Bounce Boxer!

To:-- San Francisco Chron

Re:-- The Resounding Failure of Barbara Boxer


I hope that Coakley gets soundly defeated and BOXER is next.

It is time for the American electorate to employ and for elected officials to experience PUNITIVE VOTING. Punitive voting is based on the very simply premise that politicians need to be punished precisely for giving us nothing to loose.

Boxer has been a disgrace. First off she's a hypocrite. On the same issue she sends me one type of response and sends a friend a completely opposite response. (Someone on her niche marketting team made a classification goof). Second, she ducks anything controversial. Tthe Chron's own reporters have told me she sneaks out the back door rather than face the (gasp!) press. Third she has kept mum during all the outrages & disgraces of the Bush years. Fourth, she has delivered ZERO on the progressive agenda

But you have to hand it to Boxer's "image consultant" - high rise turtle neck, wrist clasping cuffs, exquisitely streaked cascade of hair -- all blurring, hiding and blending away the sags and wrinkles of a 65 year old. She might almost pass for 40. Well done!!! IF ONLY she had spent a third as much effort on being a progressive. If only she had spent a tenth as much effort speaking out against Bush's depradations. If only she was something than a wannabe opportunist.

Americans need to stop being bought off with trickle-feed & fake promises. The people should demand that their will be respected, and the first step toward respect is FEAR. Vote to punish;

Sin Castigo No Hay Respeto

To:-- El Mundo.es

Re:--La Tración de los Demócratas

Todos los demócratas -- y por implicacíon Obama -- merecen sufrir una derrota total. Este partido de cobardes, aprovechados, vendidos y put@s traicionó totalmente a la promesa de una política "progresista" -- es decir social demócrata muy "LITE".

No ha hecho Obama nada mas promover la política de Bush. Medio Ambiente? Un desastre. Política Exterior? Tenemos a Irak + Afganistan + Yemen + Colombia con Venezuela en punto de mira-- y, sin decir, siempre con apoyo total al Estado Sagrado de Israel acompañado por silencio total ante el genocidio cometido en Gaza. Economia? La solucíon para todo consiste en regalar bultos de dolares a las grandes financieras y corporaciones *sin condición ninguna* -- Vamos, "Aqui ten, compa... $1,000,000,000,00 -- haz con ello lo que te da la puta gana. Quereis ver la solicitud? Vea aqui

En cuanto al paro? La solucion evidentemente consiste en permitir a las grandes empresas que declaren la bancarota para luego invertir en China! Justicia, Privacidad y Derechos Civiles? Ni comentar. El estado policiaco continua en pleno vigor, sin freno constitucional. Y finalmente, en cuanto a la sanidad publica? NADA, salvo una ley que obliga comprar seguro medico. Y en que queda la "reforma"? Ah pues, la reforma, el progreso, el gran beneficio es que la empresa tiene que acepter tu dinero y no puede negarte un seguro. (Claro puede cobrarte hasta mas alla del cielo, pero de eso no hablamos. Compra y callate.)

Una derrota electoral es lo de menos merecido por esta panda de corruptos e hipocritas. No importa que ganen los repulbicanos. Luego con ellos. Sin castigo no hay correccion, y sin respeto a lo voluntad del pueblo expresado por su voto no hay democracia.
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Vote to Punish & Face the Dawn

It is time for Punitive Voting. It is time to punish the Democratic party for their grotesque betrayal of the voters who elected them to office. It is time for Martha Coakley to go down to ignominious defeat and for Barak Obama to suffer a humiliating rebuke.

The concept of Punitive Voting was first urged on these pages back in September 2008[ here ]. The concept of punitive voting is very simple: If we lose, YOU lose.

If we do not vote to punish, then we, the electorate forsake any control over our elected servants. They will learn that they they can lie to us to our face, stab us in the back and get away with it because we can be bought off with razzle-dazzle and can be frightened into fear of a Republican victory.

But the democrats have proved to us that we do in fact have nothing to lose. We have nothing to lose because they produced nothing. A Democrat majority produced no more than we would have gotten from a Republican congress. The way I see it, if you act like a Republican you should be treated like a Republican. We loose either way, so we might as well kick your sorry ass out.

