Fans of modern political cartoons in the NYC area may want to check out a “Laughing Liberally” event featuring Slowpoke creator Jen Sorensen and Tom the Dancing Bug creator Ruben Bolling this Wednesday, May 14, at the Tank. 279 Church St, 8pm.
Fuck the Election
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posted by Susan Stark
I have cared very little for elections ever since I realized that (1) they can be stolen, and that (2) even if my candidate wins, they don’t necessarily do what I voted for them to do.
But since this is election year, I thought I would give a present to all of you reading this blog. This is an article by a man named Joe Carpenter that I think every working and poor person on this planet should read. It is as follows:
I’ve never understood the idea of speaking truth to power. The truth, surely, is that in almost all countries of the world, political and economic systems are designed to benefit only the rich and powerful, at the expense of those with less money and power. This is how the world works, and I see no reason to think that the powerful don’t already understand that. After all, they designed it; they maintain it.
They steal our money, sacrifice our children in their wars, send the poorest and most victimized among us off to jail for petty mistakes, and crush those of us who might present a real threat to the arrangement. They know we don’t like it. They don’t care. They don’t need to care. They also control most of our avenues of dissent. It’s a very simple, very elegant design.
Meanwhile, we get angry and toddle off to tell the truth to the powerful. We have been telling them the truth for centuries. We travel to their great palaces by the hundreds of thousands, to express our anger and despair. We shout and sing and stomp and whine. We threaten. We plead. Sometimes we’re beaten up, or sent to jail. It’s a tradition of great courage and personal sacrifice, no doubt.
We go to tell them to stop using our money and our children and our energy and intelligence to further rob and rape and murder us. We tell them to be more respectful and compassionate. We’re like angry but terrorized children, anxiously scolding our stern, all-powerful parents. And, in the end, we look to the Democrats or to some congressional panel or to the Supreme Court and demand that they come to our aid. As my friend Harry puts it: “We’re left in the terrible position of trying to decide which elite group will be less likely to prey on us.”
Well, the government and their pals are not going to stop using and abusing us. They’re not going to stop preying on us. They cannot stop! Republican or Democrat, they are rich and powerful precisely because they prey on us. They are rich because they rob us. They’re robbing us right this minute. They are powerful because they dominate every aspect of our lives, because they’ve taken control of all the major social, political, economic, and communication systems in the world. These systems were designed to increase their wealth and power by taking both from all the rest of us.
But, we are not children, and they are not our parents. We’re not little people and they are not big people. We’re not insignificant and they are not significant. In fact, we do not need them.
They are very few and we, here in the US alone, are roughly 300 million. We don’t need to rush out to tell the few that they are abusing the many. They already know that. We need to stand upright and walk out to tell the many that they are being slowly devoured by the few, for — incredibly, they do not know. We need to look to our next door neighbors, and to their next door neighbors and to the folks all along the block. We need to tell the truth to each other — for we are the answer.
While hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC, back in September, hundreds of millions of American citizens went about their business without even a vague awareness of the protests. The media to which most of them attend barely mention such things — obviously. And, most Americans don’t live in the DC area, so they didn’t see a thing.
Most Americans live in my neighborhood, or in your neighborhood. Most Americans eat breakfast right next to you in the local café. Most Americans get their car fixed at the same garage as you and I do. Most Americans visit my library, my bookstore, my grocery store, my local park — or yours.
But the rich and powerful have convinced us that we cannot — we must not — communicate with the people we can see and hear and touch, right here, right now. They have convinced us that we need to travel to some government office to persuade elected officials and bureaucrats to change our world for us. The government and media drone on, endlessly, hypnotically, and convince us that if we just elect the right leaders, they’ll talk to our next door neighbor for us.
Government programs, they promise us, will fix that gaping hole in the pavement right out beyond your driveway. Government will help poor Mrs. Wilson, languishing in the old, dilapidated house right across the street. Government will settle your dispute with that family right down the block. Government will take care of your neighbors who can’t escape the hurricane:
“It’s OK, just hop in the SUV and go, we’ll take care of everything!” Government will help; government will heal; government will bring us together.
