role in creating jobs and revenue enhancement. It is always difficult to prove a negative and conservatives continue to say the president's stimulus plan was a failure. But the truth is jobs were saved with stimulus funds but far too many tax cuts were also included in order to get Republican votes thereby diminishing the effectiveness of the overall plan.

The president foolishly tried to play statesman with people who have no ides what that term means. And he continues on this ill-advised path when he should be speaking out about Republican recalcitrance and articulating the failure of so many conservatives to understand the internal factors that influence an economy. When Republicans suggest hat across-the-board cuts of whatever amount be enacted, it should be clear this is a mindless approach. It may accomplish reduced spending, but  it fails to appreciate the effect blind-siding programs can have on local communities and on the overall economy. Eric Cantor's assessment of the poor jobs report in June hasn't changed his reticence to increase unemployment benefits. Republicans are always quick to lay bad economic news at the president's door but not nearly so quick to soften the blow to ordinary people.

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a guest on Real Time With Bill Maher, brought up the fact of how many members of Congress are lawyers and made an interesting point. It is a commonly used practice in debating circles to require participants to argue either side of an issue in order to hone their debating skills. The problem with this approach as a politician, however, suggests an absence of standards - - an ability to master sophistry not necessarily "what's right." As Maher pointed out, for example, private enterprise entities aren't concerned about creating jobs, they are interested in creating profits. So something has to trigger an impulse beyond the obvious corporate self interest.

Chris Matthews on his program talked about a tactic that could focus interest on a public works approach that would not only create jobs but boost the economy as well. If dangerous conditions on bridges and roads were repeatedly publicized it might not be so difficult to find the money to improve those situations. The public has seen bridges collapse but over time people forget; constant reminders would be well worth the trouble and expense of exposing our deteriorating infrastructure.

We seem to have lost some of that "yes we can" drive and become "palinized," and as Maher says "stupid people" speak out as if they actually knew stuff. Progressives should begin working hard to turn this state of the public mind around.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Over the past nearly forty years, David Green has turned Hobby Lobby http://www.hobbylobby.com/home.cfm), the privately held arts and crafts supply business he founded, from a small retail shop located in North Oklahoma City to more than 475 stores operating in 40 states that employ nearly 20,000 people. These days, its headquarters is a 3.4 million square foot manufacturing, distribution and office complex in Oklahoma City. As of March 2011, Green was listed at #440 in Forbes' World's Billionaires list (#147 in the United States) with a net worth of some $2.5 billion.

Not that the Green family is trying to keep it a secret, but probably unbeknownst to many of the tens of thousands of shoppers that go through the doors at Hobby Lobby shops around the country each day in search of a myriad of arts and crafts supplies, is that founder David Green, and his son Mart, are major donors to, stakeholders in, and benefactors of a number of Christian evangelical organizations and institutions.

When the Green family rides in to the rescue - as it has done frequently over the past two decades - it often comes with strings attached.

Rescuing Oral Roberts University from Oral Roberts' son's personal spending spree

Take the situation at Oral Roberts University:

A few years back, when Oral Roberts University's very existence was threatened by charges of excessive spending by Oral Roberts' son Richard and his wife Lindsay, Mart Green, the founder and CEO of Mardel Christian and Educational Supply (http://www.mardel.com/) and of Every Tribe Entertainment (http://www.everytribe.com/splashflash_content.aspx), and an heir to the Hobby Lobby family of companies, gave between $70 and 100 million to rescue the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based University founded by televangelist Oral Roberts.

According to a September, 3, 2008 report in Christianity Today, "In October 2007, the tragic unwinding of ORU's trust, reputation, and spirit began as three whistle-blowing professors filed a wrongful termination suit. They charged that Richard Roberts, president and son of founder Oral Roberts, and his board-member wife, Lindsay, misspent school funds, including $39,000 for a shopping spree for Lindsay, a $29,411 trip to the Bahamas aboard a university jet for one of the couple's daughters, and a stable of horses for their three daughters, among many other accusations."

