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Taking the Side of the Billionaires
America’s Right – from the NFL lockout to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget – side with the billionaires in what amounts to an escalating class war against the middle class and the poor
If American football fans end up facing a fall without NFL games, they probably won’t blame George W. Bush and other Republican presidents for packing the federal courts with right-wing judges, but it was two Bush appointees who reversed a District Court ruling that would have ended the lockout of players.
The Appeals Court judgment encouraged the NFL’s hardline billionaire owners to resist making the kinds of compromises that a few less intransigent owners recognize could easily resolve the impasse.
Now, the hardliners simply assume that Republican judges will keep siding with the NFL owners and thus enable them to beat down the players, eventually assuring the billionaire owners a bigger piece of the revenue pie – even if that means losing some or all of the 2011 season.
What many average Americans, especially white guys, don’t seem to understand is that whatever the populist-styled rhetoric of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, the Right’s default position is to side with the billionaires – and to show little or no regard for the fate of anyone else, whether NFL players or sick senior citizens.
Still, one must give the Right credit for having worked hard refining how to phrase its arguments. Right-wingers even have turned the term “class warfare” against the Left by shouting the phrase in a mocking fashion whenever anyone tries to blunt the “class warfare” that the billionaires have been waging against the middle class and the poor for decades.
On right-wing TV and talk radio across the country, there are tag teams of macho men pretending that ”class warfare” exists only in the fevered imagination of the Left. But billionaire investor Warren Buffett has acknowledged the truth: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
The right-wing propagandists further earn their keep by disparaging science as “elitist.” So, even as the dire predictions from climate-change experts that global warming will generate more extreme weather seem to be coming true, many Americans who have listened to the “climate-change-deniers” for years still reject the scientific warnings.
While no single weather event can be connected to the broader trend of climate change, the warnings about what might happen when the earth’s atmosphere heats up and absorbs more moisture seem to be applicable to the historic flooding in some parts of the world, droughts in others, and the outbreak of particularly violent storms.
Heat and moisture are especially dangerous ingredients for hurricanes and tornados.
Ironically, the parts of the United States hardest hit by this severe weather are those represented predominately by Republicans who have been at the forefront of obstructing government efforts to address the global-warming crisis.
Flooding, hurricanes and tornados have inflicted horrendous damage on Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri and Oklahoma – all part of the Republican base.
God’s Punishment?
If televangelist Pat Robertson were a left-winger instead of a right-winger, he might be saying that God is punishing these “red states” for doubting the science of global warming.
However, even as the U.S. news obsesses over the violent weather, mainstream media stars have steered clear of whether global warming might be a factor. It’s as if they know that they’d only be inviting career-damaging attacks from the Right if they did anything to connect the dots.
The Right also is not eager to explain how these catastrophes will require emergency funding and rebuilding assistance from the federal government. After all, you don’t want Republican voters to understand that sometimes “self-reliance” alone doesn’t cut it; sometimes, we all need help and the government must be part of that assistance.
In the case of the killer tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri, House Republicans, without a hint of irony, are extracting the funds for disaster relief from green energy programs, which remain a favorite GOP target since many Republicans still insist there is no such thing as global warming.
At both state and national levels, Republican leaders have lined up behind climate-change deniers, with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty just the latest GOP presidential hopeful to apologize for his past support of a cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing global-warming gases.
Any serious move toward alternative energies would, of course, be costly to the giant oil companies and their billionaire owners, like David Koch of Koch Industries who has spent millions of dollars funding right-wing organizations, such as the Tea Party. The Right’s media/political operatives know better than to bite the hand that feeds them.
GOP orthodoxy also disdains tax increases on the rich or even elimination of tax breaks for the oil industry. The Republican insistence on low tax rates for the wealthy, in turn, has forced consideration of other policy proposals to achieve savings from services for average Americans.
That is why congressional Republicans have targeted Medicare with a plan that would end the current health program for the elderly and replace it with a scheme that would give subsidies to senior citizens who would then have to sign up for health insurance from private industry, which has proven itself far less efficient in providing health care than the government.
The GOP budget, drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, would impose the Medicare changes on seniors beginning in 10 years.
Most attention on the Ryan plan has focused on estimates that it would cost the average senior citizen more than $6,000 extra per year, but the proposal also has the effect of privatizing Medicare, meaning that the government would make direct “premium support” payments to profit-making insurance companies whose interest is in maximizing profits, not providing the best possible care for old people.
While the Ryan plan would achieve budget “savings” by shifting the burden of health-care costs onto the elderly, Ryan’s budget also would lower tax rates for the wealthiest Americans even more, from 35 percent to 25 percent. Partly because of that tax cut, Ryan’s budget would still not be balanced for almost three decades.
Class Warfare
Thus, the battle lines of America’s “class warfare” are getting more sharply drawn. The conflict is now over the Right’s determination to concentrate even more money and power in the hands of the rich by hobbling any government capability to protect the people’s general welfare.