That’s not going to happen, of course. The elites are too busy dividing us, setting us against each other, exacerbating every animosity, every misgiving, every anxiety, however slight. They insinuate themselves into every new crack and crevice and offer convoluted, expensive legislation and bureaucracies to bring us back together again. “There oughta be a law,” says the old complaint. Well, there will be, to be sure — but it will just make things worse.
We’re all looking in the wrong place for reason and compassion and justice. It’s not anywhere to be found in Washington, DC. It’s not in governments or state houses. It’s not there in that prestigious gathering of experts and big brains.
It’s right here. It’s wherever you are, and it’s right next door and it’s everywhere along your street and all around your neighborhood. It’s in the cars that pass you on the roadways and in the shops where you buy your dog or cat food. There’s no need to travel a thousand or even a hundred miles. It’s not necessary to make the climb up to the penthouse. Our hope, our possibility — our only hope, our only possibility, lies in the ordinary people who compose our world, who are the very stuff of our lives.
Want to change the world? Tell the truth to the plumber. Begin with the lady who hands you the stamps at the post office. Talk with the checkout people at the grocery store. Chat with the waiter at your favorite café. Speak with the cops who sit down at the next table. Gab for a few minutes with the guy who changes your oil or with the elementary school teacher with whom you’ve been discussing your child’s future. Lean out of your window while stopped at the light and tell the truck driver some truth he’s certain to recall and ponder.
Feel the need to march? Gather a bunch of folks and wander about your neighborhoods with signs and leaflets. When people walk by, stop and gab with them. When that huge guy with the Hemi-powered Ram pulls alongside and tells you to “love it or leave it,” ask him to stay and talk. Smile, offer your hand, make nice. He’s one of us. He’d make a wonderful ally. When a carload of high school jocks slows to offer some single-fingered communication, hand them some cold colas and tell them about the probability of a draft. They’re our people, too. Convince yourself that this is so, then convince them.
Get together with like-minded people and think of simple, brief, meaningful ways to communicate with the folks all around you. Think about little things, easy things, immediate things. Think about what you can do together, and what you might accomplish alone. Think about your real day-to-day life, and how many opportunities there are to educate and enlighten, every day. Blab and babble and blunder and tell the truth, one ordinary person at a time. We’re all ordinary people, and we are our only hope. Tell the truth to the guy who pumps out the septic tank — he’s one of us! Forget about telling the government, forget about the hot shots.
To the extent that we believe we need them, exactly to that extent will we continue our dependence upon ruthless, murderous plunderers, people entirely opposed to our needs and deepest longings. As long as we believe we need them, exactly that long will we live life on our knees, begging — as Mickey Z.
The depth of our apparent need is the measure of their height above us. The nightmare of our poverty is our dream that they have a right to take our money. The illusion of our impotence is the chimera of their monstrous strength. We shall be slaves as long as we’re convinced that we have masters, and not one moment longer.
Time to wake up, time to grow up. We’re not children. We do not need to ask permission to live like sane, reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate human beings. We do not need to beg or bow or kneel. We do not need to look to government or to experts or to the rich and famous. Whatever we need, we can get it ourselves. Whatever we want to stop — we can stop it ourselves. Whatever must be done, we can do it ourselves. We do not need them; we need each other.
All else is distraction and delusion.
Joe Carpenter is a guy living in Southern Oregon who has traveled extensively and kept his eyes open. He can be reached at: joecarpenter@charter.net.
And now that you’ve read this article, I’d like you to send it to every friend, co-worker, family member, and neighbor you can think of. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Carpenter1102.htm
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama: The Other White Meat
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Wright Fuss Weakens Dems, Squanders Chance to Get Serious
I argue with my friends. Some of them thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Almost all believed that Afghanistan was “the good war,” the one from which Iraq distracted us. (They’re starting to come around.) A few are even bigots. We disagree about these issues, often vehemently. But we’re still friends. I would never diss a friend in public (or, in politicalese, “distance myself”). Even a former friend deserves respect.
Crisis reveals character. In politics, it reveals judgment.
Barack “Uniter Not Divider, This Time We Really Mean It” Obama was praised for dumping (“distancing himself from”) Reverend Jeremiah Wright. (“What Barack Obama did was a profile in courage,” said the Reverend Al Sharpton.) But the McCain campaign’s silence indicates that it is quietly editing its fall attack ads. Obama’s apology, they’ll say, came too little, too late. Obama has fallen for one of the hoariest old tricks in the political playbook: guilt by association.