According to OCRegister.com, "Hobby Lobby now runs the Tulsa-based University after putting $100 million into it," and Mart Green is chair of the ORU Board of Trustees.

At the time, Mart Green reportedly said: "When Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart had their situations, a lot of people suffered. When the Catholic priests had their situation, a lot of people suffered. If ORU goes down it affects all the Christian colleges."

A recent ORU News Release pointed out "the debt at Oral Roberts University has been reduced to just under $720,000. This new total is being announced along with a preliminary summary of the Renewing the Vision Matching Campaign that raised over $22 million from 15,796 donors.

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

He’s trying to ease the tensions now

Eager to get Parliament’s backing

(And secretly thrilled this new crisis

Is unrelated to any phone hacking.)

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The demand economy has collapsed for the vast majority of Americans. Jobs have been lost, wages have stagnated and the buying power of all but the wealthy dramatically reduced.

But if you are super-rich, according to an August 4 New York Times article, you "are (almost) spending like it's 2006: luxury goods are flying off the shelves, even with the economy staggering."

If you want to walk in the shoes of the ultra-wealthy, it will cost you a few weeks' wages (if you are lucky enough to have a job). According to The Times, "In 2008, for example, the most expensive Louboutin item that Saks sold was a $1,575 pair of suede boots. Now, it is a $2,495 pair of suede boots that are thigh-high."

While most of America struggles with the basic costs of living, even delaying medical care because of high health insurance deductibles (for those who have medical insurance), the rich are on a luxury item buying rampage. According to the Times:

Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering - they are zooming. Many high-end businesses are even able to mark up, rather than discount, items to attract customers who equate quality with price....

The luxury category has posted 10 consecutive months of sales increases compared with the year earlier, even as overall consumer spending on categories like furniture and electronics has been tepid, according to the research service MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. In July, the luxury segment had an 11.6 percent increase, the biggest monthly gain in more than a year.

With the ongoing DC subsidies of the most affluent Americans through tax cuts, America has moved closer to the class and income gaps that characterize third-world nations.

To paraphrase an old Nancy Sinatra song, "These $2,495 boots are made for walking, and one of these days these boots are going to walk all over you."

They already are.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Why don't corporations pay much higher taxes until they produce jobs in America?

After all, workers don't get paid until after they complete their jobs every couple of weeks or so. That's the way companies compensate employees.

So, why not wait to tax corporations at a lower rate until they prove that they are "job creators" in the United States - not overseas?

And every year, the businesses would have to prove that they haven't moved jobs to lower-wage nations, otherwise their taxes will zoom up again.

What Ronald Reagan said about the Soviet Union - "Trust but verify" - should be applied to American business, because they have gotten rock-bottom tax breaks and loopholes - but they mostly use them to increase their profit by employing sweat-shop labor in other nations. As trickle-down economics has played itself out over the last few decades, it has shown that lower taxes for the rich and corporations lead to a very large net loss of jobs in the United States, not an increase.

So, a BuzzFlash at Truthout reader suggested a simple solution. Raise corporate taxes high up, and apply a descending adjustment downward if a business creates jobs in America or doesn't fire employees and move jobs overseas.

Like workers, corporations should only be compensated when they get the job done, which is the job of creating work here in America, not in some far-away lands.

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They set the standard & we get poor.

That's the takeaway from the recent Standard & Poor's downgrading of America's credit rating.

After all, despite the ongoing collapse of the Wall Street/global corporation trickle-down theory, we are facing a job crisis which almost every well-known player in DC - except Jeremiahs and Cassandras such as Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi - virtually ignores. Even the White House gives only lip service to job creation, while accepting the basic frame of the Republican obsession with debt reduction.

How extreme a threat are we facing to the continued coring out of our economy except for paper financial wealth and the expansion of global companies overseas? Well, Eric Cantor - the majority leader and the most prominent Tea Party voice in Congress - is opposed to extending federal unemployment insurance because it would be "pumping up" the unemployed. That is his position despite the collapse of a demand economy in the US - and the fact that each dollar paid out in employment "generates two dollars of economic growth."