In some ways the Democrats are even more despicable than Republicans. They sit smug and secure in the thought that our vote is assured because the alternative is "unthninkable". This cynical cant is much like a torturer saying that the pain can always get worse therefore we should be thankful he only hurts us less than he could.

But the truth is that at a certain level, all pain is the same and equally unbearable. That point has been reached. It is only necessary to grasp what a total, absolute, uncompromising failure the Democrat legislative record has been. The progressive agenda could not have been more soundly defeated than if 500 Newt Grinches had been elected to Congress.

It is unnecessary by now to recite the dismal record of Democrat and Obama betrayal. It has been a true stab in the back of the American people on every level and on every point from the environment, to civil liberties, to the economy, to perpetual war and, lastly, on health care.

The health care obscenity is paradigmatic. Obama and his 'crats rush about intoning that progress has been made, that now, at least, insurance companies can't reject applicants on account of pre-existing conditions. Oh praise da' L'od; his chariots they be a'comin. Well DUH -- if it is mandatory that we buy insurance, it follows that it is equally mandatory that the insurance companies accept our money. DUH, DUH and DUH. What's called "a piece of reform" is just the other side of a massive, forcible transfer of wealth from people's pockets into corporate coffers.

Take virtually any aspect of the Obama record and on close inspection it will be seen that what is trumpetted as "reform" or "incremental progressive progress" is nothing more than a rhetorical fig leaf over an actual neo-liberal and neo-con, pro-corporate, pro-war anti-people policies.

The only way to put an end to this is to put an end to the people who brought us to this; and this requires us to vote republican in order to punish -- and punish hard -- this smirking, smug, cowardly, democrat betrayal.

Back in '08 we chipsters at the Gazette did not push our call for punitive voting very hard. In fact, with the greatest scepticism and reluctance, we endorsed Obama's candidacy. We fully understood the perilous juncture to which the country had been brought. We also understood that the Neocon / Bush Cabal had so poisoned both political consciousness and discourse, that it was very risky for any politician to engage in a "frank and candid" protagonization of his contemplated policies. In our loins we grasped the determinism involved in any historical trajectory. America is what it is where it is and that calculus is fundamentally unalterable. Nevertheless, man can and must act as if he were free and a sort of patriotic decency dictated our endoresment and vote for a "hope".

That hope has now been most infamously betrayed... not in detail or in part... but wholesale with a frank hypocricy beyond precedent. It is time to punish the malfactors and teach them a lesson they will never forget.

We realize that it is a terrible thing to give up hope, and that most people will hold on to anything in order to hold on to hope. That is in fact precisely the cycnical calculus that underlies this Democratic Administration and Congress.

But the woodchippers would remind their millions of readers that the forsaking of one hope is simply the painful birth pangs of another. Voting to punish the ghouls within Washington's whitewashed sepulchre will be the first step in walking away from the political cemetery that this government has become and, with blinking eyes, to focus on distant but dawning horizons.

©WCG 2010

A Dream for Elena

I found myself in Venezuela-Gaza, standing on a hill in Jerusalem from which the path ran down through narrow old streets that turned into a modern jumble of hillside favelas and a plain view of urban disparities.

A group of student volunteers were meeting up in a cavernous rectangular hall dating from Crusader times and were discussing things as they got ready to adjourn. Leaving them, I walked out into the surrounding narrow grey stone streets that coursed like channels between walls of shops with colourful open displays .

There, I ran into Elena and her baby. Elena was sick, with some respiratory ailment. The baby too was sick, but his biggest problem was that he had no milk.

What to do? I talked to Elena. She was full of what at first sounded like excuses but which on closer listening were true statements of why she couldn't do anything, why her situation was helpless and hopeless.

I did some work around and got her either some medicine or some milk or something to cover herself with in the cold. She took it with a mute and fatalistic appreciation that bordered on indifference.

I went back to the gathering, and somehow discovered that Chavez had started a milk program. Everyone one in Venezuela would get milk! Five glasses for children, 1 for adults, and 2 or 3 for old people. It was right there, in black and white, on the form next to the check-boxes.