If the Right wins, individual Americans will be left essentially defenseless in the face of unbridled corporate power.
Ryan’s Medicare plan may be just the most striking example because it envisions sick old people trying to pick their way through a thicket of private insurance plans with all their confusing language designed to create excuses for denying coverage. It is not an exaggeration to say that Ryan’s tight-fisted Medicare plan could consign millions of Americans to a premature death.
The Right’s priorities hit home at a town hall meeting held by Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Georgia, when he chastised one of his constituents who worried that Ryan’s plan would leave Americans like her, whose employer doesn’t extend health benefits to retirees, out of luck.
“Hear yourself, ma’am. Hear yourself,” Woodall lectured the woman. “You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, ‘When do I decide I’m going to take care of me?’”
However, another constituent noted that Woodall accepted government-paid-for health insurance for himself.
“You are not obligated to take that if you don’t want to,” the woman said. “Why aren’t you going out on the free market in the state where you’re a resident and buy your own health care? Be an example. …
“Go and get it in a single-subscriber plan, like you want everybody else to have, because you want to end employer-sponsored health plans and government-sponsored health plans. … Decline the government health plan and go to Blue Cross/Blue Shield or whoever, and get one for yourself and see how tough it is.”
Woodall answered that he was taking his government health insurance “because it’s free. It’s because it’s free.”
Self-reliance, it seems, is easier to preach to others than to practice yourself.
Woodall’s explanation recalled the hypocrisy of free-market heroine Ayn Rand, whom Rep. Ryan has cited as his political inspiration. In her influential writings, Rand ranted against social programs that enabled the “parasites” among the middle-class and the poor to sap the strength from the admirable rich, but she secretly accepted the benefits of Medicare after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
A two-pack-a-day smoker, Rand had denied the medical science about the dangers of cigarettes, much as her acolytes today reject the science of global warming. However, when she developed lung cancer, she connived to have Evva Pryor, an employee of Rand’s law firm, arrange Social Security and Medicare benefits for Ann O’Connor, Ayn Rand using her husband’s last name.
In 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, Scott McConnell, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute’s media department, quoted Pryor as saying: “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out.”
So, when push came to shove, even Ayn Rand wasn’t above getting help from the “despised government.” However, her followers, including Rep. Ryan, now want to strip those guaranteed benefits from other Americans of more modest means than Ayn Rand.
It seems it’s okay for average Americans to be wiped out.
Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy
While the Right’s penchant for hypocrisy is well-known (note how many Republicans involved in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton had their own extra-marital affairs), the bigger mystery is why so many average-guy Americans volunteer to fight for the rich in the trenches of the Right’s class warfare.
Clearly, the Right’s propaganda with its endless repetition is very effective, especially given the failure of the American Left to invest significantly in a competing message machine. The Right also has adopted the tone of populism, albeit in support of a well-to-do economic elite.
Yet, perhaps most importantly, the Right has stuck with its battle plan for rallying a significant percentage of middle-class Americans against their own interests.
Four decades ago, President Richard Nixon and his subordinates won elections by demonizing “hippies,” “welfare queens” and the “liberal media.”
Then, in the late 1970s, a tripartite coalition took shape consisting of the Republican Establishment, neoconservatives and the leaders of the Christian Right. Each group had its priorities.
The rich Republicans wanted deep tax cuts and less business regulation; the neocons wanted big increases in military spending and a freer hand to wage wars; and the Christian Right agreed to supply political foot soldiers in exchange for concessions on social issues, such as abortion and gay rights. Ultimately, each part of the coalition got a chunk of what it wanted.
From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, the rich got their taxes slashed, saw regulations rolled back and gained a larger share of the nation’s wealth and political power. The neocons got massive military spending and the chance to dispatch U.S. soldiers to kill Israel’s Muslim enemies. The Christian Right got help in restricting abortions and punishing gays.
But what did the American middle-class get?
Over those three decades, the middle-class has stagnated or slipped backward. Labor unions were busted; jobs were shipped overseas; personal debt soared; education grew more expensive, along with medical care. People were working harder and longer – for less. Or they couldn’t find jobs at all.
With today’s Tea Party and the Ryan budget, the Right’s coalition is staying on the offensive. If the House budget were passed in total, tax rates for the rich would be reduced another 10 percentage points; military spending would remain high to please the neocons (who foresee a possible war with Iran); and Planned Parenthood and other pet targets of the Christian Right would be zeroed out.
Yet, with the proposed elimination of traditional Medicare, the Ryan budget has lifted the curtain on what the Right’s “free market” has in mind for most average Americans, who could expect to find their lives not only more brutish but shorter.
The real-life-and-death consequences of the Right’s tax cuts, military spending and culture wars are finally coming into focus. If you’re not rich – and can’t afford to pick up the higher tab on health care – you’re likely to die younger. Or your kids might have to dig into their pockets to help you out.
Less extreme but still troubling, another consequence of the Right’s remarkable success over the past three decades might become apparent on your TV screens this fall.