Yes, there are all sorts of things wrong with this first-time-ever downgrading of the US's ability to repay debts. Firstly, as financial analyst Naomi Prins bluntly points out, "S&P's downgrade carries a large dose of irony, since the extra debt the U.S. has piled on recently came courtesy of S&P's moronic toxic asset ratings."

All the major credit rating companies - and that includes Standard & Poor's - according to the movie "Inside Edition," were complicit in allowing Wall Street to sink the American economy by overvaluing the economic stability of banks "too big to fail."

And then there's the interesting twist that the credit rating decrease was done in part because Congress (i.e. the Republicans) wouldn't agree to additional revenues. As Thom Hartmann asks on Truthout,

Have you seen, anywhere, in any media, or even heard reported or repeated on NPR, the following sentence? "We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act."

It's right there on Page 4 of the official Standard & Poors "Research Update" - the actual report on what they did and why - published on August 5th as the explanation for why they believe Congress - and even the Gang of Twelve - will be unable to actually deal with the US debt crisis.

Ironically, and to the detriment of the nation's fiscal well-being, Standard & Poor's was curiously low-key about warnings when Congress extended Bush's tax cuts for the rich. And it misled investors by giving solid ratings to corporate economic bombs like Enron.

The one thing that the Standard & Poor's downgrade does indicate is that the US economy is in a heap of trouble, which Standard & Poor's and other major analysts helped create.

And what is slip-sliding away beneath the political positioning in DC on the deficit - and the downgrading itself - is that no economy can be strong without an economic engine that creates an infrastructure of jobs for its citizens.

Without consumers able to purchase goods and services, the nation is left with just a shell of an economy - and a small class of citizens who profit off of the nation's economic decline. Standard and Poor's is among that list.

Meanwhile, financial rating agencies set the rating standards for "creditworthiness," and the rest of us get poor.

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ROBERT CREAMER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

No doubt about it.  There is widespread disappointment among Progressives at the outcome of the debt ceiling deal. So where do Progressives go from here?

Right now in Europe politicians are struggling to avoid default that would lead their economies to collapse.  In the United States, radical right Republicans manufactured the same kind of crisis that Europeans are desperately trying to avoid, and threated to blow the entire economy to smithereens if they didn't get their way.

Their tactic worked.  Turns out in a game of chicken the guy who is most reckless has a huge advantage.

The President and Democratic leadership did a valiant job ameliorating the worst features the deal.  But in the end the negotiation was only about the size of the ransom.

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ROBERT CREAMER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

No doubt about it.  There is widespread disappointment among Progressives at the outcome of the debt ceiling deal. So where do Progressives go from here?

Right now in Europe politicians are struggling to avoid default that would lead their economies to collapse.  In the United States, radical right Republicans manufactured the same kind of crisis that Europeans are desperately trying to avoid, and threated to blow the entire economy to smithereens if they didn’t get their way.   

Their tactic worked.  Turns out in a game of chicken the guy who is most reckless has a huge advantage.

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In 1786, just ten years after the American Revolution, a large group of debt-ridden farmers rose up against local government and the wealthy businessmen who sought to maximize profits from their investments in our new country. Small farmers were losing their income and property to a few dozen powerful landowners. Ironically, "Shay's Rebellion" scared the founding fathers into lobbying for a stronger government against the threat of unrestrained democracy.

Today the great majority of us are in the same financial position as those farmers, and it's just as personal. We own less than our parents. Our college graduate children, burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in loans, can't find jobs. We worry about our Social Security and Medicare benefits as wealthy Congressmen tell us these long-time programs waste money.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

There is a false equivalency that comes into play when President Obama insists on presenting himself as a "reasonable" mediator between two political sides.

Since BuzzFlash was founded in May of 2000, we have lambasted many Democratic leaders for lacking strength and conviction. We have deplored that Democratic leaders, with a few exceptions like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich, repeatedly accept the far-right Republican-generated "conventional wisdom" as the starting point for negotiating public policy.