Republicans are smart. They close ranks behind a senator caught trolling for gay sex in an airport restroom, ignoring the homophobic platform of their own party. Mr. Wide Stance keeps his job; they keep his vote. In contrast, when New York’s governor hooks up with a prostitute, the Dems–whose politics, after all, are sex-positive–sell one of their brightest lights down the river.
You’d think Democrats would have learned a big lesson in 1972. It seems quaint in this age of Zoloft, but when it came out that vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton had been treated for depression (with electroshock treatment, standard care at the time), the media went nuts. If George McGovern had stood by his running mate, the issue would soon have died. There were, after all, plenty of other stories to talk about–say, Vietnam and Watergate. But McGovern got spooked. He dumped Eagleton. Voters asked themselves: If a guy throws his own running mate under the bus, how will he defend the United States? McGovern lost by a landslide.
Rule One of political survival: Never, ever apologize. Even when you’re wrong. Especially when you’re wrong. Rule Two: Don’t comment. Defending yourself keeps the story going. Corollary One to Rule One: Stand up for your friends. Especially when they’re wrong.
But what if they’re right?
“You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you,” Reverend Wright said in his appearance at the National Press Club.
Pronouncing himself “offended” by such “ridiculous propositions” as “when [Wright] equates the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism–there are no excuses,” Obama said the next day.
What is truly ridiculous is that, six and a half years after 9/11, many Americans still think the attacks were motivated by crazy freedom-haters out to forcibly convert them to Islam. The rise of radical Islam resulted from what Chalmers Johnson termed “Blowback”–CIA jargon for the unintended consequences, in this case of arming and funding Islamist fighters against the Soviet Union. But Wright was right. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” the Reverend said after 9/11.
It wasn’t an original thought. Ward Churchill said the same thing. So have countless analysts in other countries. Only in the U.S. is it prohibited to say something so obvious–particularly in a public forum.
Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers didn’t think flying planes into buildings would make Americans join the local mosque. They were motivated by a desire to bring America’s wars home to its people, to ensure that it would suffer the consequences for having “supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans,” as Wright said. Like Wright, bin Laden has referenced these issues.
The Al Qaeda founder has also talked about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, one of the greatest war crimes in history.
“Bin Laden has said several times that he is seeking to acquire and use nuclear weapons not only because it is God’s will, but because he wants to do to American foreign policy what the United States did to Japanese imperial surrender policy,” the Washington Post noted in 2005.
9/11 wasn’t an attack on a legitimate target. It wasn’t justifiable. Except for the Pentagon, the victims were civilians: clerks, cooks, office managers and bike messengers, the vast majority of whom probably opposed such foreign policies as the trade sanctions that killed 100,000 Iraqi children during the 1990s. But pretending that the killers of 9/11 were driven by motives other than to avenge American foreign policy in the Muslim world further delays a conversation we needed to have ages ago, and increases the likelihood of more attacks.
One of Wright’s most bizarre statements concerns his “suggestion that the United States might have invented H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS,” in the words of The New York Times. There is no evidence to support this accusation. Yet paranoia can reveal truth.
“Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” Wright told the NAACP last week. (In Tuskegee from 1932 to 1972, illiterate sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated so that white doctors could observe the progress of the disease.) “In fact, one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.”
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, given what the U.S. government has done and continues to do to African-Americans–a recent study shows, for example, that blacks are 12 times more likely than whites to be sent to prison for the same drug offenses as whites–that many of them consider it “capable of doing anything.” What is surprising is that African-Americans–or anyone else–still believes the government.
The Wright controversy offered us an opportunity to talk about the need to create a government that tells the truth, that doesn’t torture or kidnap or wage unjustifiable wars–a government worthy of its people and its trust. What we got instead, courtesy of Mr. Change We Can Believe In, was the usual pablum. “They offend me,” Obama said of Wright’s comments. “They rightly offend all Americans.”
Let us all hold hands and be offended. Whatever it takes to stop us from thinking.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
Hate Mail
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After a year or two of relative silence, the right-wingers are at it again. Here, for your weekend reading pleasure, are two choice entries from today’s mail bag:
First, from “Mike Crowe” at crondo1@sbcglobal.net:
I HOPE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF A BOMB THAT WAS PLANTED TO KILL AMEARICANS.