I ran back to Elena and told her about the milk program. The only thing was that she would had to pay a nominal sum -- in her case .32 cents -- in order to "qualify" for the milk grant. Elena was appreciative, in an empty way, for what was in fact an empty gesture. Yes, but she still didn't have the money or at least not enough to do it daily; so in the end what was the use? In the end it was hopeless.

I stood inside the ante-chamber of my gyms' sauna. In Spanish, a nurse-voice said. "It is critical to get to her now. If we get to her now at this stage we can do something, otherwise her condition will become chronic, even if we were able to manage it."

I went back to my room and wrote a letter/speech to Obama. It was the perfect letter distilling the truths of what had to be said and setting them out with clarity and convincing force and with no more nor less than what had to be said.

An aide tried to run interference, but I folded it length-wise and got it into Obama's hand. "Read it," I said.

A short while later, Obama convoked a re-gathering of the young volunteers. He told them that there were three alternatives:

The first alternative was denial; to negate the reality, with some sort of countering polemic.

The second alternative was to admit the reality and the need for change, but (as he hunched a little and ducked his head to the side) to "realistically" acknowledge our limits and do what we could within our limits.

The third alternative was to admit that one had been wrong, without varnish and rise to meet the reality without compromise

The No. The Yes But. The Yes!

The audience was more than enthused. I was overcome and crying. Elena and her baby were going to be alright. There was going to be a real change from now on out. I was crying for joy.

As I returned to my college dorm room, someone came running after me. Did I hear the speech? he asked excitedly.

"Yes," I said... "I wrote it."

"What?" came the reply, "Aw c'mon... don't be an asshole."

"No really," I said, as I fished out my copy, unfolded it and gave it to him.

In my dream I felt myself waking up, and I was happy for the new day I was waking up into.

Then I woke up.

-0O0-

We can always dream. but dreaming is not enough. We have to act on our dream, and therein lies the power of the pen.

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©WCG, 2010

An Apparent Economy.

Chipsters were never very good at algebra, but we excelled at geometry and, consequently, astronomy which, as everyone knows, is simply geometry in motion. We were particularly fascinated by Ptolemy, that genius astronomer of the 2nd Century whose great work, the Almagest, plotted the heavenly motions of planets and stars and whose calculations were so accurate they continued to be used by seafarers well into the 19th century.

Ptolemy introduced into my 17 year old mind a distinction I had never thought of before, or if I had, not very clearly. I knew that things could be disguised; that is, made to look like something they were not -- that after all was the whole point of Halloween when we chipsters scampered around the neighborhood dressed up as a human beings. But it never occurred to me that something could be other than what it actually was. For this stunning concept, we must thank Ptolemy.

Of course, as everyone knows, Ptolemy decided [yes, it was a decision] that the Earth was at the center of the cosmos and that the sun, planets and stars revolved around us. But that wasn't half of Ptolemy's genius. He also decided that since the circle was the most perfect of forms, the sun had to revolve around the earth in a circle. This made perfect sense, and from this premise, calculating where the sun would be next Tuesday would be a simple matter of counting the degrees per day around the celestial clock.

The only problem was that the sun was not where it was supposed to be next Tuesday. No, it was a little bit behind. To make matters worse, the following Friday, the sun wasn't further behind, but had mysteriously advanced forward by half a degree or so. The sun was playing games.

Ptolemy scratched his head and then had the stroke of genius, for which he will ever be remembered and honored by Man. He decided [sic] that there was a "real" sun which moved in a perfect circle, and a merely "apparent" sun which we saw to be further forward or behind and which moved in an epi-cycle around the circle.

As the epi-center moved around the center, the sun moved around the epi-center and this device explained not only why the sun was where it only appeared to be, but also enabled us to accurately predict where it would not really be.

Ptolemy called this "Saving the Appearances" and with ever increasing complexity and ingenuity he saved the appearances for all the planets and, in fact, for the entire cosmos.... at least the apparently visible one.

The Almagest is full of phrases like the "true sun" and the "apparent sun" or the "mean Venus" and the "actual Veuns" the "recession" of the Equinox and the like. I don't know who it was who decided that the "simplest proof is the most elegant." Ptolemy's proofs are far from simple and they are the very paradigm of elegance. Next to him, Copernicus and Kepler are dull, dull, snore, CLUNK.