Thanks to all those right-wing judges packed onto federal appeals courts by Reagan and the two Bushes, American football fans might not have the NFL to watch.
The NFL’s lockout of its players seemed to be ending several weeks ago when a lower-court judge ruled against the billionaire owners, but the NFL’s lawyers confidently filed an appeal to a three-judge panel on the Eighth Circuit, knowing that they would surely get one dominated by Republican judges.
They did. Steven Colloton and Duane Benton, two Republicans appointed by George W. Bush, constituted the majority on the panel and reflexively sided with the NFL’s owners.
The ruling should have surprised no one. After all, the Right’s default position is almost always to side with the billionaires.
66 Comments so far
Show Allhttp://therisingriver.tumblr.com/
The beer and chicken wing lobbies are working furiously behind the scenes to insure the NFL plays ball in the fall. The paucity of intelligence is best illustrated by billionaires ability to convince the poor and middle that the former is on the side of the latter. Alas.
Concur - have always thought the greatest accomplishment of the Amerikan ruling classes has been their ability to convince the masses that the ruling classes occupy their social position purely as a result of hard work, superior intelligence, moral virtue, and flawless character. In most other countries that I know of the masses have always assumed the exact opposite was true.
"In most other countries that I know of the masses have always assumed the exact opposite was true."
It was that way here, but thanks to modern PR techniques, combined with ownership of the media and politicians, that's been reversed. This is no accident or freak of nature, but instead the result of relentless propaganda 24/7 for decades.
You'd think it would be cheaper for them to just get a tax hike of 5% than spending all these millions (or even billions) on PR. I guess they have a vision. Pity it's not going to come true. I hate to see money wasted like that.
i agree - the 6x teeshirt crowd stuffing big macs down their swollen throats supporting the cokeheads is a spectacle even larger than their bloated chest cavities
unparalleled ignorance
fuck the nfl - these leagues are welfare bums sponging funds off every city they work in
i'd like to see every "big" league sport shut down so that the alleged adults in fascist amerika could have a bit more time to worry about the fascist takeover of the country
as for fat boy limbaugh - the players wouldn't even let that quivering glob of guava jelly into the league - besides he is too stoned on his viagara and ocxcotin to even be coherent
Your comments/ reasoning are generally astute and challenging. But divisiveness is not supportive of the common good. Have a pet or a garden? Someone to hug?? Think we are all struggling from the poisons being dealt.
It is BOTH parties at fault here. Look at the exemptions that congress, their families and staff got regarding obamacare, Oh and I forgot, insider trading too...
How to Beat the Market: Follow the Trades of 19 Senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee Who Own Stocks on Prohibited List
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-beat-market-follow-trades-of-19.html
[snip]
Prosecution aside, please note that Martha Stewart went to jail not for insider trading, but for lying about it. Had there been no such laws (laws that Congress is exempt from), she would not have been prosecuted in the first place.
Regardless of how you feel about Martha Stewart, for Congress to be exempt from laws that apply to everyone else is simply unacceptable
"Yet, perhaps most importantly, the Right has stuck with its battle plan for rallying a significant percentage of middle-class Americans against their own interests."
This is the very definition of hegemony: the elite convincing the rest that what's good for the elite is good for everybody. Small government? Of course, the rich want small government -- especially if it's a government "of, for, and by" the people. And until government is small enough to drown in a bathtub, the rich will just purchase political representatives. We saw the consequences of this last weekend, when the joint congressional clapping seals performed for Bibi Netanyahu.
The NFL labor fight could unite the right and the left among the working class, if only some progressives would recognize this opportunity. Why should one man own a sports team supported by hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans? The fans own the world champion Green Bay Packers, so we know that we don't need the billionaires. So let's start eminent domain actions against all of the other 31 teams. All it would take is some vocal pressure on city councils and mayors, without any need for our corrupt congress. This could start a true people's movement for economic justice.
I notice he only mentions regresivepugs. Tony
"The game was created to demonstrate
the futility of individual effort.
Let the game do its work.
The Energy Corporation
has done all it can.
If a champion defeats the meaning
for which the game was designed,
then he must lose."
Rollerball
Great movie. My answer to the tyranny of the majority has always been "Tough Shit"
Very good summary on the devolution of the US into third world status. (Summaries laced with details and examples and specifics are very good in my opinion.)
Can the US exist indefinitely as a third world country after having been well above that for many, many decades? Probably not or definitely not, I'm not sure which. (I lean toward definitely not.)
So if the US can NOT indefinitely exist as a third world country, and given the lack of any political party representing the majority of people in the US, how does the US rid itself of the parasites that have laid it low into third world status and are gradually completely killing the economy and the society?
One possibility is that the US economy and society actually dies; the financial system which is the keystone of the US system completely collapses after the dollar collapses. The financial system collapsed and died in 2008 but was resurrected with taxpayer money. Now the elites want to recoup some of that money by denying taxpayers jobs, health care, education, and housing.