BETTER YET, I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU GET WATERBOARDED.
IT MIGHT GET SOME OF THAT LIBERAL SHIT OUT OF YOUR HEAD.
FUCK YOU!
I’m confused. I am an “Amearican.” So if the bomb planted to kill “Amearicans” went off, I wouldn’t so much as be getting in its way as…never mind. Also, how would getting waterboarded make me more politically conservative? Is conservativism literally watered-down liberalism? And if it works that way, aren’t all the Gitmo detainees Republicans by now, which means it’s safe to release them?
Then, from WolverB@aol.com, there’s:
Ted, You should be shot. You are a worthless person taking up good air that someone else could use. It’s people like you that have caused this nation to be the cesspool that it has become. Leftists have no discipline, no logic, no sense of right and wrong. You think its wrong to force a killer to give us important information that might save lives but you don’t have a problem with murdering millions of unborn babies every year on a whim.
Again, I’m confused. Who are these “killers” who are being waterboaded? They’re not convicted murderers–they haven’t seen a lawyer, much less a judge or a jury. So they’re innocent, right? Also, I’m wondering where I ever wrote that abortion was awesome.
Oh, and note that this rightie things this nation has become a cesspool. He hates America!
P.S. A reminder to right-wingers about my E-mail Rules: anything you send me can and will, especially if it’s obnoxious, appear in the . Including your email address.
Shoutout to Angelenos
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If you want me to give a talk or sign books in the L.A. area, please get in touch at chet@rall.com. I’ll be there in a few weeks.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Arrest Bush
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Bush Confesses to Waterboarding. Call D.C. Cops!
“Why are we talking about this in the White House?” John Ashcroft nervously asked his fellow members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee. (The Principals were Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General Ashcroft.)
“History will not judge this kindly,” Ashcroft predicted.
“This” is torture. Against innocent people. Conducted by CIA agents and American soldiers and marines. Sanctioned by legal opinions issued by Ashcroft’s Justice Department. Directly ordered by George W. Bush.
An April 11th report by ABC News describes how CIA agents, asked by previous presidents to carry out illegal “black ops” actions (torture and killings), had become tired of getting hung out to dry whenever their dirty deeds were revealed by the press. When the Bush Administration asked the CIA to work over prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, Director George Tenet demanded legal cover. The Justice Department complied by issuing a classified 2002 memo, the so-called “Golden Shield,” authored by Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee. “Enhanced interrogation techniques”–i.e., torture–were legal, Bybee assured the CIA.
Tenet was a good boss, a CYA type. He wanted to protect his agents. So he got the Principals to personally sign off on each act of torture.
“According to a former CIA official involved in the process,” ABC reported, “CIA headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking for authorization for specific techniques.” Can we beat up this guy? Can we waterboard him?
The Bushies weren’t otherwise known for dwelling on details. Osama was in Pakistan; they invaded Afghanistan instead. Two years later, he was still in Pakistan. They invaded Iraq. Bush and his top officials still found time to walk through every step of torment a detainee would suffer in some CIA dungeon halfway around the world.
“The high-level discussions about these ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were so detailed, [Bush Administration] sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed–down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top Al Qaeda suspects–whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.”
Bush knew.
Not only did he know, he personally approved it. He likes torture.
“Yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue,” he confirmed. “And I approved.”
When the U.S. signs a treaty, its provisions carry the full force of U.S. law. One such treaty is the U.N. Convention Against Torture, of which the U.S. is a core signatory. As Philippe Sands writes in his new book “Torture Team:” Parties to the…Convention are required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture. If appropriate, they must then prosecute–or extradite the person to a place where he will be prosecuted. The Torture Convention…criminalizes any act that constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Complicity or participation could certainly be extended not only to the politicians and but also the lawyers involved…”
George W. Bush has publicly confessed that he ordered torture, thus violating the Convention Against Torture. He, Cheney, Rumseld, Rice and the other Principals must therefore be arrested and, unlike the thousands of detainees kidnapped by the U.S. since 9/11, arraigned and placed on trial.
Because the torture ordered by Bush and his cabinet directly resulted in death, they must additionally be charged with several counts of murder. Fifteen U.S. soldiers have been charged with the murders of two detainees at the U.S. airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002. They were following orders issued by their Commander-in-Chief and his Principals.