Everyone should be required to study Ptolemy in order to understand how a premise will dictate a result and how a theory will self-validate and yet, from a certain point of view, be entirely wrong. I say this without intending to cast the least aspersion on Ptolemy for whom I have the greatest admiration and a certain affection. The problem concerns what we know, and how.

Given my background in astronomy, it is hardly surprising that my curiosity was pricked three years ago when a friend of mine, who is an investor, started complaining about how no one was talking about the "real economy."

"Real economy?" I asked with raised eyebrows. Was somebody ... Paul Krugman perhaps? ... out there saving the appearances?

"Yes, the real economy," my friend said with vehemence. No one has caught on that there are TWO economies out there: the corporate economy and the economy for the rest of us.

Gary's point had all the elegant simplicity of an epicycle, and it was, in fact, nothing very complicated. The government counts corporate earnings as part of the country's GNP. So, for example, if GM's profits are up, since GM is an "American" corporation, that contributes to the boost in "our" economy. But suppose, GM's earnings are up due to investments and earnings overseas, say for example, in China? How does this "boost" anything back home in the United States? GM isn't even required to deposit its profits in American banks, but can salt them away in a box in Dubai. What has any of this to do with you and me?

Nothing! Gary said, with a grousing air of annoyance before going on to belly-ache about the falsehood of labels and how "American" corporations were allowed to import duty free products apparently manufactured in China because they were really "made in the U.S.A."

For three years, my friend has been complaining about the economic fraud being perpetrated and about a press that aids and abets corporations that are literally gutting the country alive. Starting six months ago, Gary began complaining that corporations were "now" even shipping their capital overseas. "Soon there will be nothing left! And Americans are too damn stupid to see what is taking place right under their noses."

We at the Gazette have done our part, and have passed along Gary's wisdom to the High Mucky Mucks at the Times and other pillars of the Fourth Estate; but to no avail. Like Henny Penny's more optimistic cousins, the press runs about headlining "Corporate Earnings are Up!!!" "The Recession is Bottoming Out" ... before going on to say, without really thinking much about it, "although 'it is expected that' it will be a jobless recovery."

Oh, rejoice. "Yes, we have no bananas."

Finally, the other day, Robert Reich, who is at least as savvy as our friend Gary, published an article in which he acknowledged that what was good for GM was not necessarily good for America. In an article entitled, The Bad Job Numbers and the Secret Second Stimulus Reich writes,

"American companies are more profitable, to be sure. But there’s a massive disconnect between profitability and employment."

Meanwhile, GM's CEO announced cheefully, that the company had turned the corner, that profits were expected to be up, and that the stodgy Buick was selling like hot cakes in the booming middle class market in China. Of course, the UAW took it in the nose on health care and pensions, but hey, the Recession is over! We have positive GNP.

Since the end of the World War, the U.S. has been a fabulously rich country; and it still is, if capital assets are counted. But everything is finite, and anything can be depleted.

Robert Reich calls for more "stimulus" spending to create jobs (at home). But that is no longer a viable solution, particularly under Obama, whose Neo-Trickledown© economics [ here ] have simply consisted in throwing public money at private corporations without strings attached. (It's called "hope" ...dude.) It is too late for that. What is needed is outright nationalization of corporate assets so as to keep them here and repatriation of jobs which have been exported overseas.

Most people have realized for at least a decade if not more, that the U.S. was shipping its productive capacity overseas. But they suffered a disconnect in not seeing that this ultimately impacted on national wealth. It was simply taken as axiomatic that if cheaper overseas production boosted corporate profits at home that was "good for America." How so? According to Clinton, America benefitted by being turned into the world's financial file cabinet as Americans were "retooled" for "good paying jops" in the paper-shuffling "service sector".

Well it did not work out that way, and even in terms of trickledown, there was real trickledown (the kind that led Henry Ford to pay his workers $5.00 a day) and apparent trickledown (the kind that witches and wizards like Greenspan conjured up from their bubbling cauldrons).

We are being gutted under our very noses, and still the country does nothing. It is more enthralled by the Leno-Conan debate over who will reign in our insomniac hours.

Ridet et moritur. Ridet et moritur.