In that scenario the U.S economy (such as it is) has to be administered internationally for a number of decades, by "globalists". In that scenario, Americans will be willing to work for $3 an hour and so Chinese and other employers in other countries will move in and offer impoverished Americans jobs. Americans locked out of the labor market might eventually get a job from the Chinese government!
Another possibility is severe societal upheaval and unrest: mass demonstrations and riots etc. Then finally the elites may be forced to raise taxes on the very well off and to provide jobs, housing, health care, and education to at least most of the people most of the time.
Another possibility is that, belatedly, a political party that represents the majority is developed and takes power. There is no sign of it yet even though Robert Reich mentioned a new “People’s Party” recently, which was notable since Reich is a life-long Democrat and who was Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton.
Of course, if it turns out that the U.S CAN actually exist indefinitely as a third world country none of those resolutions would necessarily happen although they might possibly happen anyway.
Again, whether the U.S can or can not exist indefinitely as a third world country (once it actually truly and fully reaches that status) is unknown. Moreover, the US may devolve to the point where it reaches a “modified third world status” or “third world plus” instead of essentially full third world status. In other words, the US might be the new "second world" bastion.
In traditional third world countries the majority is very, very poor yet they don't revolt and they accept their very poor status meekly. Whether the vast majority of Americans would indefinitely accept that level and degree of poverty is unknown.
But at this point that the US is well on the way to third world status can not really be seriously disputed. At a rock bottom minimum the US is no longer competitive with the top tier countries which have avoided devolution into third world status with smart government policies, many of them progressive.
The only thing left for us to fight with is the little money we do have. We should go on a spending moratorium. No spending on anything but food and necessary clothing. Of course there are other necessary items but no upgrading cell phones, no foo foos for the home or person etc. We can train ourselves for when we have nothing! Because we are going to have to know those skills. It won't stay like that because we're smarter as a people and will lift ourselves back up. But if corporations' quarterly earnings sink through the floor, they will be much more malleable to our demands. This sounds like pie in the sky I know. But we have to realize we are many, they are few and we do have power. They know this too and it doesn't give them comfort I'm sure. Just don't give up because that way of thinking is debilitating. We can be healthy and strong and laugh a bit at the same time (laughter can be the antidote to the toxic political environment). All I'm saying is - no whimpering. We can handle them. They're cunning like jackals and good image-makers but they're not very smart. Their policies and schemes are unsustainable and anything that is designed unsustainably is not smart design.
It's the "New World Order" Bush was talking about. we voted for it..... we got it..... the end!!!.
It's the "New World Order" Bush was talking about. we voted for it..... we got it..... the end!!!.
The truth is that money talks and only the rich can be heard in U.S. courts or by the Manhattan Attorney Admiration Society, led by Sol Zepnick, who hired me in 2009 to work on his back-slapping, backside-licking, self-published peon to the greatness of lawyers. At first, he said a handshake was good enough for the $80 an hour work, helping him develop, write, and edit his book. But, after working with 80-100 of the Society's members for nine years at the NY Law Journal, I said I wanted to be paid each time I entered his house for work done that past week. Each invoice said so in writing. I have them, here, on my table. One day, Zepnick, who lives in the gated community of Fieldston in a $2 million house, called my work a mess and refused to pay, so I walked out. Truth is he didn't like my pushing for an actual point of view to the book besides backside kissing, so he likely finished the book and used my money to self-publish it. I'm sure he saw me as a peon or serf-in-the-making for his elite group of old white boys in Manhattan, and no longer wanted to be bothered with me. His voice turned cold. No longer the kindly grandfather. So the little people have turned to the Internet while they still can. My attempts to get Zepnick to pay $1,400 he owes me--even though he is likely worth much more than $2 million, and my wife and son have no savings, retirement fund, health insurance, aid for my son's speech delay, and barely enough for rent in checking--have fallen on arrogant ears or been made impossible by the logistics of getting to court for an unemployed man. Once you become unemployed, the wealthy drop you like a hot potato--even if they are affluent lawyers, "professionals," sworn to ABA standards, "class" acts. You are of no use to them. When "close" friends for nine years while I worked for the dog-on-a-leash-of-the-city-bar NY Law Journal, and the likes of Cary Peynolds, Posh Jeck, Schil Phatz, or Scathy Kott don't need you, after pursuing you to pad their treasure chests, it's the unanswered emails and phone calls that wear you down. You can't believe it, coming from farm country Minnesota where a human's word was his reputation. It's the corporate-legal inhumanity of "Nothing personal, you understand, it's just business." No, I don't understand. We must speak civilly. Verbal abuse cuts as deep as physical abuse. When the Internet--you can bet your law firm on it--no longer is in play for middle and lower classes to let off steam, they will stew in front of their TV sets watching a U.S. broadcast system that has turned into the one I saw in 1987 on a vacation trip with "Citizens for Peace" to Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad: only three channels available to any TV set anywhere. Topics? Soviet-written news, classical music, and soccer. Zepnick probably is watching Fox news in his patio, among the flowers and trees of his gated community, far from the elbow-to-elbow buses of commuting to work. Fox reassures him that he and his offspring are higher on the evolutionary ladder and deserve to win and procreate and that he was right to countersue for $5,000 to hassle a man who made it clear to this king of the bar that he was to pay the serf EACH time work was turned in. But laws don't apply to the elite, whether they are rich NFL owners or Manhattan-club lawyers.