When President Obama, in an appeal to the so-called "Independent" vote, positions himself as straddling the middle ground between two equal sides, it is an abandonment of leadership that could expose the moral bankruptcy and manufactured bullying of the Koch brothers' (and like-minded billionaires') created "Tea Party."

President Obama implicitly and explicitly asserts that those who would protect Medicare and Social Security, for instance, are leftist counterparts to Ayn Rand followers who want to destroy the federal government and create free-market anarchy to replace it.

As BuzzFlash has stated many a time, the mythical "center" of public opinion is not some immutable set of public policies. America's strength has been its vigorous and inventive ability to evolve. Otherwise, we would still have slavery and women wouldn't be able to vote.

When the White House legitimatizes the radical notions infused into a segment of confused and frustrated Americans by "Americans for Prosperity," "FreedomWorks" (two perniciously euphemistic names considering their missions) and the entire right-wing media and think-tank infrastructure, it is providing them with credibility. Outrage is called for from the bully pulpit of the presidency, not equating advocates of programs for the elderly and poor with hateful radicals who want to drown government in a bath tub, after strangling it (as followers of Grover Norquist) - but keep their Medicare and government subsidies.

The 20 to 25 percent of the population that is holding America hostage has made Obama look weak, not strong. In his first administration, Obama held all the cards, but still folded on virtually everything but health care reform (and that, while having many good substantive insurance improvements, was a financial windfall for private health insurance companies).

The White House's attacks on progressives while showing respect toward the acolytes of Ayn Rand will not help the nation evolve into a clearer understanding of the serious action needed to save our economy and preserve our democracy.

It calls for the audacity of hope, an impassioned advocacy of a vision infused with the facts, not a "reasonable" legitimatizing of psychotic politics that threatens the ruin of our nation.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

'It's a wonderful step in the right direction. It's much better than anything we've been doing for the last 20 years," says Norquist.

In recent weeks, he's been called "the most visible mouthpiece and muse of the lower-taxes, less-government troops that have played a major role in the debt crisis," an "anti-tax zealot," and "an immensely well-connected player in the conservative establishment, a compatriot of the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and a magnet for corporate support."

Whatever one might think about Grover G. Norquist, one thing is clear; he has a set of strong core beliefs and he will use every means in his arsenal to achieve them. While pursuing those beliefs with breakneck speed these days, he recently took a moment for some post debt-ceiling debate comments: "It's a wonderful step in the right direction,' said Norquist, "It's much better than anything we've been doing for the last 20 years." Norquist added that, "We will never again walk into a budget deal with taxes on the table. Congress will never again raise the debt ceiling without cutting spending by the same amount that the debt ceiling goes up."

Now that the debt-ceiling battle has been fought and won handily by Republicans - thanks in large part to the Tea Party and Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, coupled with his insistence that anyone voting for any revenue increases that might be folded into a debt-ceiling package would be seen as pledge violators -- there are more battles coming down the pike.

Norquist, who heads up Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) (http://www.atr.org/), was, as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell often called him prior to the debt-ceiling debate, the most powerful man in Washington that you never heard of. However, if he was known for one thing, it was for his dictum: "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

These days, however, with his "Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge," signed onto by just about every Republican on the face of the earth, he has become a very well known Republican power broker. Maybe he's not yet a household word, but he's moving in that direction, as pre-debt-ceiling-agreement appearances on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox attested to.

Norquist targeted by right wing Islamophobes

But not everything is honky dory in Groverville. As I wrote just about a year ago, several major players on the Islamophobic right have accused Norquist of palling around with Islamic Fifth Columnists (http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributor/3601). Last August, on David Horowitz's frontpagemag.com, Ryan Mauro, the founder of WorldThreats.com, and national security advisor to the anti-gay Christian Action Network, claimed that Norquist was "likely a convert to Islam."

Another Mauro piece titled "The Ground Zero Mosque's Conservative Supporter," cited Norquist's apparent support for the building of a Muslim Community Center several blocks from Ground Zero, a project that caused quite a stir last summer.