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Fathomable Contexts

According to Ha'aretz, film director, Oliver Stone has the world "up in arms" over a new documentary that tries to put Hitler and Stalin -- the Evils of Evil -- into context. "You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate," Stone is reported to have said.

Stone is perfectly right, which is why I've always said that most of what passes for history -- "Hitler" included -- is myth. Manichean myth, in fact. As I result, I usually end up provoking gasps of incredulity as I reproach the unassailable and defend the indefensible.

Why, just the other day I rode to the defense of Stalin. I forget exactly how the topic came up, but a friend of mine made a remark that just assumed that Stalin was rock solid, certain "bad".

"Whoooa... wait a minute, wait a minute," I said, "you gotta put things in context.... Stalin was a great man."

Arrested silence.

Stalin faced a cruel, historical choice. It is usually said that Russia was "medieval". No such luck. What we call "medieval" was pre-national but certainly not primitive or incompetent. In all respects, medieval Europe had a vibrant cultural and economic life that involved most of civil society. As for dumb serfs -- what civilization doesn't have dumb serfs? Russia, on the other hand was lumpen. One ought not to exagerate here, either, but on the whole, Russia subsisted in a pre-industrial, pre-urban state ... one that was enviously rich in natural resources. What was a despot to do ?

Russia was flanked by industrial power houses whose economic engines demanded resources. And behind these lay Britain and the United States, always hungry for a bargain anywhere. The expedition to Archangel had shown what they could be counted on. If only for her own defense Russia had to bring herself up to industrial snuff. But not only for defence. If the masses of Russians were to be lifted out of the bog of their existence, what alternative was there but to become like Germany, the United States, France, England?

However, each of these countries had had at least two hundred years for their "industrial revolution" to unfold. Only an imbecile would think that this revolution unfolded without leaving a trail of intense human misery... of five year olds turned into cart-hawling beasts of burden in mine shafts, of women physically wrecked at 20, of millions working 16 hour days and eating bread adulterated with alum. These hardships were spread out over a century or more, and so appear to be less intense -- but they formed a Gulag of Misery all the same.

The Soviety Union had to.... well.... take a Great Leap Forward and accomplish in decades what had taken the West centuries. Of course the misery was intensified. And not just misery. What the so-called Industrial Revolution actually required was a massive accumulation of surplus value. The working class was not reduced to foul and fetid levels of subsistence out of some sort of spite, but rather because that is how the capitalist system acquires "wealth". Wealth -- which manifested itself in the store fronts of vast warehouses of commodities -- had to be squeezed from somewhere. Thus, the cruel paradox for Communist Russia was that in order to modernize she had to pack 200 years of capitalist squeezing into 20.

Still, it was an astonishing achievement; and beyond astonishing when it is taken into account that the entire process was devastatingly set back by the Nazi invasion which levelled most Russian cities, scorched the country side and killed 20 million people. And still, 15 years later, Russia beat the U.S. to the punch and put a satellite into orbit. And in order to do that, Soviet Russia had to create from the nothing of ignorance and superstition an at least technologically educated working and managerial class.

When we take a step back and contemplate how the Congress of the world's wealthiest nation has quibbled and fumbled and managed not to provide universal health care to its citizens, Stalin's achievements are breathtaking.

"Leave it to you....." my friend laughed.

Well, this was not to deny that Stalin was something of a psychopath and that his system committed monstrosities. Nor is it to deny that much of the glittering material progress was spiritually hollow and environmentally devastating. It was only to put things in context.

As if by coincidence, the woman who had sheltered Anne Frank, died the other day. Needless to say the English speaking press carried the story, along with detailed accounts of how the Frank family had almost survived in hiding against "unfathomable evil" as the New York Times put it with an air of self-evidence.

"Unfathomable...." If something is "unfathomable" it cannot be comprehended or thought about; and if it cannot be thought about, it cannot be learned from but can only be trembled at in mute stupidity. That is not the path toward progress.

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Oh, Those Wacky Keystone Prosecutors

Leave it to Washington to end the year with a farce, as U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington ordered the dismissal of an indictment against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused in a politically charged 2007 shooting incident in Iraq. [ Report ]

Most of the press reported the story as one of prosecutorial bumbling. The creme de la creme of the Justice Department had stumbled and fumbled into compromising the Government's case by using the defendant's statements in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Sanction time!