Watching Fox or MSNBC? Same poison, now in Conservative or Liberal flavors.
garlanddegreeff: how can this be said...please don't give up. Use your time to do a little research and spread information while we still can via internet by posting short, sharp informative comments to particularly conservative sites. Remember they are people like you mostly, the homeland kind so you will know how to structure your comments. They are not being informed by say Fox News and other conservative outlets and they often tend to stick to dogmas . We need a people's information army to do this enmasse and open their eyes about the subjects they tend to care about. Little by little the nefarious skittles will fall. They can't see it just yet because they are as thick as planks so it takes a while. Actually it's kind of fun watching them stepping in doo doo's every day. But if we treasure honesty and trustworthiness, we all need to put our heads up from the hamster wheel and pay attention during this Epic of The Snatchers era.
"It is not an exaggeration to say that Ryan’s tight-fisted Medicare plan could consign millions of Americans to a premature death."
But that's the idea. Then the demands on Social Security are also reduced, and even more tax cuts can be passed ...
Win-Win!
I agree completely. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the Repugs would really like all the people who are homeless and those who have been on welfare for let's say six months and the ones who have gotten unemployment (which the Repugs seem to forget the workers paid into for years) for a year to just kill themselves. And their families too, of course. Don't want those dependents left behind.
"the failure of the American Left to invest significantly in a competing message machine"
The Right (billionaires and their millionaire minions) owns the media, the politicians and funds large parts academia. The Left owns.... what? Also, most of the "Left" media is owned and funded by limousine liberals (millionaires, like those at The Nation magazine) who profit from the very same system that screws the rest of us, and so focuses primarily on the "culture war" issues that the plutocracy uses to divide the masses, and also peddles the Obama iconography.
The left has been outspent but I see hope when a Dem. wins an election in a historically red state. The pundits are trying to figure out why but reason dictates the only way to defeat this right monstrosity is to oppose them politically. Money has bought the best minds of the country and we see the results. If the left is considered "common" and "illiterate" then let the left take over politically. To not do so invites social and economic suicide and the death of this country. I am grateful for the Nation magazine and DemocracyNow and all left leaning and/or progressive pundits and do not see their effort as one to divide the masses but rather an effort to educate the masses. This is always the first step of any movement. It amazes me too, that average Americans align with the right. It defies logic. Hopefully the message will reach them as the fight continues even in this defunct two party system. Because the progressive left media gains wealth doing what they do is irrelevant. We all have a right to earn a living and theirs is not to steal from the masses. Imagine what it would be like without the thinkers, historians, reporters and authors disseminating the information they have. They are currently the only voices of reason available in the fight against the injustice that is stealing our lives.
"...peddles the Obama iconography." that statement, without clarification also defies logic and borders on hysteria. Are you really watching the news? Your vague attack minimizing the effect of the news from the left and progressives too, I assume, rings shallow. You must be reading CD for some reason. I would be interested in hearing what you find potentially positive in this battle. Remove the noose, climb down from the chair and focus please.
I expect that the NFL impasse will be resolved sooner than later, and won't seriously jeopardize the Amerikan Imperium's traditional reliance on bread and circuses to appease and distract the yahoo masses.
In the meantime, the burning question of whether the next season will commence as scheduled becomes an absorbing meta-circus of its own.
Aside from that, it's unsurprising but unfortunate that Parry continues to conflate "the Right" and "Republicans". The political Möbius strip of the duopoly itself has been sucked into the singularity, or black hole, of "the Right".
The Republicans are only the "side", or pseudo-side, that's easiest to spot.
Fukashimed empirePie May 27th, 2011
tornado alley lined with GE nukes
f**ked, f**kest, Fukashimed
shakers, bubble makers, and leveraged takers
government pukes and new age soothes
call for a new heaven on terra infirm-a
terra infirm-a Fukashimed
but
with less people
limp dicks bow
to the fittest Trumpest nest
humping whale less with the best.
humming the theme of the turn blues
with neo conserve hues: “F U I got mine”
“F U I got mine”
"the Right’s default position is almost always to side with the billionaires."
Spank me daddy, I'm scared!
Financial Fascism is the name of the game and it's global in scope. Today, Pepe Escobar details the GCC component of FF and its newest hire--Xe, as in Blackwater, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME28Ak01.html.