One of the Bagram victims was Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver. “On the day of his death,” reported The New York Times on May 22, 2005, “Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend…Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.”
At least four detainees have committed suicide at the torture camp created by George W. Bush after 9/11 at Guantánamo Bay. Twenty-five more made 41 unsuccessful attempts to kill themselves. The conditions of their confinement–ordered by Bush and his Principals–constitutes torture. It no doubt prompted their deaths.
If George W. Bush were an ordinary citizen, there can be little doubt that he would face a long prison sentence for the scores of acts of torture he authorized both specifically and generally. Four of the seven white hillbillies charged with the kidnap-torture of a black woman in Logan County, West Virginia are now in jail for at least the next ten years.
If Bush weren’t president, he would face murder charges. The maximum sentence in a federal murder case is death.
If Bush and his co-conspirators are not above the law, if the United States remains a nation where all citizens are equal, they must be arrested and indicted. But by whom?
The Supreme Court has never resolved the question of whether a sitting president can be arrested by civilian authorities. Even if he were charged and convicted, many legal experts say he could issue himself a pardon.
However, leaving the presidency in the hands of an self-admitted torture killer is unacceptable. Congress could ask a U.S. Marshal to arrest Bush as part of impeachment charges. But the ultimate outcome–removing him from office a few months before the end of his term–seems woefully inadequate given the nature of the charges. In any case, Democrats have already said that impeachment is “off the table.”
Bush could be extradited to one of the countries where the torture and murders were committed–such as Afghanistan or Cuba. But he could claim immunity as a head of state.
There is, however, a person who could begin holding Bush and the others accountable for their crimes.
She is Cathy L. Lanier, the 39-year-old chief of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. Chief Lanier, take note: you have probable cause to arrest a self-confessed serial torturer and mass murderer within the borders of the District of Columbia. He resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Go get him.
History is calling, Chief Lanier. Your city, and your country, needs you.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
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Happy Earth Daze
posted by Susan Stark
This past week has been about the environment, coinciding with Earth Day on the 22nd. I was a little less than enthusiastic.
Unfortunately, like many holidays, this one has been compromised by those who oppose the very spirit the holiday is supposed to represent. Corporations used the event to trot out their “environmentally friendly” junk that people can whip out their credit cards for. And that includes the trotting out of ethanol and other supposedly friendly “biofuels” (never mind that biofuels cause increases in the price of food as arable land is used to grow gas). But the whole point of Earth Day is not to “buy” environmental products.
The whole point of environmentalism is to consume less. That is, to decrease your energy and material footprint on the planet, thus reducing global warming and the overconsumption of natural resources.
In the so-called developed world, especially in the US, this is not always easy to do. But it’s possible. You can start by doing this:
1) To decrease your energy footprint, make it a rule in your household that the last one leaving a room must turn off the lights and other appliances being used.
2) To decrease your energy footprint, install night-lights in the hallways so you can see without having to turn on the over-head lights. Night-lights use less energy.
3) To decrease your energy footprint, unplug ALL appliances in the household when they are not being directly used. All of them. Many appliances, such as a stereo or cable/satellite box, use energy even when not turned on.
4) To decrease your energy footprint, find out if there are any public transportation facilities where you live (train or bus), and use them as much as possible. Even out in the country, there may be a county bus system you can use.
5) To decrease your energy footprint, use a scooter, bicycle, moped, or your own two feet to get around instead of lazily using the car to go to the corner store or anywhere else nearby.
6) If you have a gas-guzzling automobile, go online or check around to see if you can have your vehicle modified so that it uses less gas per mile. Needless to say, this will decrease your energy footprint dramatically.
7) To decrease your energy footprint in the summertime, use a fan instead of air-conditioning. A fan uses less energy than the other. Also, take cool showers instead of hot showers. Not only do cool showers keep you cool, they also use less energy than hot showers. And, if it is REALLY HOT, take a t-shirt, run it under cold water, wring out the excess water, and put it on. This will keep you cool for hours. You can also wet your hair to keep you cool.