But Judge Urbino's findings, upon hearing, were a little less comic. He found the prosecutors' explanations of their conduct to be "inconsistent," "extraordianary" and "implausible" Significantly, he did not say "off the wall."

"The only conclusion the court can draw from th[e] evidence is that ... the trial team purposefully flouted the advice of the taint team when obtaining the substance of the defendants’ compelled statements, and in so doing, knowingly endangered the viability of the prosecution.”

In other words, the District Court found that the Department of Justice had thrown the case

Throw a case against Blackwater? How could this be? The answer reveals the nature of the dark comedy that passes for American Justice at the turn of the millenium.

As anyone who has ever watched a COPS show knows, the Constitution prohibits self-incrimination and neither police nor prosecutors can use statements made under duress or compulsion. No Miranda? Case out! Next!

Whoa! Not so fast. Almost immediately after Miranda was decided, the Court began back-pedalling, as the Burger and Rhenquist majorities conjured up every possible exception, limitation and defeasing circumstance they could think of. One such "exception" was the so-called inevitable discovery doctrine, the essence of which is stunningly simple: Hey, if the incriminating evidence would have been discovered disiregardless of the defendant's statements, who cares?

Who indeed? Not the Court.

Lawyers now had a new sand box to play in, as the courts fashioned rules, standards, and thresholds for determining independent inevitability.

While the Courts were coming up with creative ways to protect themselves from tainted confessions, Congress was busy passing laws requiring government agents and contractors to give full and honest accounts to their debriefers following any screw-up, malfeasance, scandal or crime. After all, it was important for the Government to get to the root of the evil, whatever it might be, in order to fix it. And this required full and candid and fearless disclosure by those most intimately and, dare we say, criminally involved.

But suppose whatever it was that was being investigated did involve criminal conduct. It was fairly obvious that statements made to investigators under threat of loosing one's job could not be considered "voluntary". (Garrity v. New Jersey Jersey (1967) 385 U.S. 493.) So then, did confession bar prosecution? For a moment the Government looked confused.

The Court was quick to help out. In Kastigar v. United States States, (1971) 406 U.S. 441 it turned to the inevitable discovery rule and held that, in cases involving administrative debriefings, a criminal prosecution could proceed if the Government proved that it made no use whatsoever of the compelled statements or that any such use was harmless less beyond any reasonable doubt. Enter "taint teams".

Obviously an investigator or lawyer who was aware that Jack had confessed to killing his girlfriend at 2.00 a.m. on a lonely back road in the wilderness of Montana after the two met up at the world's biggest most crowded mall in Winnepeg would have a hard time investigating the case from scratch without ever taking a "lead" from the confessed facts he was aware of. And so, in inimitable bureaucratic fashion, the Justice Department set up teams of lawyers whose job it was to keep other teams of lawyers in the dark, so that they could discover the truth by their own unaided lights and meet their burden under Kastigar.

One would have to be a veritable Pangloss not to realize that Government had managed to set up a double layer of protection for malfeasance in public service.

There may indeed be situations in which government has a bona fide interest in discovering the whys and wherefors of some systemic failure. Investigating "unauthorize killing" in occupation zones is not one of them. It is the height of bully boy cynicism to put on choir boy stoles and claim that a full and broad and detailed confession by Blackwater guards was needed in order to "understand" the "effectiveness" of our own rules of engagement.

The whole exercise simply allowed the guards to craft a confession-cum-defense that would heighten the difficulty of "inevitable discovery" of any key fact needed for conviction. And anyone who does not believe that Blackwater guards received "debriefing-instruction " as part of their training is a fool.

But Blackwater is the Government's darling. To make ultra-sure that no prosecution would ever see the light of day, the government's "taint team" spilled ink all over the damn place and in case that wasn't enough the "prosecution team" ignored whatever pro-forma or face saving "warnings" and "advices" the taint attorneys did deliver.

The Justice Department would have us believe, that their top attorneys on a high profile case were just a bunch of Keystone Prosecutors missing one another and bumbing into eachothers behinds. The whole thing falls into the category of Lucius' "boating accident" in I Claudius.

Is there anything in Washington that does not raise a stench to Heaven?

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