Also today, Micheal Hudson provides us with an update about FF's actions in the EU, which is essentailly copying moves from the US Empire/IMF playbook, http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson05272011.html
Myself and Alan MacDonald has been beating the drum about what is truely a ploy to establish a global Empire that combines the US Empire and the EU's that utilizes FF as its main weapon, and when that fails employs NATO or US Imperial Stormtroopers. Both Russia and China have regretted their allowing the UNSC resolution that unleashed the Imperial Stormtroopers on Libya and will not repeat it. Neither country is a paragon of democracy or human rights, but I would argue the Empire is far worse. So unfortunately for those of us striving to become civilized, we have a Barbarian Empire versus the Barbarian countries of the SCO. What's coming will make the Great Patriotic War seem a sideshow.
karloff1,
What does FF refer to? Financial Force? Financial Fu88ing? ????
Thanks,
OYE
As maciek said, it refers to Financial Fascism--the core aspect of Super Inperialism well described by Michael Hudson that I've refered and linked to quite often and the force driving the various "austerity" whips laid to the backs of Greeks, Latvians, Portugees, Spaniards, and before them most of the Global South. Icelanders were smart and refused to be whipped. I suspect British bankers to be the first practitioners of FF, but it's likely the Romans were the sire of its first, most fundamental form--making a newly conquered people pay taxes in Roman coin, which meant they had to earn that coin somehow or else. That basic form still exists at the core of the IMF and World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programs/Loans, which is also the essence of Dollar Diplomacy. Korten discusses its workings in "When Corporations Rule the World," as does Walden Bello and other longtime opponents of Globalization. What's different today is the gloves of "Friendly Fascism" have been removed and the Class War has become quite overt for those watching. The top dog Financial Fascists did a great job in choosing Obama, and there's no way they'll allow any Republican challenger to unseat him. I read your critique of Duncan; it was a good effort, but the man is beholden to the Dark Side and will not be swayed by any argument no matter how sound.
I've posted this link before. It requires an investment in time to read and listen, but Hudson has the Financial Fascist's game down pat, http://michael-hudson.com/
I should make it clear that the people running this Class War are not beholden to any particular nation-state--they are Transnational, Globalists--and are willing to destroy any country they no longer have any use for. C. Wright Mills saw this coming when he wrote "The Power Elite," and Lasch expanded on their actions in his "Revolt of the Elite."
sorry double post
I concur with your assesment. He's shilling for the lesser-of-two-evils again.
I keep waiting for the right to overreach. Maybe this is it. Nader famously said that if he could get the American public to care half as much about politics as the outcome of the super bowl he might have a chance to be president. Well, if the ruling elites take football away from the American public and that public fills that huge vacuum in their psyche with questions of why what really matters has been taken away from them, well, there will be Hell to pay. People will ask, "Why do we need owners? Why don't the players form their own league and give us back our football?" As Nero noted so many centuries ago, "The people must have their amusements."
Who do you super rich think you are? Am I not a man and a brother? You take the food out of the mouths of the poor just to underscore your wealth? You are sick, vicious, and worst of all for you, you have sold your humanity.
Yes, but they got a good price for it and are living very well on the proceeds. They'll be less ready than the rest of us when the excrement hits the air conditioning globally and irrevocably.,=
"""Now, the hardliners simply assume that Republican judges will keep siding with the NFL owners and thus enable them to beat down the players, eventually assuring the billionaire owners a bigger piece of the revenue pie – even if that means losing some or all of the 2011 season."""
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Let em beat down the players. That will allow the crummy scotus to make it legal for those most precious people of the u.s., the billionaire football team owners, to use children for their money laundering schemes. And I can't wait for the pro-athletes to come back to 'work' and getting paid only $100,000.00 a year. That'll be fine. I wouldn't miss any of those empty sports events if perchance that they just went away. Certainly has little substance other than allowing disparate people to eke out a living hocking their wares around the stadiums.
What you term as the Right sells an image, it is marketing. People have aspirations, they want to identify with success, so define success.
Going along with that, people also believe what they want to believe, if they want to believe it desperately enough they will blind themselves to a reality that they refuse to accept.
The Right uses the institutions and cultural supports of the Middle class as a stalking horse. That is to say that they borrow the useful bits of religion, duty to family, and love of country. Obviously the whole of any of these things would prove disastrous to people who view the target group, as well, the mark. So whatever is useful is emphasized, whatever is not useful is ignored and an alternate bit is concocted pulling together fragments other things into a cohesive sounding whole.
Christianity is the enemy of these people if you get into theology in depth.
The well being of family and loved ones is the enemy of these people because love is the antithesis of big L Libertarianism.
Love of Country is the enemy of these interests because they do not square with a desire to move us all forward as they exploit weaknesses with the result of killing strength as everyone is a mix of both.
The greatest weakness of this movement is the illogic of their contrived subversions of God, Country, and Religion. It is superficial and if you study the arguments instead of just getting angry the victims you can blow them up (the arguments, that is). This means that the Tea Party movement that they just spent so much time, energy, and money putting together could easily be stolen right out from under their noses.
To discourage people from visiting the liberal/progressive side of political philosophy they equate it with the Left (which is nothing more than fascism of another sort). They pick out some of the odder inventions of fevered brains of the left and present these things to the flock as mainstream thought of some sort of cohesive group (which does not exist). This makes it easier to ridicule the correct points that are brought out by producing “facts” that are red herrings.