8) To decrease your energy footprint in winter, shut down the heat when there will be no one in the house or apartment. If you worry about pipes freezing, see what you can do to prevent this. If you want plants in the household that don’t die without heat, get plants like small cedars or spruce trees or any other type of evergreen plant. When there are people in the house or apartment, bundle up as much as possible and keep the heat on low. To keep cold air outside and warm air inside, put duct tape or weather stripping on the cracks of your windows and on the doors that you don’t use very often.
Reducing Waste:
1) If there is any item in your possession that you have no use for anymore, but can still be used by someone else, do not throw it away. Either give it or sell it to someone you know who wants or needs it, such as a friend, co-worker, family member, or neighbor.
2) There is website you can go to that can help you reduce waste:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites.html
At this site, you can post one or more items that you are either selling or giving away. You can also obtain items that others are selling or giving away. Here is another extemely useful website you can use:
At Freecycle, you can give or obtain items, but only for free. Hence the name “Freecycle”.
3) You can do the traditional method of decreasing waste, and that is to give items to your local charitable organizations (Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc.).
4) If you have electronic appliances that no longer work, you can recycle these:
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm
You can also do a google search on where you take e-waste to in your local area.
5) Finally, when you buy anything, try to buy it used. As much as possible.
6) And most finally, when considering buying an item (like a video game) or a service (like cable tv) of any kind, ask yourself, do I really need this crap?
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Ted Rall Interviewed (in English and French)
There’s a lengthy interview with me at a French comics website BDtheque, both in English and in French. Check out the English language version here. The French language version is ici. (“B.D.” stands for “Bande Désinée” in French, which means comics.)
Among the highlights of this interview are shots of the cover of the new French edition of “La Route de la Soie en Lambeaux” (that’s “Silk Road to Ruin” to you Murkins) and the artwork for next year’s graphic novel “The Year of Loving Dangerously.” No, I haven’t learned how to draw more realistically. The art is by Pablo J. Callejo, noted for the “Bluesman” series from NBM. It’s my story, and I wrote it.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: One Nation, Under a Heartless God
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Why Is America So Mean?
“The 82nd,” the man ahead of me in the security line at the Kansas City airport said. He was 64 and white, very Hank Hill and not the kind of guy you’d typically see chatting up a skinny 20-year-old Latino dude. But they were both veterans. Common ground is a given.
“I was in the 82nd too,” the kid told the old man. I looked down. The kid’s legs were gone. He was standing on metal. Implausibly and heartbreakingly, white Converses adorned the tips of his prosthetic legs. High tops.
On the other side of the metal detector, I caught up with the young vet (Iraq? Afghanistan?). HomeSec was giving him the whole treatment: arms stretched out, the wand, stern expressions and stupid questions. The wand beeped and beeped. The TSA guy scowled. “I’ve got titanium all the way up my spine,” the kid explained.
You’re kidding me, I thought. After what he’s been through. After what he’s done for his country. I wanted to scream: Bastards! You should wave him around the checkpoint. Here, sir, we’d like to offer you a seat in first class. No, no, no charge.
I bit my tongue. Here in the land of the twee and the craven, I know when to shut up. That’s what we do now. Airports are nodes of high-intensity fascism in a nation settling into authoritarianism lite. Hassle the bastards and you might end up dead. I had a flight to catch, doncha know.
Have we, at long last, any decency?
In one respect, the three remaining presidential candidates say, “Yes, we do.” They’ve promised to close Gitmo.
What ought to happen to the nearly 300 detainees is obvious. Hand each of them an apology, a bag of cash–a million bucks wouldn’t be nearly enough for what they’ve been through–and a plane ticket home. Those who can’t return to their countries of origin because their U.S.-backed dictatorships would murder them receive a penthouse suite in the U.S. city of their choice.
I’d let them switch places with their guards and 300 top-ranking members of the Bush Administration for a couple of days first. No questions asked. Just get on the plane, and don’t forget your bag o’ cash.
Anyway.
Here’s how messed up, how separated from common sense justice the United States of America has become: We might close Gitmo. But we’re keeping the inmates!
“When it comes to closing Guantánamo, talk is cheap,” Columbia law professor Matthew Waxman tells The Los Angeles Times. Because, you see, the U.S. government has violated the victims’ rights so egregiously for so long that there’s no longer a legally appropriate way to process them.