Mauro pointed out that "Norquist has aligned himself with the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. that is supporting Imam Rauf [the initiator of the community center] and accusing his opponents of having 'Islamophobia' and having an anti-Muslim bias."

Gas tax set to expire on September 30

On September 30, "most of the 18.4-cent tax per gallon of gasoline [is] set to expire ... [and] renewing the tax could be the next political controversy to spark a brawl in an ever more deeply divided Capitol Hill," Byron Tau and Ben Smith reported for Politico on August 1.

According to Tau and Smith, "The federal Highway Trust Fund - the largest source of cash for mass transit and road improvements - is funded by the tax on fuel. In 2008, when high gas prices kept consumers away from the pump, the fund temporarily ran out of money, forcing Congress to appropriate an additional $8 billion to keep road projects on track."

"With the level of partisan vitriol and anti-spending sentiment at an all-time high, some advocates are worried that the nation's highway fund will be the next victim - while some conservatives sense an opportunity," Tau and Smith pointed out.

And wherever there's a possibility of a tax expiring, Grover Norquist is probably somewhere in the mix. "In general, ATR has always supported the idea of ending the federal tax on gas and having states pay for their own roads," Norquist told Politico, but Tau and Smith reported that "he declined to say whether he or his group plans to pressure congressional Republicans to let the excise tax expire." Norquist added that, "ATR would love to help begin such a dialogue," he said.

"You can already see how this issue could play itself out a month from now," wrote Doug Mataconis at OutsideTheBeltway.com.  "As it is the issue of increased energy prices is an easy one to demagogue with simplistic slogans ('Drill Baby Drill') and even more simplistic ideas ... [like the] idea of a Federal Gas Tax Holiday during the 2008 campaign...). ... It's not at all hard to see the argument over the gas tax being boiled down to the slogan Barack Obama wants to increase the price of gas. Given that renewing the gas tax is going to require affirmative action on the part of Congress (rather than legislation to block it) I'd already say that the forces that come out against it are going to have the advantage here, especially given the partisan make up of Congress and the difficulty of getting anything through the Senate."

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How strange and other-worldly were the cheers and applause that greeted Republican 'victories' in the House last week during the debt-ceiling intrigues - - and how dispiriting. The lesson learned we are told by conservatives is that the American people are hell bent on balancing the budget and shrinking government, unless when programs like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are threatened. Driven by the Tea Party movement whose shallow roots and one-note policies do little to move the country in a positive direction; that portion of the "American People" has stumbled into a leadership position it is totally incapable of handling with integrity.

No matter how angry many voters may be, no matter how disappointed they are that the enthusiasm generated during the Obama presidential campaign has failed to change the nature of our political system there remains a measure of hope that all is not lost. But Democrats and most particularly the president need to engage in a massive effort to educate the public. If they fail to do so the voices of unreason will continue to swing opinion and develop policies that lead us into an ideological thicket. Interestingly, in the debate just concluded, once the president began to explain what default would mean, opinion began to reflect a new understanding of the issues involved.

Unfortunately when one side is intent on obfuscating instead of elucidating in order to score political points, it is no easy task to keep the ship of state on an even keel. How often we are told by conservatives that the stimulus failed despite the fact that clearly it saved jobs and kept the country from sliding into a depression. And how many hysterics insisted they would vote against raising the debt ceiling because they didn't want to give the president a "blank check" obviously failing to understand we were obligated to pay debts already incurred, not take on new ones.

In an armed forces committee meeting, the majority insisted that defense spending was untouchable. And on the Senate floor Arizona Senator Kyl reiterated the familiar Republican talking point that national security would be compromised if the defense budget were on the table in discussions about reducing the deficit. Upon closer examination of how much we spend on armaments and deployments, however, it is clear that defense is probably one of our most bloated departments. And if, as one member of the committee said, our troop level is "stretched dangerously thin" that should come as no surprise. After all we have kept two wars going for longer than anyone would have imagined at the outset with endless deployments and no way to pay for them other than through a borrowing mechanism.