'THE PROTESANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM. A very good and precise offering on how wrong theology breeds wrong behaviour.'
A good point well known to any living creature with a human mind.
Many however will not get the point so I will add that reason is the function of the mind and faith in the word of the Lutheran-Calvinist-Protestant is unreason. If you do not believe me just Google 'total depravity of man' and 'predestination'. If it is too complicated to follow, well then get educated before expressing opinions and I sincerely hope you do.
Realise also that the Catholic Church, although almost infinitely more reasonable, was and is defective in reason, particularly also with regard to the use of the word faith in connection with their understanding of monotheism. Protestants and Catholics are each in fact correct in denying the authority claimed by the other. This means that neither is the answer or is the vehicle of the Word Of God even if they both accuse the other of being not so. This is so in exactly the same way as a thief is not made innocent because he correctly accuses another of thievery.
In short, the entire Christian Church is an obscene institution of self-worship and an aberration.
Now recognise that it is not alone. Judaism and Islam are aberrations of equal magnitude.
Each of the three have validities but none of the three is valid while all of the three assert that they exclusively are.
They are insane
We could forcibly move them all to the area we know as the USA, fence them in a la Guantanamo, quarantine their struggle and observe them with the understanding that any alliance between them is an attempt to escape the prison of death they are responsible for. Then, when they love each other enough to laugh at any of their historical claims to an exclusive relationship with the God, The Creator of the Universe, we can perhaps carefully interview them individually with the aim of granting their reasonable desire to become fully human by releasing them to live amongst us in which case there probably will not be many left, which will be sad but then we simply have to choose between humanity or perverted monotheist monkeys.
Now please realise this talk of a prison in the USA is allegorical.
Human beings are incapable of imagining that they are dead, yet this is one of two sure things in life, the other being taxes.
People are also wired to believe subconsciously that there is something further up the food chain than we are.
Unreason you say, can you imagine "forever"? Nope, we get very jumbled up and incapable of processing large quantities. If you believe that you are different you have not given it an honest effort.
Putting all Christians/Catholics/Muslims in a prison together to fight it out will not change the nature of human beings as these groups are not an aberration, they are the rule. Before there were Christians or Muslims there were Pagans who cut a bloody swath across the countryside, why leave them out? What about the Incans, speaking of blood? Is it "reasonable" to throw perfectly nice Hindu women into fires, to believe in reincarnation or karma?
It seems to be the notion of a path to salvation that bothers you, the follow this, that, and the other rule and you'll obtain the result you are looking for. But goodness me, anywhere you go "you have to fill out the form first... and then you wait in the line..." to quote Paul Simon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK29o9EOx-g
REASSURING LIBERAL THEORY
It is reassuring to heap blame on those in power but it obscures real issues
in favor of definitions we have been sold not only by those who oppose our
basic beliefs but by those who support them.
Joyce and Gabriel Kolko referred to this as follows:
"...The notion of American leadership's errors or misperceptions is reassuring
to those who believe the society can be redeemed merely by abler, superior
men [women]. But that species of liberal theory ignores the constancy and
also the justifications and explanations for action..."
Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, THE LIMITS OF POWER: The World
and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954, p. 7
Harper and Row, 1972
While we analyze current events and future ones which we may forsee, the
lessons of history always provide a deeper perspective.
email: peterloeb@yahoo.com
Abortion is not a desirable solution in anyone’s book that I am aware of. It is a solution of last resort for many young women for a variety of reasons. Certainly abortions both legal and illegal will become more commonplace the harder things become for working people. I am at a bit of a loss of who we can vote for as both parties seem utterly corrupt, but it seems to me that voting for someone who wants to increase the disparity between rich and poor will not end this practice to which many object, but instead increase it along with many other sorts of human misery. Desperate people do desperate things, not all of those things will be legal.
It seems to me as though our house is metaphorically on fire. We may not all agree on all things but there are some things upon which most of us do agree. We should aim for those things first, like putting out the fire. When the fire is out the atmosphere will certainly change in some ways, things don’t happen in a vacuum after all. When situations change, people’s moods and opinions change. You reassess and move onto the next glaring deficiency, and so on.
My own family is 50/50, one side is Methodist/Baptist/Presbyterian the other side has a strong Benedictine tradition. As a consequence I have a great interest in healing rifts rather than in making them grow more pronounced.
Talk about Hyprocasy..."you reassess and move to next...." You simply forgive corruption when it suits you and later when you feel that you have solved the first problem you will then move with renewed vengance on to the next bad thing and so on. WoW! try healing the rift between poor and rich when you finish that "rift" why not move on to other desperate things like finding a politician that speaks the truth and so on...
You find a politician that speaks to the fact that 63% of the country's assets are owned by 5% of the people (although I believe that gap has widened under the Obama administration). That leaves 37% of the country's assets to be divided amongst 95% of the people. It's not as though these things have been earned by these people by any means that our Founders would recognize as equitable, nope, our forebears took matters into their own hands for far less than the corruption that you are all too willing to ignore, Stockholm syndrome, maybe?