“Especially vexing,” says the paper, “are scores of foreign detainees: Officials lack evidence to prosecute, but warn against setting them free.” It’s an 800-year-old Western legal principle called habeas corpus: you can’t hold a person in custody without charging them. Oh, wait–Bush got rid of that.
“Because there is little evidence against them that could be used in a U.S. court, government officials fear that a federal judge could order them freed,” the Times continues. Heaven forbid that we release people, even if there’s no evidence they’ve done anything wrong. What’s next? Taxing the rich?
“Then you would have 100-plus future sleeper-cell members unleashed in Kansas,” a “midlevel official” told the Times. No grain silo would be safe.
Gitmo inmates have been waterboarded, urinated upon by U.S. soldiers, violently force-fed and driven to suicide. Some of the “dangerous terrorists” (John McCain’s description) were 12 years old when Afghan warlords sold them to U.S. forces for cash bounties. They’ve grown up in Gitmo. When do we finally, at long last, decide that they’ve suffered enough?
Maybe we should just shoot them.
It’s not just foreigners. Even for its own native-born wretches, America couldn’t find a path to fundamental decency if it were lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
In ancient Rome, executioners abided by a rule: If they failed to hack off your head after three swings of the blade, they set you free. Not here. Men condemned to lethal injection wake up screaming; the guards administer more poisons and barbiturates.
Veterinarians abandoned the three-drug cocktail used to kill inmates in most states because they considered it cruel to animals.
Many death row prisoners are innocent. Sometimes they even manage to prove it before their executions. “At least 205 men and one woman nationwide have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 1989, including 53 who…were convicted of murder,” reports The New York Times. But what happens to those who are set free?
No compensation is enough for someone who serves years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. But society ought to come up with something.
There ought to be money. Millions and millions of dollars. So much that the victim of a judicial miscarriage never has to work again. It wouldn’t bring back the lost years, the shattered relationships and murdered moments. But it would be a start.
Then again, this is America. We don’t apologize, much less try to pay penance. Here’s $24 and a cheap suit. Too bad about those 15 years. Thank you for playing. Want compensation? Find a lawyer who’ll work for $24 and sue.
Ah, but there’s a catch: you need a law under which to file a lawsuit. 36 of the 50 states have laws that specifically prevent innocent ex-prisoners from going to court to seek the damages they ought to have been given without asking. Twelve of the remaining 14 have limits. (New York and Maryland do not.) California caps total payouts at a stingy $100 a day, up to a maximum of $10,000–even if they lock you up for 20 years by mistake.
As individuals, Americans are generous to a fault. They do the right thing, or at least they try. The disconnect occurs when we express our collective will, through our courts and government officials. Our laws and our politicians are mean, cheap and callous.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Party Like It’s 1929
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High Unemployment and High Inflation Make This Recession Different
“Why is this recession different from almost all other recessions?” asked Herbert Barchoff. The economist, a former president of the Council of Economic Advisers, answered his own question: “This is not only the usual cyclical recession, but also a structural recession.”
Barchoff’s dark assessment appeared in a letter to the editor of The New York Times–in June 1992. Then, like now, Americans were suffering through a long, grinding recession following a boom (under Reagan) that had primarily benefited the wealthy. There were mass layoffs. The real estate market had collapsed. Foreclosures were rampant.
George H.W. Bush, who had expected to coast to reelection on the strength of his near 90 percent post-Gulf War approval ratings, projected a Herbert Hoover-like resolve to not lift a finger to alleviate the misery. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates, but it didn’t help. Six months later, angry voters fired an out-of-touch president who seemed unwilling to fix an economy he didn’t think was broken in favor of a guy who claimed to feel our pain.
Barchoff, it would turn out, was too pessimistic. “To reverse the excesses of the 1980’s,” he wrote, “restructuring has been going on in massive proportions at every level. It is a rare day that newspapers do not report layoffs, often in the thousands in the industrial sector.” What Barchoff didn’t know–few people did–was that the U.S. was about to begin the longest, broadest and biggest period of economic expansion experienced by any civilization in human history.
Downsizing continued in traditional sectors like manufacturing and newspapers. Even during the Clinton boom, millions of people were ruined, forced to declare bankruptcy. Midwestern cities were reduced to rusted-out shells. But none of that mattered to Wall Street. The Internet revolution prompted so much capital investment, and generated so many new jobs–freshly minted college grads thought it perfectly normal to earn $85,000 moving around lines of HTML–that otherwise sane people began talking about a “new paradigm” in which “the old rules no longer apply.”