So on it goes - - conservatives talk about our national debt without paying appropriate attention to all its component parts. If defense is off the table and revenue sources are not to be considered, social programs assume a larger portion of our indebtedness. That is as Republicans would have it in any case. The way things are being parceled out at the moment a twelve-person committee is going to be left to deal with the problem of deciding how to achieve savings. But since Mitch McConnell has promised to only appoint Republicans who will not propose revenue enhancements and Democrats vow to protect entitlements it may come to pass that triggers could target defense expenses after all. It may sound innocent enough to say the country's fiscal condition would benefit from a constitutional "balanced-budget amendment" but the details of such a 'solution' could force arbitrary across-the-board cuts to programs without proper vetting.

The most frustrating aspect of the arguments in Congress was the foolishness the American people were asked to endure and the enormous waste of time legislators were forced to devote to what has been described by some as a "dangerous and unnecessary brink." And in another attempt to bring the president down important positions went unfilled and no jobs programs were put in place - - another month without significant progress in developing sound governmental policy.

There have been a number of attempts to define the nature of our national problems - - a spending problem, a revenue problem and so on. But commentator Laura Flanders had it right I think when she said we have a "democracy problem."

TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Now that global finances look just as bad

As they did back in 2008

Thanks, GOP, for getting this ball rolling

With your ginned up debt ceiling debate.

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SHAMUS COOKE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The debt crisis has been averted and people across the globe are breathing sighs of relief. But in the back rooms of Congress politicians are celebrating for a different reason. It's the kind of celebration that erupts when a group executes a complicated plan to perfection. The objective in this case was to strike the first blows against the national social safety net without encountering massive resistance. Mission half-accomplished thus far.  

Half accomplished because only half of the $2.5 trillion in cuts have been decided on. The other half will be sent to a bi-partisan committee where, according to the White House Fact Sheet: 

"... the committee will consider responsible entitlement [Social Security and Medicare] and tax reform [cuts to entitlement programs]. This means putting all the priorities of both parties on the table - including both entitlement reform [Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid] and revenue-raising tax reform."  

If the committee fails to agree on the cuts, they would be automatically triggered, and Medicare would be the target: "...any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side." This means that fewer doctors would accept Medicare patients or they would provide fewer services to Medicare beneficiaries.  

When it comes to cutting Social Security and Medicare, the Democrats are Republicans are only trying to get their foot into the door. Nevertheless, the potential cuts will have a massive impact on the millions of Americans who depend on these vital services. And if these cuts are allowed to happen unopposed, the possibility of future, more dramatic cuts is certain.  

Equally bad is that the budget deal makes the unemployment situation even worse. In writing about the effect the cuts would have on employment, a Moody's analyst predicted that:

"The deal announced last night calls for a yearly average of $240 billion in cuts over the next decade. Very roughly, that suggests the new plan would cost around 1.6 million jobs per year during that time. [!]" (August 1st, 2011). 

This noxious level of contempt for working people was the product of a manufactured crisis, with Democrats and Republicans playing along. How did Obama and the Democrats essentially push through the long-term objectives of the Republican Party? Author Michael Hudson explains on Democracy Now:  

"... There has to be a crisis. Now, in reality, there is no crisis at all. In reality, raising the debt ceiling has been done for a hundred years automatically. There is no connection between raising the debt ceiling and arguing over tax policy. Tax policy takes many years to work out. All of a sudden, Mr. Obama is going along with the charade of saying, "Wait a minute, let's create a crisis."... And Wall Street doesn't like real crises, so there's an artificial non-crisis that Obama is treating as a crisis so that he can put forth the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Commission to get rid of Social Security that he has supported all along." (July 22nd, 2011).  

Thus, it's not true that Obama was "held hostage" by the Republicans. If he told the country only half of what Mr. Hudson explained on Democracy Now, the Republicans would have folded instantly. If Obama would have told the country that the Republicans wanted massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, instead of purposely hiding these issues, Republican voters would have converged on Capitol Hill with torches and pitchforks. Instead, Obama went along with the charade; because in order for it to succeed, he was required to play a leading role in the drama. 

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