Regarding your first sentence, we do not live in paradise, the Bible says the world is a fallen place, sort of the neighborhood crack house as it were. Do you remember what God's standard was for saving Sodom and Gomorrah? If Abraham could find 10 good men? God would not punish these people as he had judged that they deserved if only 10 good men could be found? I believe that is called mercy, you might want to look it up.
There is another story you might want to consider found in Matthew 18:21-35.
These women do not have abortions because it's fun or because they enjoy hurting people, they do so out of desperation. Now on the other hand, the people who are seeking world domination through our financial system do so because it's fun and because they enjoy hurting people. The blood on their hands is far more than the blood on the hands of those women to say nothing of the malicious intent present. Heck a lot of the blood of those innocents is on their hands as well when you get down to it, directly and indirectly.
I grew up in the catholic church, for the most part it is right wing, that is it is fundamentalist and conservative. There is a liberal segment of the church, but they have little power and the conservative side has been trying to eliminate them. So the church definitively leans to the right. It's agenda is to the right wing.
Now painting everyone in the church with a broad brush is not going to fit all, I know some very liberal catholics. But the people who run the church are the ones advancing an agenda that hews completely to the right wing of thought. And many in the congregations appear to accept and support that.
When I see something like Planned Parenthood that spends 97% of their money for health issues, about 30% goes to birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and the rest of the 97% goes to health clinics for poor women, including prenatal care that they can't get elsewhere, then I think that they are doing much more good than harm. Maybe if we advocated more birth control, we could reduce those unwanted pregnancies to almost zero.
I am unsure of what you mean by proper use of sex. It sounds like you are against gays with a statement like that.
Most people who are pro-life, are pro-war, pro-death penalty, anti-helping the poor, in other words, once you are born they don't care about you anymore. So it's nice to see you are more pro-life in all ways. Sounds like you as the individual are more moderate. But the church itself isn't. They take very hard conservative stances, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-birth control, etc.
Fortunately we are moving towards a secular society where churches will lose their power to enforce their morality on the rest of us. Or should I say immoral behavior on their part. I don't believe the church is a moral institution. Individuals are different. While there is some immoral sexual behavior, I don't believe that most is. What I would hope for is not restrained sex, but responsible sex. Using birth control, condoms, mutual agreement, taking no for an answer. The normal christian belief that sex is something inside only a marriage is unacceptable to me.
I become angry about comments like this. I am old enough (75) to remember when abortion was supposed to be illegal. It never really was. I grew up in a poor neighborhood. I never heard of any abortions there. It was different when I moved up a bit. Abortions were discussed - not in terms of morality or legality but rather in terms of safety and money. Moreover, there was no education, information, or birth control available.
For the poor, an abortion meant a cheap dangerous procedure that could kill you. For people who could afford it, it meant a safe, quiet procedure than noone need know about.
I do not think apparent morality should be defined in terms of money, as it was back then. Nor do I approve of the hypocrisy that said anything was OK as long as it looked good. I do not want to return to those days.
I dislike abortions, yes. But it is better to have the facts about abortion public instead of hiding them and speaking of them only in whispers.
The best solution is education and birth control. Planned parenthood supplied these. Only a small percentage of their budget was used for abortion. Without organizations like them, the number of abortions will increase.
If you are against abortions don't have one. Just stop trying to impose your Victorian standards on everyone else.
If you are against abortions don't have one. Just stop trying to impose your Victorian standards on everyone else.
I am a new guy here and I am reading for the first time the hatered of those that call themselves "liberal" - I never dreamed that a game that seems to captivate the country in the fall and early winter could produce such viterall. Why is it that liberals love to hate success and, what is success? I cringe when I hear that that people that are fortunate enough to make over $250,000 a year are "BILLIONAIRES"??? Come on you gang of pussies admit it you want me to believe that hard work shouldn't pay, that our country should reward those that choose to quit school at 16 and jump on the unemployment bandwagon as fast as they can while working jobs under the table paying no taxes?
I believe that people in true need deserve help but... I don't believe that those that choose not to work or try deserve my help. Too many of "you" love to blame but fail to repair. Both parties stink they are filled with career politicians that (for now) pander to the liberals because their votes keep them in office. As far as the NFL who really cares- I like football but I refuse to sit around and concern myself with who makes how much. Go kiss a tree and pretend that the electricty for your volt comes from heaven...not the coal burning power plant.
Not angry much are you? I don't know of any team owner who makes just over 250,000 dollars. It usually requires hundreds of millions to buy a team nowadays. So team owners aren't that much richer than the rest of us is what you are saying? So how does someone who earns just 250,000 afford to pay many millions for a sports team?
I don't know of any liberal who would advocate the positions that you stated. But folks on the right want to demonize us so that others will think that we say such things. So it's very difficult to answer such false charges. Maybe when you learn what liberals really stand for, the ideals that we believe in, we could have an honest discussion.