In other respects, however, Barchoff was prescient. “[The then-new European Community] will substantially hurt our ability to be competitive,” he correctly predicted. “The drop in interest rates is no solution. During the Great Depression the prime rate went to one percent, with no cure. When you are out of work or afraid of losing your job, you do not take on debt. Nor will entrepreneurs borrow even very cheap money unless there is a market.”
The Bush Sr. recession was a grim affair. When I graduated from Columbia in 1991, the university canceled its annual jobs fair due to employers’ lack of interest. But it was a picnic compared to what we’re facing now. Bush Jr. could finally realize Barchoff’s nightmare of a structural recession–the kind of no-way-out shock experienced by Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“Normal” cyclical recessions feature increased unemployment, which puts downward pressure on prices. You rarely see high unemployment and high inflation at the same time. Conservative economists point to rising inflation during the late 1970s as an exception, but that wasn’t even a downturn, much less a recession. Inflation was high but unemployment was low. Anyway, the inflation didn’t hurt workers; during the Carter years mean wages rose faster than inflation. The opposite is true now. Real income is falling.
The economy has bled 3.1 million jobs since George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, the worst record since the Depression. The official unemployment rate, constantly re-jiggered to make the economy appear more robust, has risen to 5.1 percent. The long-term unemployment rate, which includes people who have had such bad luck looking for work that they’ve given up entirely, has doubled, to over 13 percent.
Meanwhile, inflation is approaching seven percent. Again, that’s the official inflation rate. Your mileage as an average American–who spends a third of your pay on housing and more and more on gas–will vary. But let’s not dwell on the irony of $4-a-gallon gas resulting from a war fought to steal oil.
But wait. There’s even more bad news.
Two-thirds of economic activity is generated by consumer spending. Most people are broke. So much for that two-thirds. “In 2000,” reports David Leonhardt in The Times, “at the end of the last economic expansion, the median family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less–about $60,500.”
This, says, Leonhardt, is a big deal. “This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records.” RBC Capital Markets reports that consumer confidence has fallen below 30 percent, an all-time record low. T.J. Marta, a fixed-income strategist at RBC, said: “What confidence? There is no confidence. It’s like 1929.”
If Barchoff had picked up a copy of the San Jose Mercury-News in 1992, he would have read about the birth of the Web revolution, then touted as the “information superhighway.” But there’s nothing like that coming down the pike today. To paraphrase the ever-quotable Donald Rumsfeld, we’re going to have to make do with the economy we have, not the one we wish we had.
Liberal economists like Paul Krugman suggest a rerun of the 1930s, when FDR’s New Deal employed millions to build new infrastructure like dams and bridges. But none of the three remaining presidential contenders is likely to undertake such a thing. “The worst-case scenario” about the 1991 war against Iraq, Barchoff said in 1992, would have been if it had lasted two years and cost an extra $200 billion. Iraq War II, now in its sixth year, is currently pegged at an estimated $3 trillion. Republican John McCain is committed to pouring more trillions into Iraq War II until victory is achieved, i.e., forever. As Democrats wary of being tarnished with the label of “big spender,” both Obama and Clinton will likely place fiscal discipline ahead of expansive new government programs.
There is no short-term fix. In the long term, we must put more money into more people’s pockets. That means higher wages and lower taxes for the poor and middle class. Some of what is needed is easy to see: a more progressive tax code, repealing laws that allow employers to harass and fire those who try to organize unions, nationalizing industries run by vampire capitalists–health insurers, private hospitals, colleges and universities. Banks encourage predatory lending while stifling saving. They ought to be re-regulated. What madness permits them to charge 30 percent on credit cards while paying one percent on passbook savings accounts?
More–much more–is necessary to prevent the wholesale collapse of the U.S. economic system. A maximum wage should be imposed–the highest paid American should earn no more than ten times the lowest paid. I know, I know–none of this will happen. There will be nothing but Band-Aids and lazy rhetoric as we plummet into the abyss. It cannot be otherwise, for our politics are ossified, the media is corporatized, and we the people are dull and apathetic.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
